What types of research databases are available?
Bibliographic databases are databases that contain citations to publications, such as journal articles, books, or dissertations. Some bibliographic databases may also provide abstracts, or brief summaries, for each article. Reading these abstracts may help you decide if the article is relevant to your research, before you try to locate the original article. Bibliographic databases can usually be searched by subject, author, and keywords. Each citation includes enough basic information about an item for you to be able to locate it in your own library or obtain it from another library through Inter Library Loan. Bibliographic databases are grouped in two broad types: General databases include a wide range of topics and a mix of popular and scholarly literature. Examples: • Essay and General Literature Index • Newspaper Abstracts • Periodical Abstracts • Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, in print, for articles published before the 1980s. Subject databases cover a more narrow range
