About databases, e-journals and e-books

Access information

The Library’s directory of databases, e-journals and e-books is accessed through the Search It. You can select an individual database to search or use the cross search feature and send your search term through to up to eight databases simultaneously.

We also have a small number of databases, which are not available remotely. Go to the Restricted access databases page to find out what they are and how to access them.

If you have problems accessing e-resources remotely, visit the Remote access to Library e-resources page.

If you find an article in a database but can’t open the full text to read the article, then the Library may not have subscribed to that journal or that particular year. (Hint if there is a Find It button on the page this might help source the article from another database.) You can check our catalogue to see if we have the journal on our shelves, or you can request our Document Delivery Service to retrieve a copy from another Library for you.

Finding e-journals

When looking for a specific e-journal title, the best place to start is the e-journals A-Z listing on Search It

If the journal is not listed here then you should also check the Library's catalogue.[Hint: Select Electronic Resources to limit your search].

If still unsuccessful, try the online journal finders listed below. Once you know which database has the journal you require, go to the Search it Databases A-Z listing and find the database.

  • Ulrich's Periodical Directory up-to-date journal details information including whether a journal is published electronically.
  • Genamics JournalSeek “Genamics JournalSeek is the largest completely categorized database of freely available journal information available on the internet. The database presently contains 54248 titles. Journal information includes the description (aims and scope), journal abbreviation, journal homepage link, subject category and ISSN.”
  • Directory of Open Access Journals “This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.”

Keeping up to date with new articles

Many databases allow you to sign up for an alert so that you can find out about the latest issue of your favourite journal. See the Database alerts page for more information.

Trial databases

Trials are part of the purchasing process and we encourage feedback from our users on the relevance of the databases we trial. An online Evaluation Form is attached to the trial database page. Find out what databases are currently on trial.

A note for online course developers

The Library maintains an information resource in the Learning Hub, which provides instructions and examples on how you can create links directly to journal articles held in the full text databases (useful for annotated reading lists, etc.). To access this resource called Lib 2000 RMIT University Library and your online course login to the Learning Hub with your staff NDS login and password. For assistance contact Mike Brooks in the Swanston Library.

Help and FAQs