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What is a database?

A database is an organised collection of data, which can be facts, statistics and information. What goes into a database is determined by its purpose, subject, and the potential users of the database. What you get out of a database is determined by the way you use it. This introduction is about understanding databases and how you can make the most of using them.

Using a university database can save you time in your research and provide you with academic peer-reviewed articles.

Introduction to Databases

This is an introduction to the components of databases that are available at the university. Click on the interactive PowerPoint (with a quiz) to download and open it. The PowerPoint has audio, so you may need to adjust your volume.

Transcript of PowerPoint This PDF is the transcript for the Introduction to Databases tutorial.

A to Z Resources for Your Subject Area

Choose the library databases for your research
Choose by Subject, Database Type, Vendor/Provider or Search for a database.

Key Databases

Key Subject Resources

These are the key databases we recommend that you use, a more complete list is available from the Database page.

Accessing library resources from home

To connect to library resources such as databases and journals you will need to use the University’s VPN service called Globalprotect. Advice on how to set your connection up can be found on the iSolutions page How do I set up VPN on my device?

ChemSpider, Reaxys, and SciFinder-n are databases that search for literature, structures, reactions and properties.

Compendex, IEEE Xplore and Web of Science provide full-text articles and more.

The UK Physical Sciences Data-science Service (PSDS), previously known as the National Chemical Database Service, provides many databases to search.

ESDU Data
ESDU is an engineering knowledge base which provides essential design and analysis methods and guides, data and software tools to help solve complex engineering problems. These design guides can be used in a wide range of engineering disciplines, including ISVR, aerospace, mechanical, civil, transportation and chemical engineering.
ChemSpider
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ChemSpider covers 67 million structures, properties and associated information from freely available chemical data. It is owned by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Reaxys
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Reaxys covers an extensive collection of organic, organo-metallic, and inorganic chemistry data. Reaxys enables you to search by structure, substructure, reaction, text, and property data.
SciFinder-n
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SciFinder, the online version of Chemical Abstracts, is the main database for chemistry. It provides easy access substance and reaction information, patent and journal references. It is for individual, not-for-profit use only. Personal registration required.
Physical Sciences Data-science Service
The PSDS is a new National Research Facility which brings together tools and resources for UK researches in physical sciences, including chemistry, crystallography, materials, and related fields.
To identify which resource to use in PSDS go to https://www.psds.ac.uk/resources
Compendex
Includes Chemical Engineering and is the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world.

Compendex is one of many databases in Engineering Village. Celebrating 50+ years, Compendex is an abstracting and indexing database, comprising coverage of >28M records of highly curated, globally published, scientific content, focused primarily on applied engineering research, literature and technical information

Guide to Engineering Village https://elsevier.libguides.com/engineering-village/home

Engineering Village is a platform that enables in-depth search and discovery of both current, archival and interdisciplinary content comprising research and technical information in the applied engineering and physical science domains. It hosts highly-curated databases in which content from global publishers is indexed from journals, conference proceedings, trade publication, dissertations, standards, books, patents and technical reports

IEEE Xplore
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Full text access to all IET and IEEE journals and conferences since 1988 and all active and archival (but not draft) IEEE standards.
Web of Science
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Previously called the Web of Knowledge. Provides access to a number of databases including Web of Science Core Collection (covering engineering, science, health, social science, humanities, etc.), BIOSIS (biological & biomedical science) and Inspec (physics, computing, electrical & electronic engineering, etc.). Select 'All Databases’ to search multiple databases simultaneously or choose an individual database.