InfoSkills for Humanities and Digital Sciences

What is a library database?

You'll see the word 'database' a lot when working through the InfoSkills tutorial, so let's be sure you know what a database is.

A database is a collection of information, specially organized for rapid search and retrieval by a computer. You already use a database when you search for songs in Spotify, friends on Instagram, or clothes in a webshop. 

A library database includes information about credible documents such as articles from scholarly journals, professional journals, newspapers, or magazines. Some library databases also include information about (e-)books or non-traditionally published sources such as working papers and reports.

Some databases include full-text (articles in their entirety), some don't. Articles published in an open access journal may be included in a database. The full text of such articles is, of course, accessible. 

Records & Fields

• Databases are comprised of records representing individual items, for instance scholarly articles. Articles (and, depending on the database, other types of sources) included in a database are called 'documents'. 

• Database records contain fields that describe the document. Each field represents a single bit of information about the document, such as the title or the year of publication. 

  Field names may vary, but in library databases the following fields are common:

  • all fields
  • full text
  • title
  • author
  • source/publication/publication name (used for journal titles)
  • publication year
  • publisher
  • abstract
  • keywords (often provided by authors)
  • subjects/descriptors (assigned words or phrases that describe a the content of each document) 
  • publication type (e.g. journal article)

Sample record

Here's a record from the database PsycINFO:

How do articles end up in database search results?

Watch this 2.28 minute video.