Cross-Disciplinary Databases
DATABASES.HOLLIS.HARVARD.EDU
Bookmark this address! it's invaluable for discovering the key online resources for identifying scholarship in a given academic field (like medicine or history). It's also where you can easily find digitized collections of texts and important primary source materials, data and dataset collections, and media of many kinds (images, maps, film, sound, music).
These collections contain items that may not be in HOLLIS or don't surface easily there.
You can search by keyword, browse by subject category or do fancy combinations of both in advanced search.
FIVE BROADLY USEFUL DATABASES:
- Academic Search Premier
This database can be a good next step once you've explored content available in HOLLIS. While much of what ASP searches is from scholarly sources, generous amounts also come from newspaper and general interest magazines. ASP casts a wide net, so you might see your topic treated from a number of disciplinary angles or through a variety of theoretical lenses. PRO TIP: Result sets can sometimes have more breadth than scholarly depth. You will need to supplement your searching with databases that more comprehensively cover the scholarly conversations in your particular discipline. - Google Scholar
A powerful index of scholarly literature across disciplines, languages, time periods and publishing formats. PRO TIP: Make sure you get access to articles that Harvard Library subscribes to by configuring Google Scholar to eliminate paywalls. Follow these instructions to connect Google Scholar to your library access. - JSTOR
Provides access to the contents of 2600 core academic journals in 60 knowledge domains in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Much of the journal content in this database has a "moving wall": a set period of time in which the most current volumes, issues, and articles are not available online for reading and downloading. (Depending on the journal title, the moving wall may be anywhere between 1 and 5 years). In a few instances, the moving wall has been eliminated. PRO TIP: Articles not (yet) available on JSTOR may be available to you another way. Try searching for the article title in HOLLIS. - Social Sciences Premium Collection (ProQuest)
With an aim to facilitate cross-disciplinary research, SSPC combines, in one place, the contents of several of the most important databases for of the social sciences. Journals, working papers and reports, dissertations, magazine and trade publications are among the types of documents included. PRO TIP: Explore the thesaurus for potential search terms; apply source type, document type, and language filters before you search, or limit your results after you search via left-side filters. - Web of Science
A rich collection of citation indexes with scholarly research articles found in the most globally significant journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences and art & humanities. PRO TIP: If you are interested in finding publications produced subsequent to a key text published earlier, try the Cited Reference search in this database. It can be a useful tool for tracing the genealogy of scholarship forward in time.
ONE GREAT DATABASE FOR SEARCHING ACROSS LIBRARY CATALOGS (AND BEYOND HOLLIS)
- WorldCat
A way to search across national and international catalogs to identify materials, confirm citations, or discover archival materials in many formats.
ONE GREAT DATABASE FOR LOCATING PRIMARY SOURCE COLLECTIONS
- Archive Grid
A database for identifying historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world.
