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The California Academy of Sciences subscription databases listed below are available to onsite researchers at the Academy. The list of free databases is an aggregate of databases available for use without cost by any interested party regardless of location or affiliation. If you require additional assistance, reference librarians are available to help with the use of online library catalogs, indexes, and databases. Please email library@calacademy.org.
Subscription Databases
"World's oldest continuing database of animal biology...includes 1.8 million indexed and searchable records from 1864 to the present."
"Provides seamless electronic access to dozens of databases and more than 10 million full-text and full-image articles."
EBSCO Electronic Journals Service
Search the abstracts and indexes from all the Academy's full-text BioOne titles.
TL-2 Online (Taxonomic Literature 2)
“The standard reference work for plant taxonomic literature from Linnean times to 1940" and a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, Second Edition.
"Provides information on wild California plants for conservation, education, and appreciation."
Free Databases
Serves as the catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library and "covers materials in all formats and periods, including printed works from as far back as the 15th century."
"A freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library."
California Statistical Abstract
"A compilation of data on social, economic, and physical aspects" of California available in PDF and Excel formats.
(electronic Plant Information Centre hosted by Kew) -- search International Plant Names Index, Kew Record of Taxonomic Literature, Survey of Economic Plants of Arid and SemiArid Lands, Living Collection of c30,000 plant taxa individually or all at the same time).
Education Resources Information Center allows searching of more than 1.2 million citations (journals and non-journals) related to education. Full-text is available for more recent non-journals and "grey literature."
American Heritage Dictionary plus a thesaurus, computing, medical, legal and financial dictionaries, the Columbia Encyclopedia, and an acronym dictionary.
A freely available database designed to help individuals and organizations interested in reducing the negative impact and increasing the positive impact they have on the environment.
Index to American Botanical Literature
"Covers various aspects of extant and fossil American plants and fungi, including systematics and floristics, morphology, and ecology, as well as economic botany and general botany from 1995."
ING [Index Nominum Genericorum (Plantarum)]
"The Index Nominum Genericorum (ING), a collaborative project of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) and the Smithsonian Institution, was initiated in 1954 as a compilation of generic names published for all organisms covered by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature."
Multiple discipline database plus document delivery for scholarly and professional literature
"A place for researchers to share pre-publication research, unpublished manuscripts, presentations, posters, white papers, technical papers, supplementary findings, and other scientific documents ...in biology and other fields."
Nomenclator Zoologicus v. 1-10
"A list of the names of the of the genera and subgenera in zoology from the tenth edition of Linnaeus 1758 to the end of 2004."
Includes citations to plant science literature, listings for North American seed and nursery firms, and incorporates Flowering Plant Index
Bibliographic database for primatology including Primate Lit from 1940, current Primate references and books received
Medical literature "a service of the National Medical Library that includes over 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. Includes links to full text articles and other related resources."
Statistical Abstract of the United States
"The authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the U.S. which includes data from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other federal agencies and private organizations."
The TROPICOS site provides access to the Missouri Botanical Garden's VAST (VAScular Tropicos) nomenclatural database. For any given scientific plant name, you can obtain current information on the name, its place of publication, type, and other information about the plant.
OCLC Databases
A selection of additional databases are available through OCLC, including services such as ArticleFirst. Broad categories include: Arts & Humanities, Business & Economics, Engineering & Technology, General Science, News & Current Events, and Social Sciences. Please feel free to consult a librarian if you have questions on how to search any of these most effectively. Here's a sample list of databases: