Database: An organized collection of information,
usually pertaining to a particular subject.

Article Databases

Think of databases as huge electronic filing systems. They must be highly organized for people to easily find the information they need.

There are many kinds of databases. The most common type you will encounter in the library is an online periodical database. These databases point to the articles published in magazines, journals, and newspapers.

Each year millions of articles are published in thousands of periodicals. Not all of them, however, make it into periodical databases. The companies that own the databases choose which publications to include. When you search a periodical database, you will only find articles from the publications it chose to index.

Periodical indexes contain one or more of the following:

• Citations - basic publication information for indexed articles (author, title, date and publication name)
• Abstracts - brief summaries of indexed articles
• Full text - online copies of the text of indexed articles