Research Guides: Education: Research Databases

Finding Books, Videos, Journals

NYU Libraries Catalog, known as BobCat (Bobst Catalog), can help you find books and ebooks, journals, encyclopedias, videos, and government documents. Enter a topic, a title, an author, or a publisher to search. (To search for journal articles, use the "Search by citation tool" on the Library website.)

Please note: most ebooks should be findable in BobCat. Proquest's Ebook Central is our biggest ebook database, but we also have various university press databases and a variety of other online publishers like Bloomsbury, Brill, Taylor & Francis, and Sage. Not all books put out by these publishers are available in ebook format, however.

Research Databases

Select a research database to search for scholarly journal articles. Please see the Video Resources page for streaming education videos and the Curriculum Materials page for children's literature databases.

You will be asked for your NYU NetID and password (same as NYU Home) to access the research databases on this list from off campus.

Education Source with ERIC This link opens in a new window
The two main databases in education, fully searchable together, via one interface. Provides citations to educational materials in nearly 1,500 journals and thousands of non-journal sources
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies This link opens in a new window
Bloomsbury Education and Childhood Studies is a digital platform offering systematic and comprehensive coverage of education and childhood studies around the world.

What Works Clearinghouse
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) reviews the existing research on different programs, products, practices, and policies in education in order to provide educators with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions. They focus on the results from high-quality research to answer the question “What works in education?”

CTREX (Children’s Technology Review Exchange) This link opens in a new window
Children’s Technology Review Exchange (CTREX) reviews commercial interactive products marketed toward children birth to 15, including apps, video games, web sites, hardware and software. Ratings are given by educators who have achieved inter-rater reliability on the same review instrument.
LearnTechLib (The Learning & Technology Library) This link opens in a new window
LearnTechLib is an online resource for aggregated, peer-reviewed research on developments and applications in learning and technology.
Formerly EdITLib—Education & Information Technology Library
ProQuest Education Journals This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Education Journals gives users access to over 900 educational publications, including more than 600 of the titles in full text. The coverage spans the literature on primary, secondary and higher education as well as special education, home schooling and adult education.
Sports Medicine and Education Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes records from peer-reviewed journals, report literature, conference proceedings, trade magazines, patents, articles from the popular press, and many other publications. Abstracts feature a wide variety of content, ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, and sport sociology/psychology. Dates of coverage: 1970 to present.
Professional Development Collection This link opens in a new window
Professional Development Collection provides access to educational journals (many of which are peer-reviewed) and educations reports, offering information on topics such as children's health and development to pedagogical theory and practice.
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) This link opens in a new window
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is composed of a number of specialized research networks in the social sciences. Topics covered by networks include accounting, economics, financial economics, legal scholarship, and management (including negotiation and marketing). The SSRN eLibrary consists of abstracts of scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an electronic paper collection of downloadable full text documents in pdf format.
In order to subscribe to the NYU network one must create an account with their NYU email address. Please note that when accessing through off-site connection you may encounter a login screen which indicates you can 'login anonymously.' If you reach this choose to login anonymously and you will be granted access.
PAIS International This link opens in a new window
An excellent resource for policy issues related to education. International in scope, with good coverage of journal resources as well as "gray literature" like government information.
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) This link opens in a new window
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is a source for theory and research in international affairs. It includes scholarship, working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals, case studies for teaching, and policy briefs.
Education Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
The Education Magazine Archive‎ (1910 - 2015) Archive of magazines in the field of education, ranging from the early 20th to 21st centuries. The publications are aimed at teachers and other educational professionals and chart the evolution of educational policy, practice and theory.
Education Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Education Index Retrospective indexes an international range of historical English-language Education journals from 1929-1983.
Dance Education Literature and Research Descriptive Index This link opens in a new window
An index of literature and research from 1926 to the present that informs teaching, learning, and future directions of research in the field of dance education. It contains extensive descriptions of 4,100+ literary works including theses, dissertations, journal articles, conference proceedings and other reports from over 200+ different publications and organizations and 147 university dance programs. In addition to providing basic citation information, the DELRdi provides detailed descriptive information on the methodology, techniques, and characteristics of the research documented in the index.

Advanced Research

WorldCat - FirstSearch (OCLC) This link opens in a new window
Search for books and more in libraries in the U.S. and around the world. Indicates when NYU Libraries holds a copy of a book and shows you nearby libraries with holdings.
Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Dissertations and Theses Global contains indexes, dissertations and some theses. Full-text is available for many dissertations and theses, including those from NYU.
Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Web of Science Core Collection is a multidisciplinary citation index that includes scholarly articles, conference proceedings, and books in the biomedical, psychosocial, and arts and humanities. The collections contain Science Citation, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index , Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Book Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index and Current Chemical Reactions index.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is a multidisciplinary index of peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

Other Relevant Databases

SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new window
SocINDEX covers the sociology literature, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. It indexes scholarly journals, books, monographs, and conference papers.
PsycNET (with PsycINFO) This link opens in a new window
APA PsycNET is an integrated collection of databases from the American Psychological Association (APA). It provides information about and access to journal articles, books & ebooks, dissertations, conference presentations, tests & measures, videos, gray literature, and many other other publication types in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.
To search only a specific database (e.g., PsycINFO) within the PsycNET interface, use the "Select Databases" features at the top of the PsycNET landing page and check (or uncheck) the database(s) that apply.
ABI/INFORM This link opens in a new window
ABI/INFORM features full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business, and economics periodicals. Researchers can locate country- and industry-focused reports, and its international focus provides a picture of companies and business trends around the world.
Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes scholarly articles, book reviews, and dissertations on social work, human services, social welfare and social policy. Dates of coverage: 1979 to present.
America: History and Life with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Indexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.

Search Tips

When using article databases, remember there are always three stages in your workflow:

Discovery: Do and redo your searches! Do a keyword or keyphrase search, scan the results, and figure out if you can do a better search using more focused terms, synonyms, and/or by using the Boolean operators "and, or, not" to get good results. Your first search is not your best search, but rather an opportunity to learn how to immediately do a better search. Learn more about Boolean searching here.
Delivery: For items that you like, select the link to the full text if available. If the citation does not include the full text, use the icon to see if we own the full text in another database. If you want to keep this item, save it to your own computer, email it to yourself, or print it.
Document: Keep track of the search terms you've used and a running bibliography of all that good resources you found. If you want to create your own library, NYU Libraries offer a number of citation management tools that you can learn more about. These tools are like research shadows - you can save the metadata of the resources you find there, and they will help you create a bibliography as you write a paper. They require habit to use though!