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What is a Database

Scholarly Databases

A research or educational database (referred to as a ‘database’ or ‘scholarly database’ within this guide) is an online index of scholarly resources. 

Scholarly databases span all research and education disciplines, and may include collection information (such as metadata), full-text journal articles, conference abstracts, book chapters, websites, visual arts and cultural records (such as photos and videos), court opinions, and historical records (such as newspaper articles and websites). 

A database may be discipline specific or cover multiple disciplines. Some will index only limited types of material and others, a broader range of materials.

Each scholarly database has a unique coverage and repository of information within it. 

Most databases are organised in a similar way. Therefore, understanding the organisation of databases will help you get the most out of searching no matter what the tool. For research, a database can be described as:

  • A collection or repository of electronic resources.
  • A searching tool indexing scholarly records.
  • Housed on a publishing platform (e.g. EBSCOhost which has multiple collections by subject and/or format).

Examples of scholarly databases include: 

  • Journal databases such as ProQuest or MEDLINE
  • Institutional repositories such as OPAL
  • Scholarly-focused web search engines such as Google Scholar

Common features

Common features of scholarly databases include:

  • Basic and Advanced Search screens
  • Searching by fields such as author, article title, abstract, etc.
  • Search syntax techniques such as Boolean, truncation, wildcard, proximity, etc.
  • A results screen with ability to sort and view in different ways
  • Limiters to refine results by subject, format, publication date, peer-reviewed, etc.
  • The ability to email, print, download, export to reference management software
  • The ability to create accounts, save searches and results.
  • Email alerts for searches and Table of Contents
  • A thesaurus of subject terms in use
  • Help functionality to show the search options

Further Resources: