Article Databases

By: Sarah MahoneyLIS 6120 – Access to Information

Professor Pecoskie

Geographical Library Reference

It is a collection of

organized data that primarily consists of articles.

These are typically in a computer.

Just what is an article database?

Narrowing of focus: Article databases allow

librarians and patrons to look for scholarly sources within a more narrow topic. This eliminates sources from other disciplines that are not relevant.

Faster searching: Databases help the user find important information quicker with the use of their search engines and limiters.

Reliable sources: Most article databases have a limiter for scholarly (peer-reviewed) materials. This enables the user to find trustworthy sources.

What’s so important about article databases?

GeoRef AGRICOLA GreenFILE Scirus JSTOR

Databases that work best for geography:

This database was created by the American

Geosciences Institute in 1966. It contains over three million references: books,

journal articles, reports, theses, maps, and more. Resources cover North America from 1669 to the

present day, and the rest of the world from 1933 to the present day.

Subjects covered include: economic geology, environmental geology, geochemistry, geophysics, oceanography, paleontology, seismology, and more.

GeoRef

http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/georef-set-c.shtml

This is the National

Library of Agriculture database.

It searches for articles and books in all areas of agriculture, forestry, and animal science and spans from 1970 to present day.

Contains nearly five million citations.

AGRICOLA

http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/agricola

GreenFILE searches for information in all areas

related to the human impact on the environment.

Some examples of topics covered: global warming, pollution, renewable energy and recycling.

Information available includes articles, government information, books, and book reviews.

Includes more than 9,100 full text resources and abstracts and indexing for more than 612,000 resources.

GreenFILE

http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/greenfile

Scirus is a comprehensive science-specific

search engine. It works similarly to Google, but searches for

articles, scientist’s homepages, patent information and information from scientific websites.

Has indexed over 545 million scientific items.

Scirus

http://www.scirus.com/

Provides searchable full text of many of the

core research and academic society published journals in almost all subject areas, with an emphasis in the humanities and social sciences.

The majority of JSTOR’s content is academic and peer-reviewed.

Contains over 19,000 titles.

JSTOR

http://www.jstor.org/

Although these may be the article databases

best suited for searching in the field of geography, many others contain materials pertaining to the topic as well.

Be sure to check your local and academic libraries to see what they provide and check out any subject guides they might have!

And many more!