Guides and databases: LibrarySkills@UCL: Searching for information: Databases

Searching specific databases

If you're carrying out a thorough search for information to support your work, it's important that you are familiar with the most relevant databases and other sources.

Remember that all databases work a little differently. It's vital that you understand how the database you are using will interpret your search terms. Familiarise yourself with the help pages for the database, and make sure you understand the search rules.

UCL Library Skills have produced some guides for some of the well used database platforms (such as Ovid) and specfic databases (such as PubMed).

Related guides

Keeping up to date with journal literature

Most databases that index journal literature allow you to set up email alerts for new articles on a particular topic or in a particular journal. Many individual journals will also have an alerting facility on their website. You may also find the following online services useful:

Browzine Web
Browzine presents UCL's academic journals in a browsable format. BrowZines easy to navigate bookshelves and compelling visual display allows users to easily find subject areas of interest, to see available scholarly journals, and get to content with a single click.

Browzine App
BrowZine is an e-journal browsing service that allows our journal collection to be browsed in an easy and intuitive way on mobile devices. It is also available as a web service called BrowZine Web.
JournalTOCs
JournalTOCs is the largest, free collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs): 33,123 journals including 16,657 selected Open Access journals and 11,745 Hybrid journals, from 3447 publishers.

Current Contents Connect
Current Contents Connect is a current awareness database that provides access to complete tables of contents, abstracts, bibliographic information, and abstracts from the most recently published issues of leading scholarly journals, as well as from more than 7,000 relevant, evaluated websites.