Library Databases

Library databases allow you to search for articles published in scholarly journals and magazines. There are two major types of library databases to consider when conducting article-based research:

• Multidisciplinary: These databases typically cover scholarly articles published across a wide variety of disciplines, similar to Google Scholar. They provide excellent breadth, but may lack in depth for a given subject.
• Subject-specific: Databases of this type limit their coverage to journals that are relevant to a single subject or cluster of subjects, e.g. physics or environmental studies. They provide excellent depth, but may not return as many results as a multidisciplinary database.

It’s usually good to start with a multidisciplinary database and then seek out a subject-specific one if you don’t find what you need.

Recommended starting points:

• Academic Search Complete Links to an external site. is a multidisciplinary database that offers an enormous collection of full-text journals and some popular magazines and newspapers.
• Web of Science Links to an external site. is a multidisciplinary database that provides access to thousands of journals in the sciences, social sciences, technology, medicine, and arts & humanities.  
• Check out the libraries’ Research Guides, created by UW subject librarians, for recommended databases in your discipline.

You can find these databases, and many more, through the UW Libraries Articles & Research Databases list.