On this page I've listed the best databases to use for Linguistics research.

The prime purpose of databases (often called a bibliographic databases) is to find journal articles on a topic. A database is a computerised index to journal articles, chapters in books and other sources of information such as conference papers. The Library Catalogue will only tell you the titles of journals held by, or that we can access from, the University of Adelaide Library. A database will index each individual article from an extensive range of journals, not all of which will necessarily be in the University of Adelaide Library collections here.
Note that databases cover journals world wide. No library will contain or have access to all the articles indexed. That means that you will need to check the results of your search to see if the articles you have identified as relevant are available in the University of Adelaide Library.

If you are unsure about how to use a database, have a look at my step by step explanation of this process.

And if you need some gentle persuasion to start using databases to find relevant information, listen to our podcast make databases your friend.
Visit the Library podcasts page for full details of how to listen to the databases podcast.

You'll find more information about databases lower down on this page.

For most searches you will need to use more than one database to make sure you have adequately researched your topic; I suggest you start with the major database, LLBA.
You might then think of searching your topic in the generalist databases, Academic search premier and Academic OneFile. Note that these are not dedicated linguistics databases but index a wide range of articles, including language and linguistics. I have also listed other databases which cover various disciplines that could be useful for your research topic. If you are doing an Applied Linguistics topic you might want to run your search in a database such as ERIC which covers educational topics or PsycINFO, say, if your topic has a psychology aspect.

LLBA [Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts]

This is the most useful database for Linguistics research. It indexes a wide range of international literature on the nature, use, and teaching of language and also speech, communication and linguistics. Covers journal articles, books, technical reports, dissertations, book reviews. Coverage 1973+

Academic search premier

Indexes and provides abstracts of articles from over 8,000 journals. Of these, full text is provided for over 4,600 journals, and more than 3,600 are peer-reviewed.
Coverage: social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies.
Academic search premier is one of the Ebscohost research databases to which the Library subscribes.

Academic OneFile

A collection of peer-reviewed, full-text articles in HTML and PDF format from more than 8,000 journals with extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, and literature. The publisher maintains a complete listing of journals covered by Academic OneFile, with details of dates of coverage.

MLA

The MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography is a subject index to journal articles and books on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It covers from 1925 onwards and contains over 1.7 million citations from more than 4,400 journals. The majority of records are from English-language publications, but at least sixty other languages are represented including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Swedish.
The database also has an identifiable subset of more than 77,000 records from JSTOR's Language and Literature Collection. The documents date back as far as 1881 and contain direct links to the full-text articles in JSTOR (see below).

ERIC

Indexes Current index to journals in education (CIJE) and Resources in education (RIE). A U.S. Department of Education database covering the journal and research literature in the field of education research and practice. The world's largest source of education information, containing abstracts of documents and journal articles.

PsycINFO

Psychological abstracts. Citations and abstracts of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law. Coverage 1983+

Sociological abstracts.

An index with abstracts (1974+) to journals, conference papers, book reviews, books in sociology, social policy, psychology and social sciences, especially those dealing with culture and society. Coverage 1963+.

Australian public affairs - full text: APA-FT

Includes citations (from 1978 onwards) and some full text (from 1995 onwards) for journal articles, selected newspaper articles, conference papers and books in Australian business, health, current affairs, economics, humanities, law, literature, politics and social sciences. If APA-FT is not available, use APAIS (see below):

APAIS (Australian Public Affairs Information Service)

Index only: not full text. Use if APA-FT is not available (see above). Part of the AUSTROM group of databases.

JSTOR

Not strictly a database but a searchable collection from volume 1 onwards of over 270 core journal titles in many disciplines. I've had very good results using it to track down citations for specific articles when not all the details were known. Coverage extends to all volumes except for the last few years, so don't use it to find articles on very recent topics.
JSTOR citations can be exported in EndNote-compatible format [don't know about EndNote bibliographical software? - visit the EndNote page].
Note to my academic colleagues: JSTOR provides a stable URL for every article, which you can copy and paste into MyUni - see Using Library e-resources in online teaching for details.

Periodicals index online (PIO)

Formerly called Periodicals Contents Index (PCI) this huge database indexes millions of articles published in the arts, humanities and social sciences over the past 300 years.
From the PIO results screen there is a link to Periodicals Archive Online which provides access to hundreds of online journals.

Web of Science

The Web of Science database includes the Arts & Humanities citation index and the Social sciences citation index from 1980 to date. Search by author, keyword or citation.
Web of science is useful for finding articles that have cited a given article, and so are likely to be on a related topic.

Scopus

A large database with an emphasis on science but which also indexes over 2800 social sciences, humanities journal titles. Covers 1980 onwards for topic searching: from 1996 onwards allows cited reference searching to find articles that have cited a given article.

Libraries Australia (Kinetica)

Use this database to find which Australian libraries hold a particular book or journal.
Note: Use Advanced search and change all of these to exact match or starts with. Apply the Journals limit when searching for journals.
If you do not find a journal in Libraries Australia, search SIAL: Serials in Australian Libraries which includes a few extra older journal holdings.

British Library Integrated Catalogue

Search for details of over 12 million books and other material from 1450 to the present day. A CD-ROM version of The British Library general catalogue of printed books to 1975 is available only on Barr Smith Library Non-networked databases computer 331, in the Reserve and Multimedia area.

Alerts and Saved searches

Many databases allow you to save your searches on their servers and will alert you when new articles on your topic are added to their files. Databases that index citations, such as Scopus and World of Science, will also let you create document citation alerts. This means that you will be notified when a selected article is cited by another article.
A database Alert will usually be sent to you by email, or you may be able to sign up for an RSS feed. [Not sure about RSS? Here's a straightforward explanation].
To set up an Alert you typically have to register with the database by filling in an online form with your contact details. You will usually also be asked to assign yourself a username and a password.
For example, if you want to set up Search history/Alerts on the database Academic Search Premier you click on the tab at the top of the page labelled Sign In to My EBSCOhost. When the Sign in page appears, click on the tab labelled I'm a new user, fill in the registration form, then click the Submit button. Shortly after you will receive an email confirming that you have an account registered with My EBSCOhost.
Once you have registered you can set your Preferences for future searching - just click on the word Preferences under the Academic Search Premier Search box. Here you can choose from different format options for your search results. You can do things like select your preferred citation format (MLA is one of the options) and have the database save items in a file formatted for EndNote (and other popular bibliographic formats). You can direct that the formatted file be emailed to you if you wish.

To set up Alerts on the major Linguistics database, LLBA, you need to register for what they call My Research by filling in a Personal Profile.

You'll find that the process of setting up an Alert is pretty similar on most databases. It's well worth doing if you need to be sure to have the latest information that is published in your area of interest.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online

The Web-based new edition of the OED. Click on the link Enter OED Online on their website to use the dictionary.
The online Dictionary contains the complete A to Z sequence of the Second Edition, its three-volume Additions Series, and also draft material from the revision programme, which represents the latest progress towards the Third Edition. Provides etymology, definition, part of speech, date of origination, pronunciation, quotation and cross references.

If you just want to quickly look up a word in the OED simply type it in the box below:

[Isn't modern technology wonderful!!]

Indexes to newspapers

Factiva

Indexes all major Australian newspapers; provides facts and numbers from nearly 9,000 sources in 22 languages, including influential local, national and international newspapers, leading business magazines, trade publications, and newswires.
If you haven't used Factiva before, I strongly suggest you have a look at the Factiva help pages before you start searching.

Elibrary

A database of full-text newspapers including Australian newspapers, full-text magazines, newswires, classic books, maps, and photographs, as well as major works of literature and art.

Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre

This resource provides access to many Australian and New Zealand newspapers in full text, including News Ltd. publications.

If you are embarking on a thesis you should consult these indexes to theses/dissertations as early as possible; not only is it interesting to see what work has been done on your thesis topic, it is crucial, if you are doing a higher degree, to ensure that your actual thesis topic is original.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

An index to doctoral dissertations (theses) submitted to accredited North American universities and colleges, and some international universities, from 1637 onwards. Formerly called Dissertation abstracts.
Citations from 1980 include a 350-word abstract. From 1997, in addition to the abstract, you can read a preview comprising the first 24 pages of the thesis. Masters theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. You can also download the complete text of each thesis in .pdf format, but you will need to pay for that (in February 2008 the cost was US$35.00).

Index to theses

Theses accepted for higher degrees by the universities of Great Britain and Ireland.

Australasian Digital Theses Program

The University of Adelaide is a member of the ADT program which is building a distributed database of theses in digitised format from Australian universities. Search or browse the database, and find out how to deposit a thesis in the database.

The Library has an excellent and constantly expanding collection of electronic databases - indexes to published material on a topic. The main emphasis is on journal articles, but often they also index important chapters in edited books, conference proceedings and other sources.
Some are indexes only: they provide a full reference so that you can find the article referred to. Remember that by no means all the journals indexed by a particular database will be in the Barr Smith Library's collections. If you find an article that is important to you, and it isn't available in our Library either in paper format or as an online subscription, you can make use of our Document delivery service.
Some databases will provide full text of the articles either directly, or by linking you to the journal's website through the Library Catalogue.
Most databases will allow you to mark results that you want to follow up and many let you email your marked results, and/or the full text of articles, to your own email address.

I've listed on this page the Library's databases that are most likely to be of use in linguistics research.
They are all available through the Library Catalogue, using the 'Electronic Resources' Limit, but here I've provided short cuts.

How to access the databases

You'll find information about how to access them on the page for each individual database in the lists above.
Databases for which the Library has purchased a network licence may be accessed remotely, if you are a current member of the University of Adelaide community, from your home or office computer. The remote user login page has information about using your Username and Password to get remote access to databases and other electronic resources.

Please note:-- The terms of our licence agreements with suppliers strictly limit remote access to electronic databases to enrolled students and staff members of the University of Adelaide.

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This page was created and is maintained by Alan Keig