Computer Science

There are numerous databases to help support your research in computer science. Depending upon your topic and purpose you might want to focus on multidisciplinary databases (e.g. Web of Science) or a more specialized database (e.g. Inspec). If you are seeking handbooks on programming languages use Safari Tech Books Online (O’Reilly Press) or search UC Library Search. If you do not know where to start, look at a multidisciplinary database such as Web of Science or Ask a librarian for recommendations.

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library 

ACM is a major Computer Science publisher; use the ACM Digital Library to get online access to ACM publications.

• Citeseer 

A library of computer science & engineering conference proceedings and articles on the web.

• Computing Research Repository (arXiv.org) 

Archive of technical papers about CS

• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore 

Provides access to full-text IEEE transactions, journals, conference proceedings, and standards and IEE/IET journals and conferences.

• INSPEC 

Citations from scholarly journals, conference proceedings, books, reports, and dissertations in physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computers and control, and information technology.

• Safari Tech Books Online 

A collection of computing books that includes the full text of O’Reilly Press books, dating from 1999 to the present.

• Web of Science 

A database for finding article citations in all fields of science and engineering, including CS.

• Scopus

Indexes journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, and book series in the sciences and more.

There are several online libraries of programming books that we subscribe to, including:

• The Springer computing collection, including APress

The Library also has printed books on programming languages stored at the Shields Library,3rd floor. The chart below lists examples of topics and their associated subject headings, which can be useful with searching UC Library Search  (make sure to search ‘with my exact phrase’ and ‘in subject’). Direct links to online books by language/topic are also included. Do not hesitate to ask a reference librarian for assistance locating books in your subject area

Use UC Library Search to find articles, ebooks, print books, and more. You can also search collections of ebooks and similar material that focus on security in the following databases:

Safari Tech Books Online (Proquest)- Security titles  – Featured collection of O’Reilly Media books related to computer/ information security.

Synthesis Lectures on Information Security, Privacy, and Trust – The Synthesis Lectures Series on Information Security, Privacy, and Trust publishes 50- to 100-page publications on topics pertaining to all aspects of the theory and practice of Information Security, Privacy, and Trust.

ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control – ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control’s mission is to develop the information security profession by sponsoring high quality research conferences and workshops. Provides access to ACM publications that address all aspects of information and system security, encompassing security technologies, secure systems, security applications, and security policies.

National Academies Press Computers and Information Technology – Online books that focus on Information Security and Privacy

Academic Search Complete  – The multi-disciplinary database Academic Search Complete (ASC) provides full-text access to more than 5,500 periodicals, including over 4,600 peer-reviewed journals, and indexing and abstracts for an additional 9,500 journals and 10,000 publications, including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.

Business Source Complete  – “Indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals

Factiva  –  provides access to global news and business information, including local newspapers, same-day newswires, company reports, and media programs. Provides company information including market data and competitors. Includes full-text of the Wall Street Journal.

Gartner Campus Access  – Gartner provides technology-related information and insights, containing research findings and advice on technology markets, topics, and industries that help inform decisions related to information technology. Among the type of research that can be found in Gartner are:

* Technology products, services, and trends
* Global IT industry perspectives
* IT management and organizations
* IT strategies and governance
* Business-IT issues
* Market research
* Real-world case studies

LexisNexis Academic – One of the largest web-based full-text databases for current news, business and legal information, supporting a broad range of interdisciplinary research, LexisNexis Academic provides full-text access to nearly 6,000 individual titles. Includes a wide range of U.S. and foreign newspapers, plus transcripts of television and radio news programs. Business resources include business articles, accounting literature, company financial information. Legal resources include state and federal laws and regulations, a full range of case law, and law review articles.

• UC Library Search: UCD Library Catalog setting

  UC Library Search, the new Library catalog includes all of the UC library collections.  This setting is specific for the UC Davis libraries including (for the first time) the holdings of the Law Library. If you Sign in (on the top right corner) using your UCD login and Kerberos passphrase, you are prompted with your loan period, can renew books online, and request items that have been checked out to another borrower, or are in storage.

There are several online libraries of compter science related books that we subscribe to, including:

• The Springer computing collection, including APress.
• WorldCat Catalog- find authoritative content in a variety of formats from worldwide library collections. Coverage: 1000 A.D. to the present.
• HathiTrust is a collection of books digitized by US research libraries. You can search the full-text of over 10 million books, but access to some of the content is restricted. To search for full-text books only:
  1. Use theFull-text Search
  2. Enter your search terms
  3. Limit to: Full View Only   (UC Davis is a partner member of HathiTrust. If you would like to download full PDFs of public domain books, you must log in.)
  4. Google Books- Search the world’s most comprehensive index of full-text books.

Individual UCD  dissertations and masters theses can be found here:

• Finding UC Davis Theses and Dissertations 

This page describes how to locate and access UCD titles.

• Proquest Dissertation Abstracts International/ Dissertations & Theses (also known as ProQuest Digital Dissertations)

The Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) database is the authoritative source for finding doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. It also provides access to the full-text of all dissertations from University of California campuses since the late 1990s- See
Current Research @ University of California, Davis
Searches all University of California, Davis dissertations published in the Dissertation Abstracts database.

• American Doctoral Dissertations

Dissertations & theses from 31 USA colleges & universities, including Ohio State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, and North Carolina State University. This is a small subset of published dissertations & theses, but does include some that are not indexed elsewhere. Use in conjunction with other databases such as Dissertations & Theses and PQDT Open.

• Open Access Theses and Disserations (OATD)

OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world.

• PQDT Open 

PQDT Open provides the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge.

You can contact Me for help if you experience any problems accessing a dissertation or thesis in print or online.

Doing a cited reference search in science and engineering

Doing a cited reference search answers the question: who has cited a particular author or paper? Knowing this can help you find related papers to the one you have, and help determine how well-known a particular author or paper is in a field.

Also see the Guide:  Cited Reference Searching: Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

The main database that offers cited reference search is Web of Science:

Web of Science(WOS)

“Web of Science” was the first database to offer cited reference searching. You can use it to look up an author or a specific work and find out how many articles in the database have this author or work in their footnotes/reference.

Note: Our subscription to Web of Science includes Book Citation Index to the footnotes of books or essays published in books after 2005. Also keep in mind, Web of Science  does not index every journal in every field, only a selection of what it regards as core titles.

Computer Science– College of Letters and Science