Databases Collections
This list includes Open Access and free web sites that provide only indexing, indexing and abstracting, and full-text access, or with the opportunity to purchase the full text.
A – E
ADT: Australasian Digital Theses Program – Search Trove to find Australasian theses.
American Doctoral Dissertations, 1933-1955 – This is a digitized index of over 100,000 doctoral dissertations by title, author and school, from an important twenty-two-year time period in American history
CAIRN Free Access Journals – CAIRN Free Access Journals is a database of journals in the humanities and social sciences. Journals are freely available online once the embargo period defined by their publisher is over. Most of the titles in the database are French-language journals.
Caltech Electronic Theses
collection of online theses that can be searched or browsed; from Caltech Library System
Census Data – This database supersedes the American FactFinder. The new database includes American Community Survey; 1-year Selected Population Profiles 2010-2015; 5-year Selected Population Tables 2011-2015; 5-Year American Indian; Alaska Native Population Profiles; 2000 and 2010 Decennial Summary Redistricting Data Summary Files.
Clinical Guidelines Program – Includes major clinical guidelines for adult and pediatric populations, quality of care indicator tools, clinical education program descriptions.
Congress.gov – Congress.gov is the official source for federal legislative information. It replaces the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov site. The site includes materials on current and past legislation, the Daily Digest version of the Congressional Record, links to Congressional committees, their hearings and reports (1995-present), and an explanation of the Legislative Process.
Congressional Member Guide – Member Guide for the 115th Congress Provides access to information on current Congress members, including their picture, party affiliation, hometown, home state, and service length.
Congressional Record (1994-2011) – Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. Published daily when Congress is in session. G.P.O. Access contains Congressional Record volumes from 140 (1994) to the present. At the back of each daily issue is the “Daily Digest,” which summarizes the day’s floor and committee activities. The current year’s Congressional Record database is usually updated daily by 11 a.m., except when a late adjournment delays production of the issue.
Center for Research Libraries Online Catalog: Dissertations
Search for dissertations from foreign countries; from the Center for Research Libraries which “seeks to provide comprehensive access to doctoral dissertations submitted to institutions outside the U. S. and Canada”
Directory of History Dissertations – American Historical Association – “contains more than 21,000 dissertations that have been completed or are currently -in progress in the United States and Canada since 1882. This directory is the merger of two previous online publications, Dissertations in Progress (online from 1999 to 2005) and the Directory of Completed Dissertations.” – from the site
Dissertation.com – Dissertation Publishers & Abstract Database – commercial site where dissertations can be purchased or published; free previews of first 25 pages
Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology-Online – an international database of bibliographic records for completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines”- from the site
DSpace@MIT: Home – Dissertations at M.I.T.’s Digital Repository
EBSCO – provides free research databases covering a variety of subjects for students, researchers and librarians. … It is a free database with records for more than 1.2 million electronic theses and dissertations from around the world.
E-Prints Complutense – An open access repository of the research literature of the Complutense University of Madrid
E-thesis – Electronic Publications of the University of Helsinki
– doctoral dissertations and other publications from the University of Helsinki. All of these full-text publications are freely accessible via the Internet.” – from the site
Electronic Theses & Dissertations – University of Miami – A publicly available, searchable, full text repository of UM theses and dissertations in PDF format.
ERIC (from the Alabama Virtual Library) –
Education Journals and Documents [library has documents from 1972 (ED66621)-2003 (ED483004) located in the Annex].
ETDs@Virginia Tech’s University Libraries
– An electronic thesis and dissertation database Over 15,000 records with over 4,000 available full text through the digital library and archives at the Virginia Tech’s University Libraries
EThOS – A United Kingdom database with approximately 500,000 records relating to theses awarded by over 120 institutions. Approximately 50% are full-text with the remaining being accessible via a link to the associated institution to access databases extending to 1800 A.D.
F – J
IDEAS – RePEc -Date coverage varies. Citations and abstracts. Research Papers in Economics database of working papers (244,000), journal articles (356,000), book and chapter listings (3,700), and software components (1,600) from 63 countries.
Internet Archive – Access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format; includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages
Internet Archive: eBooks and Texts – A sub-set of the Internet Archive. Many licensed using Creative Commons licenses, this collection comprises any text contributed by the Internet Archive Community.
Internet Archive: Universal Library – The Universal Library Project, sometimes called the Million Books Project, is an effort to create a universal free-to-read, open-source digital library. When possible, full-text searching is supported. The Governments of India, China, and Egypt are helping fund this effort through scanning facilities and personnel, and the Internet Archive has contributed scanned volumes and servers.
Internet Movie Database (IMDB) – Information on over a million movies and television programs and more than 2.5 million people associated with the motion picture industry, including actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, composers, and others.
Iowa Research Online – A service of the University of Iowa Libraries, dedicated to preserving and providing open access to its scholarly and creative work.
K – O
Mayo Clinic – MayoClinic’s web site offers health information to help users assess symptoms, understand their diagnosis, and manage their health. Search by symptom, procedure, disease, or condition. A team of Mayo Clinic experts produces this site.
MedlinePlus Health Information – MedlinePlus has extensive information from the National Institutes of Health and other trusted sources on over 800 diseases and conditions. There are directories, a medical encyclopedia, a medical dictionary, easy-to-understand tutorials on common conditions, tests, treatments, health information in Spanish, extensive information on prescription and nonprescription drugs, etc., health information from the media, and links to thousands of clinical trials. MedlinePlus is updated daily.
MERLOT II A curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) – NARA has preserved and provided access to the United States of America records for more than seven decades. Records help us claim our rights and entitlements, hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, & document our history as a nation. In short, NARA ensures continuing access to the essential documentation of American citizens’ rights and their government’s actions. NARA is the keeper of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
National Bureau of Statistics of China – Freely accessible statistical data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China.
National Library of Medicine (NLM) – This opens a pop-up window to share the URL for this database 2004-present. Created to search for an increasing number of information resources of the National Library of Medicine and targeted the user needing a single interface that searches in multiple retrieval systems.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Browse or search through several ETD collections, typically across multiple institutions at once.
NOAA Central Library – This opens a pop-up window to share the URL for this database Includes materials from Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (Miami), National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center (Miami), Western Regional Center (Seattle), and Camp Springs (Maryland)
NTIS – 1964-present. Citations and abstracts. The National Technical Information Service catalog covers business and management studies, health and safety reports, environmental research reports and site clean-up, technology innovations, international market reports, and training tools and materials.
OAIster – OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records representing open access resources built by harvesting from open access collections worldwide using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Today, OAIster includes more than 30 million records representing digital resources from more than 1,500 contributors.
OhioLINK ETD Center
“Free Online Database of Ohio’s masters and doctoral theses and dissertations from participating OhioLINK member schools. It contains the abstract for all included theses and dissertations. The full-text is also available if it was submitted.” — (from the site)
Open Access Theses & Dissertations – OATD currently indexes more than 2,000,000 theses and dissertations.
P – T
PhdData.org
A database of doctoral dissertations in progress around the world
ProQuest Dissertation &Thesis Open
Provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge
PubChem – Contains information on the biological activity of small molecules.
Public Health Image Library (PHIL) – An organized, universal electronic gateway to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pictures organized into hierarchical categories of people, places, and science presented as single images, image sets, and multimedia files.
Rutgers Electronic Theses & Dissertations (RUetd)
From Rutgers’ graduate programs
Science.gov – This opens a pop-up window to share the URL for this database
2002-present. Site searches over 36 databases and 1,850 selected websites, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information, including research and development results.
Society of American Archivists Publications – The journal seeks to reflect thinking about theoretical and practical developments in the archival profession, particularly in North America; about the relationships between archivists and the creators and users of archives; and about cultural, social, legal, and technological developments that affect the nature of recorded information and the need to create and maintain it.
Spectral Databases for Organic Compounds – Includes various spectra types such as EI-MS, FT-IR, ESR, C-NMR, and H-NMR.
SpringerOpen – The SpringerOpen database includes Springer’s portfolio of 160+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals across all science areas ranging from very specialized titles to SpringerPlus, an interdisciplinary open-access journal that covers all disciplines.
TEL: Serveur de Thèses Multi-Disciplinaire – Self-archived theses; over 14,000 full text; most if not all in French.
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal (DEEP) – A single European portal for the discovery of electronic theses and dissertations; over 100,000 doctoral theses.
Theological Research Exchange Network – Library of over 10,000 theological thesis/dissertation titles; titles may be ordered online
Theses Canada Portal
– Central Access Point for Canadian theses
U – Z
U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – Medical product safety information, adverse event/problem reporting and more.
United Nations Official Document System – United Nations Official Document System database covers official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. ODS also provides access to the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards.