Databases are large, searchable collections of records describing journal articles and other documents such as conference papers, reports, and book chapters. They are produced commercially or by scholarly societies, and most are international in scope, allowing you to explore global literature in a particular field.
When you search a major international database, the articles you find may or may not be available through UCT Libraries. Most databases provide abstracts (summaries) of the articles, and some include full-text access. When full text is not available in the database itself, our link resolver software, SFX, will help you locate the article if it is available in any of our e-journal packages.