Library catalogues are a great source for books, reports and dissertations, but they do not cover journal articles, book chapters or contributions to proceedings.
Bibliographic databases or article indexes can be created for specific subject areas or publication types or for more general coverage of several subject areas. For example, if you are looking for information on topics related to agriculture:
- Web of Science
- covers a limited number of high quality scientific journals, mainly covering fundamental research. - CAB Abstracts
- covers a much wider range of journals, both scientific and professional, as well as books, reports and theses from all over the world.
- Artik
- covers only 120 journals, but these are all professional oriented on Dutch agriculture, food and environment.
Which one you choose depends on the type of information you are looking for (applied vs scientific, Dutch vs international).
To choose the best database ask yourself:
- What kind of information do you need? Scientific information on fundamental research or more practically oriented information on applied science and technology? Marketing information, current opinions, laws and regulations or policy information?
- What types of publications do you need? Some options are scientific peer-reviewed journals, professional journals, theses, conference proceedings, technical reports, recent newspaper articles, policy documents.
- Does your topic come from a specific area of research (subject specific)?
- What dates are relevant for your topic? Bibliographic databases cover differing periods of time.
- Which geographic regions or climate zones are you interested in. The tropics, The Netherlands, developing countries?
Once you have some answers to these questions, you can consult the Portals section to see if you can find a relevant database.
Each main portal page lists a number of general bibliographies. You can read the database descriptions behind the
to see if they are relevant for your topic.
More specialised bibliographies are listed in the portlets under "Resources by subject"
 Wageningen Digital Library, 14 July, 2006
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