Research Guides: Disability Studies: Databases & Articles

Databases

Databases are subscription resources that bring articles from a variety of journals into one place with a sophisticated search engine. Access the databases directly from this guide, from the UMD Libraries Homepage or Database Finder.

Use the databases below to find journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, conference proceedings, dissertations, and more related to your topic.

Because of its multi-disciplinary nature, there is no single database for locating Disability Studies materials.
Choose a subject database from the list below that best fits your topic.

Academic Search Ultimate
Useful For: Getting Started. Academic Search Premier is a multidisciplinary database providing abstracts and indexing for over 7,000 journals. Includes full text of articles for over 4,000 scholarly publications, including more than 3,100 peer-reviewed publications. See also Periodicals Index Online, another excellent multidisciplinary database with a focus on arts/humanities and social sciences.
America: History & Life with Full-Text
Useful For: Historical perspectives on disability and/or disabled persons. America: History and Life provides information on articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations on U.S. and Canadian history from prehistory to the present. For information on similar publications on non-U.S. and non-Canadian history from 1450 to present, use Historical Abstracts.
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Useful For: Representations of disability and/or disabled persons in the mass media, speech/language-related disabilities, etc. This database combines two communication resources: CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index. For more on speech and language-related disabilities, see Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA).
Dissertations & Theses Global
Useful For: Getting started; finding theses and dissertations on disability-related topics. This database is the an authoritative source for information about doctoral dissertations and master's theses. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 graduate schools and universities. Full text is available from 1997 to the present.
Education Source
Useful For: Disability issues in education, learning disorders, mainstreaming, etc. Education Research Complete is a bibliographic and full text database covering scholarly research and information relating to all areas of education. See also the database ERIC, which includes similar materials as well as ERIC Digests (short reports on topics of current interest in Education.)
Family & Society Studies Worldwide
Useful For: Aspects of disability related to families, parenting, children, and more. A primary family studies resource, Family & Society Studies Worldwide provides more than 700,000 citations and abstracts to professional journals, books, book chapters, conference papers, theses & dissertations, websites & internet documents, selected popular literature, government reports, statistical documents, working papers, and unpublished material from 1972 to present.
GenderWatch
Useful For: Intersections of disability with women's and gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, etc. Full text database of 175 titles, primarily periodicals that deal with gender issues, including academic and scholarly journals, regional publications, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, booklets and reports. For lesbian and gay studies, LGBT Life with Full Text is also recommended.
JSTOR
Electronic archive of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Includes complete runs of journals with full-text of all articles published PRIOR to the MOST CURRENT FIVE YEARS.
MEDLINE
Useful For: Excellent information on medical conditions and diseases. The National Library of Medicine's Medline database provides abstracts and indexing for about 4,600 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries. Covers the fields of medicine, nursing, psychiatry, medical education and health care planning and administration. Also available from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.
PAIS Index
Useful For: Disability-related social and public policy, disability issues in education, etc. PAIS International contains references to more than 460,000 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, Internet material, and more from 1972 to present. For citations to materials published 1915-1976, use PAIS Archive.
Project Muse
Full text of recent issues of over 240 journals from 40 scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literary studies, history, the visual & performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many other arts and humanities and social science disciplines.
PsycINFO
Useful For: Information related to psychological aspects of disability, developmental, communicative and mental disorders, attitudes about disabilities, etc. PsycINFO is the most comprehensive index in psychology and related fields, with more than 1.7 million citations and abstracts of articles, book chapters and books, technical reports, and dissertations. See also the Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection
Public Health
Useful for: All aspects of disabilities and health including policy. Journals, dissertations, trade publications, newspapers and reports.
SocIndex with Full Text
Useful For: Information related to sociological aspects of disability. The index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a sociology-specific thesaurus. Also contains abstracts for more than 620 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, in addition to information for 1,890 "priority" and "selective coverage" journals. Extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers, and other sources is included.