Databases for Reference

Alphabetical List of Databases | Databases with Some Full-text | Multidisciplinary Databases

Databases by Subject

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Reference Databases

African American Biographical Database (Some Full-Text): Largest collection of electronic biographical information on African Americans, 1790-1950.
Updated bimonthly.
AncestryPlus (Full-Text): With over 1.2 billion records in over 3,000 databases, AncestryPlus is a comprehensive online source of information for conducting genealogical and local history research available. Included in AncestryPlus are the digitized images of the U.S. Federal Census from 1790 forward, the American Genealogical Biographical Index, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, and much more. An online tutorial is available.
NOTE: Available from on-campus only.
Associations Unlimited (Full-Text): Contains information for approximately 444,000 international and U.S. national, regional, state, and local nonprofit membership organizations in all fields, including IRS data on U.S. 501(c) nonprofit organizations. For some 2,500 major U.S. national associations, provides full-text association materials such as brochures, pamphlets, and membership application forms.
Biography Index (Some Full-Text): Coverage includes 2700 English-language periodicals and more than 1,800 books added each year. Includes autobiographies, bibliographies, biographies, critical studies, fiction and drama, pictorial works, poetry, juvenile literature, obituaries, journals, collections of letters, book reviews, and interviews.
Coverage started: 1984. Updated monthly. (via FirstSearch)
Book Review Digest (Some Full-Text): Indexes 100 periodicals published in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain, covering over 7,000 adult and children's books each year. Includes English-language fiction and nonfiction.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1983. Updated monthly. (via FirstSearch)
Books in Print (via Bowker) (Some Full-Text): Descriptions of over 4.4 million books, 337,000 videos, and 157,000 audiobooks (new and forthcoming); 1.3 million out of print titles; 763,000 full-text reviews from 12 sources.
Updated weekly.
Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (Full-Text): Contains full-text of reviews of more than 110,000 children's books. Reviews are provided by independent reviewers as well as 20 other organizational sources, including the American Library Association's Booklist, ALAN, The Bulletin, CCBC Choices, KIRKUS, KLIATT, and VOYA.
Under "Children's Literature Comprehensive Database", click on 'Registered Users'.
College Catalogs (Full-Text): CollegeSource® Online features over 7,800 College Catalogs in complete cover-to-cover, original page format representing 2-year, 4-year, graduate and professional schools.
While you can search for schools by different criteria and view school profiles (including admission requirements, financial aid options) from any computer, full college catalogs can only be viewed in EMU's Bruce T. Halle Library, Information Commons North, First Floor.
Columbia Granger's World of Poetry (Some Full-Text): This release "includes 13,000 poems in full text, and 250,000 poetry citations, in addition to several important new features—commentaries, biographies, bibliographies, notes on form, and a glossary of prosodic terms, all written by William Harmon or written under his editorship. Also new to this release is the ability to search by author category (Asian-American, Irish, Polish, etc.)."
Dissertation Abstracts: Index of doctoral dissertation accepted at accredited institutions.
Coverage started: 1861. Updated monthly. (via FirstSearch)
Dun & Bradstreet Key Business Ratios (Full-Text): Provides 14 key business ratios for over 800 lines of business, including solvency, efficiency and profitability ratios.
Updated twice a year.
Facts.com (Full-Text): Answer questions about events, issues, statistics, and people of the last 20 years with selected content from seven databases, including Facts On File World News Digest, Issues and Controversies On File, Today's Science On File, Editorials On File, Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, Reuters On-Line News Service, and World Almanac and Book of Facts. Delivers additional special features including maps, photographs, historic documents, and overviews of key issues, newsmakers and events.
Coverage started: 1940. Updated weekly.
FactSearch (Some Full-Text): Contains full-text statistical statements on current social, economic, political, and environmental public policy issues. Entries come from more than 1,000 print sources as well as a wide range of Web-based resources.
List of publication titles. Coverage started: 1984. Updated quarterly. (via FirstSearch)
Grove Dictionary of Art (Full-Text): 45,000 articles on the art and culture of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Pacific from prehistory until today with links to images and further information in museum and other art-related web sites.
Updated continuously.
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Opera, Jazz (Full-Text): This site "comprises the full text of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London, 2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (London, 1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition, edited by Barry Kernfeld (London, 2002). Articles that have been updated since their appearance in print are date-stamped in the upper right corner of the screen."
Updated quarterly.
NOTE: Only 1 user at a time.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Full-Text): Covering both the social and behavioral sciences, this full-text encyclopedia includes over 3,800 signed articles and 90,000 bibliographic references.
Issues & Controversies @ FACTS.com (Full-Text): This full text reference database "presents and enhances the full backfile of Issues and Controversies on File, which has probed more than 250 controversial topics in the news since its debut in September 1995. Chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information augment the balanced, accurate coverage of current and historical events."
LearnATest (Full-Text): LearnATest.com/Library is the leading source of test preparation materials and interactive practice exams, based on official tests. The purpose of this service is to help individuals improve scores on academic, civil service, military, and professional licensing and certification exams. LearnATest provides immediate scoring, complete answer explanations, and individualized analysis of an individual’s score. In addition, course and study material is available for individual use.
LexisNexis Academic (Full-Text): Access to a wide range of FULL-TEXT news, business, legal and government information sources, as well as company, country, financial, market research and industry reports, biographical and medical and health information.
List of titles. Updated daily.
LexisNexis Congressional (Full-Text): In addition to the indexing and abstracting of the CIS's Index to the Publications of the United States Congress, it provides the FULL-TEXT of Congressional hearings, committee reports, bills, selected committee prints, public laws, Congressional Record, Federal Register, U.S. Code.
Literature Resource Center (Full-Text): LRC combines biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information to deliver a complete reference/resource package on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism). Centering on Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Literary Criticism, this data set is augmented with full-text, excerpted, and commissioned critical material illuminating an oeuvre or era. In partnership with Merriam-Webster, Inc., LRC offers the Encyclopedia of Literature including over 10,000 entries for authors, works, literary landmarks, literary and critical terms, mythological and folkloric figures, fictional characters, literary movements, and prizes.
Mental Measurements Yearbook (Full-Text): Contains descriptive information and critical reviews of more than 2,000 commercially-available standardized English-language educational, personality, aptitude, neuropsychological, achievement and intelligence tests. It contains the text of test reviews starting with the Ninth Mental Measurements Yearbook.
Updated every six months.
Mergent (formerly Moody's) Online (Full-Text): Service includes: Company Data Direct/U.S. -- Covers 10,000+ public companies and their SEC (EDGAR®) filings; Company Data Direct/International -- More companies from more countries than any other international database, with global searching across databases; Country Statistical Profiles.
Click on 'Enter Mergent Online' to begin. NOTE 1: 3 simultaneous users. NOTE 2: Mergent Online is currently not compatible with Netscape 4.7 or older and the Apple Macintosh® operating system.
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (Full-Text): Provides full text information on about 70 controversial social issues. It "brings together viewpoint articles, contextual topic overviews, government and organizational statistics, court cases, profiles of government agencies and special interest groups, newspaper and magazines articles, as well as links to more than 1,000 reviewed and subject-indexed web sites."
NOTE: Two users at a time. Try again later if you cannot connect.
Oxford English Dictionary Online (Full-Text): "The OED Online contains the complete text of the 20-volume Second Edition, first published in 1989, together with its 3-volume Additions Series, published in 1993 (volumes 1 and 2) and 1997 (volume 3)...The OED is currently being revised, with the aim of producing a completely updated third edition by the year 2010. Draft material from the revision programme will also be published online..."
Updated quarterly.
PapersFirst: Index to papers included in every congress, conference, exposition, workshop, symposium, and meeting received at The British Library.
Coverage started: 1993. Updated 24 times per year. (via FirstSearch)
ProceedingsFirst: Index of every congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received at The British Library.
coverage started: 1993. Updated 24 times per year. (via FirstSearch)
The Prokaryotes (Full-Text): The electronic version of The Prokaryotes begins with an online implementation of the content currently found in the printed reference work, The Prokaryotes: Second Edition (1992). Approximately 25% of the content will be fully updated each year over a four-year period until the work is completely revised. Thereafter, material will be continuously added to reflect developments in Prokaryotic microbiology.
Reference USA: Proprietary databases of 11 million U.S. businesses. The "U.S. Business database is compiled from hundreds of annual reports, Chamber of Commerce and industry directories, business magazines and newspapers, telephone directories, SEC and government data..."
Schwann Online: "Schwann Online is the electronic edition of the classical recording catalog information of Schwann Opus and the pop, rock, jazz, world music recording information of Schwann Spectrum...Schwann Online includes the music of yesterday--details on all the titles that have been available over the last 5 years. Plus, Schwann Online includes the music of tomorrow--articles and features, sneak previews of the music about to be released."
Ulrich's Periodicals Directory: A directory describing more than 250,000 serials (scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters) on all subjects from over 80,000 publishers in more than 200 countries.
Updated weekly.
One user at a time. Please click on 'Logout' when done.
Union List of Periodicals: Lists the periodical holdings of thousands of libraries.
Updated semiannually. (via FirstSearch)
What Do I Read Next?: This readers' advisory database includes over 100,000 recommended titles, more than 58,000 plot summaries, and awards information from 562 awards, all to help users uncover new reading adventures, find long-remembered favorites, and discover award-winning titles. Search by genre, subject, author, title, series, locale, and more.
Who's Who on the Web (Full-Text): Over 1 million biographies taken from 20 Marquis Who's Who print titles. Updates to biographies made daily, and new biographies added daily.
NOTE: Up to two users at a time. Try again later if you cannot connect.
World Almanacs (Full-Text): The World Almanacs database includes the contents of: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1998; The World Almanac of the U.S.A.; The World Almanac of U.S.; Politics; The World Almanac for Kids.
Updated annually. (via FirstSearch)
WorldCat: WorldCat is the OCLC Online Union Catalog, containing more than 35 million records describing items owned by the Library of Congress, EMU, and about 19,000 libraries around the world; each record contains library holdings.
Coverage started: 1000 A.D. Updated daily. (via FirstSearch)

Multidisciplinary Databases

ArticleFirst (Some Full-Text): Indexes 12,500 journals in science, technology, medicine, social science, business, the humanities, and popular culture and allows browsing of contents pages.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1990. Updated daily. (via FirstSearch)
Blackwell Synergy (Some Full-Text): Blackwell Synergy holds the content for about 740 Blackwell Publishing journals, the majority of which are published on behalf of international scholarly and professional societies. While citations and abstracts for all articles can be searched and displayed, full-text is available only for articles from the 135 journals to which EMU subscribes.
List of EMU subscription titles. Coverage: varies with title.
Detroit News & 4 Other Michigan Newspapers (Full-Text): In addition to the Detroit News (1999- ), other Michigan newspapers included are the Battle Creek Enquirer (May 2002- ), Grand Rapids Press (2002- ), Lansing State Journal (1999- ), Port Huron Times Herald (1999- ).
Note: After connecting to database, click on "America's Newspapers".
Electric Library Elementary (K-6) (Full-Text): Geared to children in grades K-6, contains the full-text of selected articles from: about 30 magazines (e.g., Jack & Jill, Ranger Rick, Highlights for Children, Time for Kids, Entertainment Weekly); about 10 newspapers; about 50 books (e.g., Alaska Purchase, Battle of the Alamo, Gold Rush of 1849); as well as maps and pictures.
List of titles. Periodical coverage started: 1992. Updated daily.
Electronic Collections Online (ECO) (Some Full-Text): Index to the contents of over 2700 journals in a variety of subject areas. EMU is paying for access to online full-text for 664 of the titles. Articles are presented in page image formats (predominately PDF) that include all original content and images. The interface supports cross-journal searching and browsing within selected journals. Users can view bibliographic information for all journals and view full-text articles from journals to which their institution subscribes. Adobe's free Acrobat PDF viewer and CatchWord's free RealPage viewer are required to view the full-text articles.
List of titles available full-text to EMU community. List of all titles available. Coverage started: 1995, but varies by journal. Updated daily. (via FirstSearch)
GenderWatch (Full-Text): GenderWatch (GW) is a full-text collection of international journals, magazines, newsletters, regional publications, special reports, and conference proceedings that focus on how gender impacts on a broad spectrum of subject areas.
List of titles. Coverage started: 1970.
General Reference Center Gold (Some Full-Text): An index to the contents of about 1000 periodicals, with about 60% available with full-text.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1980. Updated monthly.
NOTE: There is a delay when adding new issues of certain titles to the database. List of embargoed titles and their database inclusion delays.
InfoTrac Custom Full-Text Newspapers (Full-Text): Includes the full-text of articles from the last 365 days of the New York Times. Other newspapers from around the United States as well as Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Mexico have varying full-text coverage dates.
List of newspapers and coverage dates.
InfoTrac OneFile (Some Full-Text): This multidisciplinary database indexes nearly 8,000 titles and includes more than 4,200 full-text titles. It includes indexing of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Christian Science Monitor; full-text from 89 wire services covering agriculture, general news, broadcast news, government, business press releases, industry topics, sports and current events from all over the world; and indexing and some full-text from general interest magazines; refereed academic journals; business publications; technology periodicals; plus specialty titles in law, health care and computers.
List of titles. Coverage started: 1980. Updated daily.
Ingenta (Some Full-Text): Search and browse the contents of over 27,000 periodicals. Full text of some articles available via EMU Library subscriptions.
Periodical titles. Coverage started: 1985. Updated daily.
JSTOR (Full-Text): Complete text of the backfiles of about 600 core scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, and the social sciences.
List of full text periodicals by title and discipline.
Kluwer Online (Full-Text): Complete contents of about 265 Kluwer journals in subjects including sciences, social sciences, technology, and humanities.
List of full text titles and start dates.
netLibrary (eBooks) (Full-Text): eBooks are electronic versions of printed books. Through this service we now have access to about 14,000 copyrighted books in addition to about 4,000 public domain titles.
Complete list of titles is available as two Excel spreadsheets: eBooks Michigan and MEL Ebooks
New York Times (June 1980- ) (Full-Text): Text-only articles from June 1980. When connected, click the word 'Sources' on the top right menu, type 'new york times' (without the quotes) in the Source List search box, click the 'Find Title' button, click 'Search This Title' below 'New York Times, The'. In the search dialog box that appears, fill in your search terms. (In Step Four, you might want to expand the time frame of your search beyond six months.)
New York Times Backfile (1851-2001) (Full-Text): Every backfile issue from 1851-2001 has been digitized from cover to cover in pdf format, including news stories, editorials, photos, graphics, and advertisements.
NewsBank-NewsFile (Full-Text): Full-text news resource containing coverage of current issues and events from over 500 US and Canadian newspapers, news sources and domestic and international newswires. More than 70,000 articles selected annually provide regional, national and international perspectives and coverage of the arts, and people and professions in the news.
List of titles. Coverage started: 1991. Updated daily.
Periodical Abstracts Full-Text (Some Full-Text): Index to about 2000 general and academic journals, covering business, current affairs, economics, literature, religion, psychology, women's studies, and others.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1987. Updated weekly. (via FirstSearch)
Project Muse (Full-Text): Project Muse is an online journal collection containing the full-text of 112 titles in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
List of periodical titles. Coverage: varies with journal; often starts with 1995. Updated when new issues are available.
Readers' Guide Abstracts (Some Full-Text): Index to the contents of about 180 popular periodicals published in the U.S. and Canada.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1983. Updated monthly (via FirstSearch)
Wilson Select Plus (Full-Text): Index to the contents of about 1300 periodicals, all with ASCII full text online.
List of periodical titles. Coverage started: 1994. Updated weekly. (via FirstSearch)

Alphabetical List of Databases | Databases with Some Full-text | Multidisciplinary Databases

Databases by Subject

Click Here to Try Limited-Time Free Trial Databases

Last Updated: March 27, 2004
Technical Contact: Keith Stanger, keith@stanger.com