Search Tools
See also Subject Research Guides.
OBIS Catalog
OBIS provides access to print and digital books, databases, audiovisual materials, journals, and course reserves. It is the best place to look up books, recordings, journals, and films by title to determine if you can access an item through Oberlin. To see if Oberlin has access to an individual article, use the journal list. OBIS makes it easier to search by subject heading than Summon does, but it does not index the full-text of any books.
In addition to books available at Oberlin through OBIS, patrons also have access to collections from a number of public, university, and college libraries in the state of Ohio through Oberlin College’s partnership with the OhioLink consortium and SearchOhio.
The online library catalog of all print and electronic materials held by the Oberlin College Libraries.
PubMed
Comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. Best bet: neuroscience
Public access to MEDLINE, plus 40+ specialized databases for biochemistry, proteins, genomics, nucleotides, the NLM catalog, and more.
CAS SciFinder-n
Comprehensive first choice for chemical literature searching from Chemical Abstracts Service. Draw and search by chemical structure, formula, name, registry number, other compound attributes.
- Access requires an individual registration, from an Oberlin IP address and using your oberlin.edu account. Register here.
- In addition to creating a personal account, you must access SciFinder-n from oncampus or via the Virtual Private Network (VPN) or library proxy server. More about off-campus access.
Search Tips from SciFinder-n, Training tutorials and Recorded Webinars for in-depth training
Databases Covered
CAS References -- Scholarly literature from 1907 to the present plus selected pre-1907 references. Sources include journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, technical reports, books, and more. Was published in print as Chemical Abstracts.
CAS Data
Including chemical substances, reactions, patents, commercial sources, and formulations. Details here.
MEDLINE
Biomedical literature from more than 4,780 journals and 70 countries, covering literature from 1950 to the present. Other MEDLINE options: EbscoHost, PubMed.
Merges Chemical Abstracts, CAS Registry chemical compound data, CAS reactions, patents, and commercial sources, and Medline. Access requires individual registration, first time users click the help icon for registration information.
Web of Science
Major interdisciplinary resource. Scholarly literature in the sciences, health and medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities and proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions. Includes cited reference searching across many databases. Best bet: biology.
Combines these databases: Science Citation Index, Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index. Also: BIOSIS, Derwent Innovations Index, KCI-Korean Journal Database, MEDLINE, Russian Science Citation Database.
Major index of scholarly literature in the sciences, health and medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Includes cited reference searching.