Each database covers a different subject field so choose the databases that suit your essay topic best. You may need to try several.
Major databases in each field are listed below.

Major databases for agriculture and life sciences are listed below
For example, for an essay topic on the genetic engineering of animals, you could start with the databases: CAB Abstracts or Biosis Previews (also called Biological Abstracts).

Choose the most appropriate databases through

• the menu option on the Library Home Page: Use Databases to find journal and newspaper articles then choose the subject of interest to you: for example

Agriculture, Animal Science, Commerce  (these web page will open in a new window. To return to this tutorial, close the window).  You can link to the same webpage through the Databases tab at the top of every Library web page.
• the Library catalogue, if you know the database name.

Databases for life sciences, agriculture, ecology
 

Agriculture & Natural Resources (archival only)	Australian agriculture and natural resources
Agricola	agriculture
Biosis Previews (Biological Abstracts	animal , plant and microbial biology
CAB Abstracts	agriculture
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts	ecology, environmental and aquatic sciences
Pubmed (Medline)	medicine, animal and microbial biology
SAGE	Australian science, environment, agriculture and natural history
SciFinder Scholar (Chemical abstracts)	chemistry, biochemistry
Scopus	science
Streamline (archival only)	Australian natural resource management
Web of Science	science
Zoological Record	zoology

Databases for agricultural business and marketing:
 

Academic OneFile	interdisciplinary areas
Academic Search Premier	interdisciplinary areas
Agricola	agriculture
Annual Report Collection	annual reports of 500 Aust. companies
Ausstats	Australian Bureau of Statistics full text database
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre	Australian current events, business
Australian Public Affairs Full-Text (APA-FT)	Australian social, cultural and economic areas
Business Australia Online	Australian finance, accounting and management
Business Source Complete	business and management
CAB Abstracts	agricultural economics
Econlit	economics
Emerald Fulltext	marketing, business management
Factiva	business, commerce, marketing, news

Databases for earth sciences and natural resources:
 

CAB Abstracts	earth sciences
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts	ecology, environmental and aquatic sciences
Geobase	geography, ecology, physical geology
Georef	earth sciences
Streamline (archival only)	Australian natural resources

Databases covering all subjects:
 

Academic OneFile	interdisciplinary
Academic Search Premier	interdisciplinary
Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre	current events, business and popular culture
Australian Public Affairs Full Text (APA-FT)	Australian social, cultural & economic affairs
ISI Current Contents Connect	interdisciplinary
Scopus	interdisciplinary
Web of Science	interdisciplinary

Some Web search engines or publishers' search engines also lead to journal articles but so far they don't cover as many journals and can't be searched in the same way as databases. On the other hand they have the advantage of searching for terms in the full text of articles: