| Academic Search Complete | ASC features thousands of full-text journals, offering unmatched coverage of information spanning a broad range of important areas of academic study. Online tutorials are available under the Help section of this database. |
| Art & Architecture Source | Art & Architecture Source replaces Art & Architecture Complete and Art Full Text combining the two into one source. Art and Architecture Source Covers a broad range of related subjects, from fine, decorative and commercial art, to various areas of architecture and architectural design. Providing over 600 full-text journals, more than 220 full-text books, and a collection of over 63,000 images, it is designed for use by a diverse audience, including art scholars, artists, designers, students and general researchers. |
| Arts and Humanities Citation Index | AHCI covers a variety of fields of study. Areas indexed include art, archaeology, architecture, philosophy, radio, television and film, theatre, language and literature. Online tutorials are available under the Training and Support section of this database. |
| Design and Applied Arts Index | DAAI provides articles from almost 500 design and craft journals. It also contains data on over 48,000 designers, craftspeople, studios, workshops, firms etc. Online tutorials are available under the Help section of this database. |
| JSTOR Arts & Sciences Collections | JSTOR provides access to the highest-quality academic journals, books and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences and science. Includes access to 1,130 journals in Arts and Sciences. |
| Oxford Art Online | Oxford Art Online (formerly Grove Art Online) offers access to the comple text of Grove Art Online and Oxford Art Reference. It covers the history of art, photography, architecture, painting, sculpture and fine art from all areas. An online tutorial is available under the Find Out More section of this database. |
| Project Muse | Covers literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, etc. Contains current full text scholarly journals which cover these fields and a significant collection of recent scholarly books. |
| World Advertising Research Centre | WARC is a provider of information and insight into the global marketing, advertising, media and research industries. WARC online is its internet service. |
For a full list of Databases see the main database page. Other databases than those listed here may be useful to you.
Some databases require a username and password, you can find details here.
See this Guide to Off-Campus Access for information about accessing electronic resources when not on a TU Dublin computer.
See the guides below for help doing a keyword search for journal articles:
Books in TU Dublin Library will provide you with a lot of useful information. However, early on in your studies you may find the need to get more up to date information, or perhaps information on a topic that is not widely covered in books. This is when you will need to use the Databases available through the library.
A database is an electronic catalogue or index of articles, with information from journals, books, newspapers, conference proceedings and much more.
The library subscribes to many databases covering many various different subject areas.
Articles in a database are available 'Fulltext' (the full article is provided), or as abstracts (only a summary of the full article is provided). Many of the databases that TU Dublin Library subscribes to are fulltext.
For a full list of useful Art and Design databases including information about subject coverage and access, please see the Databases listed in the section below.
Before you begin to search a database you need to think about what you actually want to look for and how you want to phrase your search. This is called 'developing a search strategy'. You need to really analyse your topic and decide on about 6-8 keywords that sum up the information you want. Be as specific as possible. Use subject encyclopaedia and dictionaries to help you clarify your topic, get background information and give you ideas for keywords. You can use thesaurus.com or the thesaurus on the database you choose to get you started.
Once you have your keywords you will need to search for them in your chosen database. Choose a database based on the subject area covered (e.g. if you were looking for information about art history or criticism then Art & Architecture Source would be a good database to use). Most databases have a Basic and Advanced Search page. It is better use the Advanced Search page as you will be able to enter more keywords and also refine your search. Enter your keywords and start your search.
If you find that you have too many results you can always narrow down your search by limiting by year, by document type, or by fulltext as opposed to abstract only (available in fulltext databases only). You can always add more keywords to make your search more specific using AND. You can also try a phrase search which allows you to find documents containing a particular phrase e.g. "video art". If you find that you have too few results then you might have to change some of your keywords. You can always truncate words using the * symbol e.g. art* will search for art/artist/artists.
You will then need to go through your list of results and pick out the useful ones. You should have a quick read through the abstract to see if the article is of use or not. As mentioned before, you may not always get the fulltext of the article. If you don't, check for the Journal title (not the article title) on the DIT catalogue to see if we have the journal in paper form. If it is not available in the TU Dublin Library you can get a letter of introduction from the issue desk to visit another library that does stock the journal. You can check various other library catalogues here. You can also apply for an Inter Library Loan to get a copy of the article/book. Please see ILLs for more information.
Another useful tip is to create an account in the database that you find the most useful. Do this so that you can save the results that you have found (create folders for different research topics), and also so that you can create an alert within that database. An alert will cause an email to be sent to you each time some new piece of information goes into the database relating to your search terms. This will save you a lot of time. To create an account in database look for 'Create an Account'/'Sign In' buttons.
Use the Help section of each database to watch tutorials or get tips on searching effectively.
Every year the library holds Information Research sessions for specific courses so make sure you come along to these to learn more about the databases relevant to you.