Alternatives to Subscription Databases
Because the library's educational contracts with vendors specify that subscription databases may be used only for current classroom assignments, we have listed numerous alternative research resources available both in the community and on the web. These alternative resources can provide you with the same or similar information offered by the databases you found useful while still in school.
However, we have listed other methods for accessing information contained in the databases at Pepperdine University Libraries. Some of the databases are available through the public libraries. Many public libraries provide web-based access to users with library cards. Users must apply for library cards in person. Other databases are available for a fee from the database vendor. In addition, we have listed databases that provide similar types of information.
ABI/INFORM
Description: Provides in-depth coverage of articles on business conditions, trends, corporate strategies and tactics, management techniques, competitive and product information, and a wide variety of other business topics. Indexing and abstracts for articles from more than 1600 publications, including over 350 English-language titles from outside the U.S. Full-text, page image, or text+graphics are provided for over 700 publications. Includes the Wall Street Journal; overall dates of coverage: 1971 - present
Commercial Access: Proquest provides accounts that only charge users for documents they download. Call at 800-521-0600 for more information.
Public Library Access: The Los Angeles Public Library provides remote access to "General Interest Magazines with Images" which includes access to ABI/INFORM. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Similar Databases: Most mid-sized to large public libraries offer General BusinessFile, which is very similar to ABI/INFORM.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Academic Search Elite
Description: An EBSCO database that provides full text coverage of over 2,050 journals, including nearly 1,500 peer-reviewed titles in the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, education and more. Full-text coverage back to 1985.
Public Library Access: Public libraries generally make databases available which are very similar to Research Library. The Los Angeles Public Library, for example, has "General Interest Magazines with Images" which patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
America: History & Life
Description: Indexes and abstracts scholarly literature from journals, dissertations and book reviews on the history and culture of the United States and Canada. Coverage begins in the year 1450 and continues to the present. Included are links to electronic journals such as Chronicon, Common-Place, Cromohs, Essays in History, Journal for Multimedia History, Journal of the Association for History and Computing, Mennonite Life, North Star, and Screening the Past. Approximately 16,000 entries are added each year. Available online articles are provided by through J-STOR and Project Muse, to which America History and Life provides a direct link.
Public Library Access: America History & Life is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Art Full Text
Description: Wilson Art Full Text indexes and abstracts articles from 378 peer-selected journals. Subjects covered include advertising art, antiques, archaeology, architecture and architectural history, art history, computers in art, crafts, decorative arts, fashion design, folk art, graphic arts, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, motion pictures, museology, non-western art, painting, photography, pottery, sculpture, television, textiles and video. Coverage includes the full text of 98 journals beginning January 1997.
Public Library Access: Art Full Text is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Associations Unlimited
Description: Contains information for approximately 460,000 international and U.S. national, regional, state, and local nonprofit membership organizations in all fields, including IRS data on U.S. 501(c) nonprofit organizations.
Public Library Access: Associations Unlimited is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id. In addition, many public libraries will own the print version of this database: The Encyclopedia of Associations.
Similar Databases: The American Society of Association Executives is a searchable database of professional associations.
Biography Resource Center
Description: Provides biographical information on more than 220,000 people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. Besides biographical narratives, the database provides full-text articles from more than 250 periodicals.
Public Library Access: Biography Resource Center is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Similar Resources: Pepperdine University Library has many print biographical resources that are available. In addition, many public libraries will have excellent collections of biographies. Biography.com is a free biographical database on the Internet.
Business Source Premier (EBSCOhost)
Description: Business Source Premier is the world's most comprehensive index of business journals, magazines and other sources, containing indexing and abstracts for more than 3,800 business-related periodicals with coverage back as far as the first half of the 20th century. This file also provides full text for more than 3,000 periodicals, including nearly 1,100 full-text peer-reviewed journals. Business Source Premier offers unparalleled full text coverage of journals in marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance, econometrics, economics, international business, and more. Business Source Premier contains full text from the most prestigious business journals, including Harvard Business Review (back to 1922), Journal of Marketing (back to 1936), Accounting Review (back to 1926), Journal of Finance (back to 1946), Quarterly Journal of Economics (back to 1904), etc. The database also includes full text from country economic reports, monographs, industry reports, and company profiles.
Public Library Access: Los Angeles Public Library provides access to General BusinessFile and "General Interest Magazines with Images" which includes access to ABI/INFORM. These databases also provide full-text access to academic business journals.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Congressional Universe
Description: Access to legislative and regulatory information from the United States government, including hearing transcripts, committee reports, bills, the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, the U.S. Code, and public law.
Commercial Access: Contact the LexisNexis web site for subscription information.
Similar Databases: THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet provides full-text access to bills from the 101st Congress to the present.
Dissertation Abstracts
Description: A ProQuest database, Digital Dissertations provides abstracted records of doctoral dissertations and master's theses completed at accredited colleges and universities in North America. Titles published since 1997 are available in full-text, PDF digital format and have 24-page previews available. The database holds more than 1.6 million entries with the addition of some 47,000 new dissertations and 12,000 new theses each year.
Commercial Access: Proquest provides fee-based dissertation searches.
ERIC
Description: ERIC, the Educational Resource Information Center, is a national information system supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Library of Education, and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. It provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. ERIC provides full text of more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information and citations and abstracts from over 1000 educational and education-related journals.
Commercial Access: ERIC database (AskERIC) is available free of charge.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Factiva
Description: Factiva provides access to the Dow Jones and Reuters news wires, The Wall Street Journal and over 8,000 other sources with the ability to cross search Web sites, publications, newswires, company reports and pictures in a single search.
Commercial Access: Affordable commercial accounts are available from Factiva.
Similar Databases: The SEC's EDGAR database provides free filings (10-K's, 10-Q's, Proxies, etc). The Los Angeles Public Library has "General Interest Magazines with Images" which includes access to ABI/INFORM and the full-text of newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News and the Los Angeles Times. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id. Los Angeles Public Library users can dial in from home to search General BusinessFile via the web. Most mid-sized to large public libraries provide General BusinessFile. In addition, Los Angeles Public Library makes PROMT (Predicasts Overview of Markets & Technology available remotely. PROMT is a good database for accessing trade journals.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Historical Abstracts
Description: Reference guide to the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada) includes over half a million annotated bibliographic citations to articles and book reviews in over 2000 journals, plus citations to abstracts of dissertations completed worldwide of particular interest for historical research. Available online articles are provided by J-STOR and Project Muse, to which America: History and Life provides a direct link.
Public Library Access: Historical Abstracts is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Investext Plus
Description: Provides full-text analyst reports from 450 investment banks and statistical and trend reports from 150 trade associations. Historical reports are available back to 1996. Reports appear in Investext Plus about 6 weeks after the date of initial publication.
Public Library Access: The Los Angeles Public Library provides remote access to Investext. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Commercial Access: Yahoo Finance has a resource for locating fee-based investment reports.
LexisNexis Academic
Description: LexisNexis Academic indexes and provides full-text coverage of approximately 5,600 newspapers, magazines, wire services, federal and state court opinions, federal and state statutes, federal regulations and SEC filings such as 10-K's and 10-Q's. It also provides access to company profiles, industry and market research information and trade journals. The Medline database is available through LexisNexis Academic.
Commercial Access: Contact the LexisNexis web site for subscription information. Daily and Weekly rates are available for short term subscriptions.
Public Library Access: this database will not be available in Public Libraries unless they have a fee-based research service.
Similar Databases: The SEC's EDGAR database provides free filings (10-K's, 10-Q's, Proxies, etc). The Los Angeles Public Library has "General Interest Magazines with Images" which includes access to ABI/INFORM and the full-text of newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News and the Los Angeles Times. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id. Los Angeles Public Library users can dial in from home to search General BusinessFile via the web. Most mid-sized to large public libraries provide General BusinessFile. Findlaw, a free web site on the Internet, contains codes and case law for both the Federal government and the states (including California).
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Literature Resource Center
Description: The Literature Resource Center is a literature reference database that combines biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information to deliver a resource package on authors and their works (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism). It includes information from the following works: Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Classical and Medieval Literature & Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Shakespeare Criticism, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Literature Criticism 1400-1800.
Public Library Access: Literature Resource Center is available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Similar Resources: The Payson library owns many of the reference works in Literature Resource Center in print format. In addition, many public libraries will own these resources in print.
Los Angeles Times
Description: A ProQuest database that indexes the major daily newspaper from Los Angeles including extensive coverage of national, international and local news. Covers 1985 to current date.
Public Library: The Los Angeles Timesis available remotely from the Los Angeles Public Library. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Similar Databases: The Los Angeles Times web site provides access to full-text articles for a fee.
Medline
Description: MEDLINE covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry and the preclinical sciences and includes bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The file contains over 14 million citations dating back to the mid-1950's, made available through PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that provides access to bibliographic information to MEDLINE and more. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts. More than 4,600 international clinical and research journals are indexed and abstracted. MEDLINE is also available through LexisNexis Academic with coverage from 1966 forward.
Commercial Access: Medline is available free of charge from the National Library of Medicine's web site.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
Moody's/Mergent Online
Description: Provides key financial data for both American and international publicly traded companies. Company financial statements can be viewed in any currency at exchange rates in effect at the end of the fiscal period you select. This feature is useful in comparing companies from different countries. Moody's is especially useful for retrospective financial data. In addition, annual reports are available on Moody's.
Public Library Access: The Los Angeles Public Library provides access to this database (listed as "Mergent Online") from any branch.
Similar Databases: The SEC's EDGAR database provides free filings (10-K's, 10-Q's, Proxies, etc).
PsycINFO
Description: PsycINFO contains more than one million citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations and technical reports, all in the field of psychology. Journal coverage, which spans from 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,000 periodicals in over 35 languages. More than 60,000 records are added each year. It also includes information about the psychological aspects of related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law.
Commercial Access: The American Psychological Association (APA) provides free access to PsycINFO to members. Other users may purchase a 24 hour password.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
RAND California
Commercial Access: Note: RAND California provides information on California public policy and social science issues affecting the state, its counties and cities. It provides access to current economic, demographic, educational, and financial data for the State of California. Commercial subscriptions are available at the RAND web site.
Public Library Access: The Los Angeles Public Library makes US government data (including California-specific information) available as well through a variety of Government Databases.
Similar Databases: Census and other types demographic data about California can also be accessed through the Government Resources link on the Pepperdine Libraries' website.
Reference USA
Description: Reference USA is an online directory of 12 million+ businesses in the United States and Canada. Users can search by company name, ticker symbol, executive name, geographic location, sales range, type of business and number of employees.
Public Library Access: The Los Angeles Public Library provides remote access to Reference USA (listed as the "American Business Disc"). Many public libraries subscribe to this database.
Similar Databases: The Thomas Register is a free company database available on the Internet.
Research Library
Description: Access to scholarly journals in business, health, the social sciences, humanities, education, and general science; citations and abstracts for over 2,300 journals from 1971 forward. Full-text and/or full-image is available for over 1400 journals from 1986 forward.
Public Library Access: Public libraries generally make databases available which are very similar to Research Library. The Los Angeles Public Library, for example, has "General Interest Magazines with Images" which patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Document Delivery: If you have a citation or list of citations and would like a copy of the full article you may wish to consider the document delivery services which make specific articles available for a fee.
S&P Market Insight
Description: Web-based access to Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys and Stock Reports and much more. Market Insight also includes industry information from U.S. Trade Outlook, DRI Country Overviews, CIA World Factbook Statistics as well as Executive Compensation data, and Compustat Financials as Excel Analytics for both U.S. and Global companies. Links are provided to navigate between company, industry and executive compensation data.
Commercial Access: Contact Standard & Poor's for subscription information
Public Library Access: Los Angeles Public Library provides remote access to Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage which contains Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys and Stock Reports. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id. Pepperdine University Libraries owns Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys in print form. Also, most mid-sized public libraries own Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys and Stock Reports in print format.
ScienceDirect
Description: Provides indexing and abstracting for over 1,000 scientific, technical and medical journals as well as access to full-text Elsevier journals and titles subscribed to by Pepperdine University Libraries in the following subject collections: Agricultural and Biological Sciences; Business, Management and Accounting; Economics, Econometrics, and Finance; Medicine; Psychology (includes comprehensive clinical psychology); and Social Science.
Commercial Access: ScienceDirect provides free, searchable abstracts and citations over the Internet. The full-text of articles is available through credit card payments.
Public Library Access: This database will not be available at public libraries.
Stat-USA
Description: U.S. Department Of Commerce databases, including the National Trade Data Bank, the Economic Bulletin Board, Global Business Procurement Opportunities, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis Economic Information.
Commercial Access: Affordable commercial accounts can be purchased online, by mail and fax.
Similar Databases: Tradeport is a good website for international trade information. The CIA World Factbook is a useful source for country information. In addition, the Country Commercial Guides provide useful information about conducting business with other countries.
Public Library: Los Angeles Public Library provides Stat-USA at all of its library branch locations.
Tablebase
Description: Tablebase presents business data in a tabular format. Tablebase contains industry trends and sales, company and brand rankings, forecasts, usage and capacity, demographics and market share.
Commercial Access: Contact Gale for a commercial subscription.
Similar Databases: Demographic information is available from the Census Bureau. The Statistical Abstract of the United States provides a variety of statistics from government and private sources.
Public Library Access: Very few public libraries will have access to Tablebase. It may be possible to get some statistics from databases that are available remotely at the Los Angeles Public Library such as PROMT (Predicasts Overview of Markets & Technology), ABI/Inform, Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage and General BusinessFile. Patrons can search from their home computers using their library card number as a logon id.
Value Line Research Center
Description: Access to six products: The Value Line Research Center Investment Survey, including full-page Ratings and Reports on 1,700 stocks plus a weekly Summary and Index with key financial data and the Selection and Opinion newsletter; The Value Line Research Center Investment Survey - Expanded Edition; The Value Line Research Center Mutual Fund Survey; The Value Line Research Center Daily Options Survey; The Value Line Research Center Special Situations Service; and The Value Line Research Center Convertibles Survey.
Commercial Access: Value Line provides individual accounts for a fee.
Similar Resources: The Los Angeles Public Library provides access to Investext. Investext provides investment advice for stocks. In addition, the Los Angeles Public provides access to Standard & Poor's Stock Reports through Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage. Pepperdine University Libraries own Value Line in print format.
