University Library: Alumni & Community Resources: Open Databases & Free Research Sites

General Public Databases (These are free and open!)

EBSCO Essentials This link opens in a new window
Find free, open-access articles and books on topics including business, education, literature, history, and more.
Florida Electronic Library (FEL) This link opens in a new window
Free resources for Florida residents (authenticates from any Florida location or out-of-state via your public library barcode). Search for resources in a variety of subjects, including homework help, magazines, newspapers, and e-books. Education majors will be interested in literature and curriculum materials for specific grade levels.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Find peer-reviewed articles, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports from a wide range of academic disciplines. When available, select "Full Text @ FGCU Library" in the results.
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of online free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. Open a free account to "check out" digital items.
Open Research Library This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed Open Access books accessible for everyone.

Specialized Public Databases

Ant Bibliography (FORMIS) This link opens in a new window
A composite of several ant literature databases. Contains citations for a large part of the world's ant literature (about 30,000 references).
Specialty databases include:
Fire Ant Literature Database
Comprehensive Leaf-Cutting Ant Bibliography
Pharaoh Ant Bibliography - (about 1000 citations). Karen Vail; David F. Williams, Klaus-Peter Berndt, Wolfdietrich Eichler; Jerzy Wisniewski.
Santschi Ant Bibliography - (210 citations) Rolf E. Meier.
RFORMICA-Russian Wood Ant Literature Database - (almost 800 citations) Vladilen E. Kipyatkov, Dmitri S. Malyshev.
ANTBIB, A bibliography of ant systematics - (about 8,000 citations) Philip S. Ward, Barry Bolton, Steven O. Shattuck, William L. Brown, Jr.
ArchiveGrid This link opens in a new window
Includes millions of records describing archival materials, including historical documents, personal papers, family histories, finding aids, and other materials.
Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics (BOP/IIP) This link opens in a new window
Contains balance of payments and international position data of individual countries, jurisdictions, and other reporting entities. Coverage for the data begins in 2005; coverage varies by country.
Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) This link opens in a new window
Find citations to art-related articles and books published before 2007.
BioMed Central (BMC) This link opens in a new window
BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher of 256 peer-reviewed open access (free) journals. The portfolio of journals spans all areas of biology, biomedicine and medicine and includes broad interest titles.
Catalog of U.S. Government Publications This link opens in a new window
The finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online.
Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports This link opens in a new window
This collection contains authoritative, nonpartisan overviews of contemporary political issues.
Digital Commons @ University of South Florida This link opens in a new window
A website on the history and culture of Florida, focusing primarily on the Tampa Bay Region. Resources for students from kindergarten to the university level including images, documents, E-Books, and audio & video recordings.
DigitalFGCU This link opens in a new window
DigitalFGCU provides open access to materials from the University Archives and Special Collections that showcase the history, culture, and environmental ecology of Florida Gulf Coast University and Southwest Florida.
Digital Library of the Caribbean This link opens in a new window
Find articles, books and other research materials related to Caribbean history and culture.
Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) This link opens in a new window
Presents current figures on the value of merchandise exports and imports disaggregated according to a country?s primary trading partners. These time series cover 184 countries dating back, in some cases, to 1947. Users must create a free account in order to download data.
English Short Title Catalogue This link opens in a new window
Find works printed in any language in England or its dependencies from the beginning of printing through the end of the eighteenth century.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
Find education-related journal articles, conferences, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, directories, books, and monographs.
FGCU Theses & Dissertations This link opens in a new window
A collection of full text theses and dissertations produced by FGCU students.
Florida Times Union Newspaper Index This link opens in a new window
Jacksonville, Florida - Index 1986 to 1997
GovInfo This link opens in a new window
Provides free online access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.

Alumni & Community Resources

General Public Databases (These are free and open!)

Specialized Public Databases

Florida Gulf Coast University Library