Bibliographic & Statistical Databases
A selection of bibliographic & statistical databases commonly used by researchers at the Population Research Instittue. Many more databases are available through Penn State University Libraries.
Use these databases to locate journal articles, dissertations, book chapters, and statistics. To search for books, go to the PRI Library & Data Archive catalog, or the University Libraries CAT.
Unless otherwise noted, all databases are accessed through Penn State University Libraries subscriptions, and are only available to Penn State faculty, students, and staff. For more information on accessing these databases, see the Remote Database Access page.
Getting help
Choosing a database/Locating full text (PDF) includes a table comparing several frequently used databases and sources for full text articles. This handout was prepared for a PRI workshop conducted in October 2007 by Tara Murray. (Viewing PDF files requires the free Adobe PDF Reader.)
PRI faculty, students, and staff may request assistance in conducting literature searches or locating full text from Tara Murray. Additional literature searching and document delivery services are available to PRI faculty.
Bibliographic Databases
Access UN (Index to United Nations documents and publications from 1966 to date. Paper and microform copies of documents are available in the Social Sciences Library, 2nd floor Paterno Library. Selected documents are available in the PRI Library.)
AfricaBib (Available free online. Provides access to the Bibliography of Africana Periodical Literature Database and the African Women’s Database.)
AGRICOLA (Agriculture and related subjects, including rural sociology and agricultural economics.)
Annual Review of Population Law (Available free online. Full text of back issues of the Annual Review of Population Law, as well as topical pages on subjects in Population Law.)
Anthropology Plus (Combines Harvard University’s Anthropological Literature and the UK Royal Anthropological Institute’s Anthropological Index.)
Current Index to Statistics (Indexes publications in mathematical statistics.)
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) (Advanced search capabilities and access to full-text links through this subscription database. Also available free online through the US Department of Education.)
Google Scholar (Available free online. Select Scholar preferences to connect Google Scholar to Penn State’s Libraries.)
jake (jointly administered knowledge environment) (Available free online. Find information about electronic journal titles, including which databases index them.)
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) (journal rankings from ISI)
JSTOR (Archive of full-text scholarly journals.)
LexisNexis Academic (News, business, legal, and reference information.)
Medline (Available free online through PubMed. Indexes biomedical literature.)
National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) (Available free online.)
POPLINE (Available free online. Indexes international reproductive health literature.)
Population Index (Available free online. Abstracts in the demography literature covering the period from 1986-2000. This database is no longer being updated.)
ProQuest (Indexes scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers, with many full-text articles. Subject areas include general research journals, business and trade, education, psychology, and nursing.)
PsycINFO (Not just for psychologists, this database indexes a wide range of disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences and medicine.)
PubMed Central (the National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature)
Social Sciences Citation Index (Indexes journal articles as well as citations, allowing searchers to see which papers have cited a paper and how many times a paper or author has been cited.)
Statistical Databases
Historical Statistics of the United States
LexisNexis Statistical (Indexes statistics and data contained in federal government agency publications. Duplicates the American Statistics Index (ASI).)
Social Sciences Statistics and Data (From Penn State’s Social Sciences Library)
UNData (From the United Nations Statistics Division)
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