Online Databases

Freely available, specialized databases on the Web. Typically, there is a search interface for the database. Usually there are basic and advanced search modes.
  • American Mineralogist Crystal Structure Database managed by Mineralogical Society of America and the Mineralogical Association of Canada, and financed by the National Science Foundation.
  • American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank. Includes audio as well as text files.
  • Anthropology Collection Database from the California Academy of Sciences
  • Anti-Slavery Collection from Cornell University
  • Australian Dictionary of Biography
  • Australian Literature and Historical Texts from the University of Sydney
  • BASE Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
  • California Heritage Collection Part of the Online Archive of California
  • Calisphere Access to primary sources from University of California
  • California Newspaper Project Identify where to find files of specific California newspapers
  • CALL Center for Army Lessons Learned -- public U.S. military documents and materials
  • Choral Public Domain Library Access to classical music scores and translations
  • ChroniclingAmerica Historic American newspapers, from Library of Congress
  • Congressional Research Service Reports see OpenCRS
  • Conservation Online from Stanford University -- "a full text library of conservation information, covering a wide spectrum of topics of interest to those involved with the conservation of library, archives and museum materials"
  • Contagion -- Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics, from Harvard
  • Contemporary Writers, from the British Arts Council, covers British writers
  • CRS Reports see OpenCRS
  • CureHunter -- type in a disease and read about its cures.
  • Densho The Japanese American Legacy Project
  • Dictionary of the History of Ideas edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1973-74.
  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOIJ) from Lund University. " ... covers free, fulltext, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. There are 2260 journals in the directory. Currently 643 journals are searchable at article level."
  • Documenting the American South from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; includes texts, images, and audio files related to Southern history, literature, and culture.
  • Early American Fiction Collection from University of Virginia. "... represents 136 American authors writing between 1789 and 1875."
  • EarthTrends "a comprehensive online database, maintained by the World Resources Institute, that focuses on the environmental, social, and economic trends that shape our world."
  • EcoIndex database of over 1,000 conservation projects in the Americas
  • Education-line from University of Leeds, England. "... a freely accessible database of the full text of conference papers, working papers and electronic literature which support educational research, policy and practice."
  • Electronic Reading Room CIA documents that have been released due to successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings.
  • Electronic Text Center from University of Virginia Library
  • Encyclopedia of Life -- free, online collaborative encyclopedia; partners contributing content include Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution and many others. Aims to be "the most complete biodiversity database on the Web."
  • Enforcement and Compliance History Online from EPA. Type in your zip code and find out if any facilitiy in that zip code has been cited with environmental law violations
  • ERIC Education Resources Information Center, U.S. Dept. of Education (partially fulltext)
  • eScholarship Editions "The eScholarship Editions collection includes almost 2000 books from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, science, history, music, religion, and fiction."
  • eScholarship Repository  "... a service of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library. Research and scholarly output included here has been selected and deposited by the individual University of California units."
  • ETDEWEB -- energy technologies database. Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) is a programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Have to register, but it's free.
  • Ethnologue: Languages of the World Click on Browse the Web Version.
  • Federal Election Commission -- see who gave $$ to whom
  • FindArticles for articles from over 300 magazines; can limit to those freely available
  • Footnote.com "At Footnote.com you will find millions of images of original source documents, many of which have never been available online before."
  • Foreign Relations of the United States from U.S. Dept. of State. 1861-1958/1960 [372 vols.] Full text searchable.
  • Foreign Relations of the United States from U.S. Dept. of State. Volumes online include a number from the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations
  • France in America/ La France en Amerique -- in partnership with France's national library.
  • FundRace 2008 Gathers information about who is giving how much $ to whom this political season. "Solve the mystery of why that crazy-ex-roommate of yours is now the Ambassador to Turks and Caicos." You can also search by zip code, or address, or name! [Not perfect! I couldn't find my address or my name. But I got info on my neighbors]
  • Gambling Literature Online Database from the Alberta Gambling Research Institute
  • GeroNurseOnline.org "developed through the Nurse Competence in Aging initiative, is the official geriatric nursing website of the American Nurses Association (ANA) and of the John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing at the New York University College of Nursing."
  • Gifts of Speech: Women's Speeches from Around the World, including Nobel lectures.
  • Global Education Database a repository of international education statistics compiled from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Demographic and Health Surveys.
  • Gutenberg-e Columbia University Press open access book site; coordinated with the American Historial Association.
  • HighWire Press A division of the Stanford University Libraries. "HighWire Press hosts the largest repository of free, full-text, peer-reviewed content, with 943 journals and 1,340,006 free, full-text articles online."
  • Historical Nursing Journals Royal College of Nursing (UK)
  • History Makers -- the nation's largest African American video oral history archive
  • History Matters Created by the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).
  • HLAS Handbook of Latin American Studies. From Library of Congress.
  • Household Products Database From National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine
  • In The First Person Letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives
  • Information Bridge from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). "...contains documents and citations in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, and other topics of interest related to DOE's mission."
  • Internet Ancient History Source Book: Full Texts
  • Internet Archive provides access to movies, texts, animations and cartoons, past Web pages, and much more!
  • Internet Sacred Text Archive -- "the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet." Click on SEARCH.
  • InterDok -- directory of Published Conference Proceedings. Scroll down for search box. Future conferences.
  • Intute -- portal to academic resources to support higher education; from the U.K.
  • Iraq The War Card large database of Iraq-related public pronouncements of top Bush administration officials tracked against their private assessments and what was, day-by-day, actually known. From Center for Public Integrity.
  • LISTA Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts -- EBSCOhost makes this database available free on the Web, so you can search using the "look and feel" of a standard periodical article database interface; not fulltext.
  • Labordoc from International Labour Organization. "Labordoc contains references to a wide range of print and electronic publications, including journal articles, from countries around the world, on all aspects of work and sustainable livelihoods, and the work-related aspects of economic and social development and human rights."
  • Landscapes of Capital -- searchable database of TV advertisements, e.g., CellularOne, Office Depot, Oracle
  • LiveSearch from Windows -- experimental academic search engine
  • Lunar and Planetary Institute Scientific databases
  • MagPortal -- freely available magazine articles on the Web; covers about 200 magazines.
  • Making of America from Cornell University library. "A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction."
  • MarkTwainProject -- "authoritative texts, documents, and historical research" from the California Digital Library
  • Material Safety Data Sheets from U.S. Dept. of Environmental Health and Safety "An MSDS reflects the hazards of working with the material in an occupational fashion. For example, an MSDS for paint is not highly pertinent to someone who uses a can of paint once a year, but is extremely important to someone who does this in a confined space 40 hours a week."
  • MERLOT Federated Search for physics resources; indexes 5 large science databases
  • Modern English Collection from University of Virginia. "... contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest."
  • Monologue Database find lots of monologues
  • National Issues Forums -- scroll down to ISSUE BOOK CATEGORIES
  • National Pipeline Mapping System -- see where gas and hazardous liquid pipelines are in the U.S. This database was taken off the Internet right after 9/11, but now has been restored.
  • National Security Archive hosted at George Washington University. Scroll down to find search engine. The Archives "collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act."
  • NCBI National Center for Biotechnology Information access to multiple databases, including PubMed.
  • New Nation Votes election data from 1787 to 1825 (in progress); from Tufts University
  • New York State Historical Literature from Cornell University
  • New York Times Article Archive Not full text. In two databases: 1851-1980; 1981 to the present. For fulltext -- Cabrillo College Library subscribes to the New York Times full text database from 1851 to the present. Go to the Cabrillo Library homepage, and click on Full Text Articles.
  • NewspaperArchive Membership required; fee based.
  • NINES Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship -- British and American 19th century materials for scholarly studies
  • NLM Databases Databases from National Library of Medicine. [I should eventually add all of these to this list.]
  • OAIster A project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service. Database of previously difficult-to-access, academically-oriented digital resources
  • ODS Offical Documents of the United Nations. "ODS covers all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. Older UN documents are, however, added to the system on a daily basis."
  • Open Access Digital Library access to over 4,000 full text, scholarly journals in a variety of subjects
  • OpenCRS Congressional Research Reports
  • Open Science Directory Access to the contents of about 13,000 journals; developed by EBSCO - Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO) and Hasselt University Library (Bibliotheek Universiteit Hasselt)
  • OpenSecrets from the Center for Responsive Politics tracks campaign contributions to political candidates
  • Oxford Latin America Economic History Database from Latin America Centre at Oxford University
  • PatentLens search patents from U.S., Europe, Australia and more. See also U.S. Patent and Trademark Office link, below.
  • Plants Database from USDA
  • Political Database of the Americas from Georgetown University
  • Presidential Timeline from University of Texas at Austin, and other organizations
  • Primary Source Collections from Library of Congress
  • Project Vote Smart collects information about candidates
  • Public Agenda is a nonpartisan opinion research organization; provides access to research studies and issue guides.
  • Public STINET the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)'s Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET) Service
  • PubMed Some full text available. "... includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s."
  • Right To Know Network provides access to databases with environmental information
  • RulesOfThumb "Every rule of thumb on earth in one place!"
  • Salem Witch Trials documentary archive and transcription project
  • Science.gov U.S. government science documents
  • Scirus Scientific information
  • SearchGov.com One search interface to most federal government Web resources
  • "Second Wave" and Beyond -- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000. From Alexander Street Press.
  • Sheet Music Collection -- nearly 6,000 available; from Mississippi State University
  • Small Business Search Engine -- a database from business.gov for the entrepreneur
  • Social Science Research Council features collections of academic essays on topics of current interest, e.g., Understanding Katrina and Pakistan in Crisis, among others.
  • SourceWatch is a guide to names behind the news -- information on people, organizations and issues. A wiki, SourceWatch uses strict referencing and is overseen by a paid editor.
  • StoryPlace -- the children's digital library
  • SustainLane Government database of best practices for sustainable development for state and local governments
  • Terrorism Knowledge Base -- tkb.org freely available, in-depth analysis on domestic and international terrorist activities, individuals, groups, and trials. From the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT)
  • United Nations -- see ODS Offical Documents of the United Nations.
  • U.S. Agricultural Research Service database
  • U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- search patents from 1790 to the present; full text available for 1976 to the present.
  • Virginia Military Institute Archives
  • Witchcraft Collection from Cornell University Libraries
  • Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 -- see The "Second Wave" and Beyond (above)
  • Women Working, 1800 - 1930 from Harvard University
  • Wright American Fiction "... a collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included ... by 1,456 authors"
  • Yale University Libraries Digital Collections -- access to about 300,000 images from 22 diverse collections.

Books

  • African American Women Writers of the 19th Century from The New York Public Library Digital Library Collections
  • Botanicus Free accessiblity to historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library
  • Internet Archive-- provides access to the texts of nearly half a million books
  • Online Books Page from University of Pennsylvania
  • Open Archives Initiative (OAI) from the University of Michigan.
  • OpenLibrary.org -- a project of the Internet Archive
  • OAI Toolkit for downloading 100,000 books (out of copyright)
  • Oxford Text Archive most of the books are freely available
  • The Universal Digital Library is an ambitious digitization project managed by a combination of universities in India, China and Egypt. The goal of making 1 million books available full text via the Internet via 50 scanning centers around the world was achieved in 2007. Books in over 20 languages are included, though the vast majority are in English. Books download as TIFF files. An article published 1/18/08 says "While the goal of the Universal Digital Library to digitize more than 1 million works of literature is certainly noble, it has been so far outstripped by a clunky interface that makes accessing the works more trouble than it is worth." One reporter's opinion.

Electronic Texts Internet Links page at Cabrillo College Library provides access to other projects that give access to full text books.

Scientific Papers

  • arXiv.org Open access to e-prints in physics, math, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics; hosted at Cornell University Library.
  • Astrophysics Data System Access to millions of bibliographic records in astronomy, physics and astrophysics. Links to much that is full text. Many external links.

Think Tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and The Brookings Institution and The RAND Corporation and The Urban Institute, and more specialized think task such as the Migration Policy Institute, publish papers and analyses on important political and social topics. Their Web sites have databases of reports and studies. There are many think thanks. A good comprehensive list of public policy think tanks is maintained by the University of Michigan's Document Center.

Trade Associations such as the National Mining Association frequently offer databases of policy and issue papers. Consumer Action lists many trade associations.

Databases of databases

ROAR Registry of Open Access Repositories. Provides access to over 200 repositories of electronic resources worldwide. Major, important resource for access!!

Databases and eResources at Library of Congress -- access to a variety of electronic databases

  • CompletePlanet "Discover over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines." Not reliable
  • GeniusFind "categorizes thousands of topic-specific search engines and databases." Not reliable.

Image and Multimedia Databases including Videos and TV-- a selection of the large, quality image databases available excluding very specialized ones as, for example, medical images.

Videos and TV

Lectures

SciVee.tv Videos, pubcasts, communities, international with emphasis on science. From the Public Library of Science.

Aerial Views

Language Map of the United States, from MLA

last rev. 9/08