Adam Siegel
Research Support Services
Researcher Services Librarian
530-754-6828
by Adam Siegel – January 11, 2021
The basic principle underlying the organization of any library is to describe the documents it contains so that they may be located. All libraries create sets of records which describe the documents in their collections. Catalogs are sets of records to documents that share a location. Indexes are sets of records to documents that share some other attribute (generally subject matter). Below are the most significant and representative article indexing databases for international (but English-language-centric) comparative literature scholarship.
Research Support Services
Researcher Services Librarian
530-754-6828
The Melvyl catalog allows users to search for documents held by the UC Davis and other UC libraries. When configured for “Libraries Worldwide,” the catalog allows users to find documents (books, media, reports, etc.) held by libraries throughout North America and Europe.
This database is the combined archive of two bibliographic indexes, Pascal and Francis. They provide multidisciplinary and multilingual coverage of humanities and social sciences. Source documents include journal articles, books, conference proceedings, dissertations, and reports. It was produced and is now hosted as an open access resource by the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
BASE is one of the world’s most voluminous search engines especially for academic open access web resources. BASE is operated by Bielefeld University Library.
Provides the most comprehensive, current bibliography of international scholarly literature in Medieval Studies available.
Gale’s Literary Index is a master index to the major literature series published by The Gale Group. It combines and cross references more than 130,000 author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and more than 140,000 titles into one source.
A collective database of all books published in Europe between the invention of printing and the end of the sixteenth century (1450-1700).
JSTOR provides Full-Text access to back files of hundreds important scholarly journals in nearly 50 disciplines spanning the arts, humanities, social sciences and the sciences. Current issues are now included for selected titles. Holdings vary by journal. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Online access to all of the in print volumes of this major series of Greek and Latin texts with facing translations. From the publisher: “The Loeb Classical Library® is the only existing series of books which, through original text and English translation, gives access to all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church fathers who made particular use of pagan culture—in short, our entire classical heritage is represented here in convenient and well-printed pocket volumes in which an up-to-date text and accurate and literate English translation face each other page by page. The editors provide substantive introductions as well as essential critical and explanatory notes and selective bibliographies.”
Redalyc serves as a portal to more than 15,000 full text articles published in over 700 journals that come from 15 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. New titles and older content are added monthly. Subject coverage includes topics in the social sciences, arts and humanities, and the natural sciences. Redalyc can be searched by keyword, subject, author, country of publication or journal title. Articles are primarily in Spanish. Redalyc adheres to an Open Access policy and its material is released under a Creative Commons license, with free downloads of the PDF files.
Project Muse provides full text access to hundreds of journals in the arts, humanities, social sciences and mathematics. It is useful for searching interdisciplinary cultural studies topics. Its full-text search engine permits finer-grained searching than any other index for these journals. Coverage varies by journal.
UC Davis Mabie Law Library Catalog
Melvyl (UC System) Library Catalog