Wellesley College Library subscribes to over 100 databases, most of which
are governed by strict licensing agreements limiting access to Wellesley
College students, faculty, and staff, with provisions for walk-in users.
For your convenience, here is a selection of scholarly electronic resources that are available free on the Web.
In addition, see the "Key Websites" listed in each of our Research
Guides by Subject pages for free resources
by discipline.
Your public library most likely provides access to a variety of electronic resources -- including some of the same ones to which we subscribe; find a public library near you.
If you are in Massachusetts, these regional library networks provide information about remote access to electronic resources:
Find books
- Digital Book Index
- Links to over 135,000 digitized books and texts from almost 2,000 publishers. Two-thirds of of the titles are available free in full-text; other titles are fee-based. Requires free registration.
Google Book- Search the full text of thousands of books, many of which have been scanned from the holdings of major libraries in the United States. Displays only excerpts of each book; use the "Find this book in a Library" link to locate a nearby copy.
National Academies Press- More than 3,000 free books online (in .html format) . Browse titles in the behavioral/social sciences, physical and life sciences, engineering, and more. About NAP
Project Gutenberg- Oldest producer of free electronic books (eBooks or eTexts) on the Internet.
Find articles
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Over 2700 free, full-text, quality-controlled, scientific and scholarly journals. About DOAJ
Google Scholar- Search engine that identifies scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, articles, and reports in all subject areas, linking to the full text, abstracts, and/or citations. About Google Scholar
OAIster- Search engine to identify freely available, academically-oriented digital
resources, from the University of Michigan Digital Library. About OAIster
espacenet- International gateway for patent information from North America, Europe, and selected other countries - "more than 60 million patents from 85 countries"
Scitopia.org- Free search portal with access to approximately three million scientific articles and occasional patents from scholarly societies in the physical, chemical, and engineering sciences.
American Chemical Society- articles from peer-reviewed journals in the chemical and related sciences
Geoscience e-Journals- articles from over 40 peer-reviewed, electronic earth science journals
Highwire Press- Free journal articles from prestigious scientific journals ; typical embargo period is 12 months; occasional exceptions.
Top 100 List: Health Web Sites You Can Trustfrom CAPHIS, Consumer and Patient Health Information Section of the Medical Libraries Association
Universal Library Project- Search engine of digitized academic materials, in a broad variety of subjects and languages, from Carnegie Mellon University. About
bnet- Free articles on business and other topics - specify free articles only in your search. About bnet
Find government information
- Government Documents at Wellesley College
Catalog of U.S. Government Publications: Advanced Search- Index to publications created by United States federal governmental agencies. Provides direct link to freely available [online] publications. Also identifies which U.S. federal depository library has received the item in question. 1994+ About
Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)- Indexes journal articles and publications related to education, published by the US Department of Education.
USA.gov- The official U.S. gateway to all government information.
GPO Access- U.S. government databases. Access to federal budgets, congressional bills and reports, the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, economic reports, the Public Papers of the Presidents, Supreme Court Decisions, the U.S. Code, etc.
PubMed- Indexes over 16 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. Includes biochemistry and related fields. Links to many sites providing free (and/or subscription-based) full-text articles.
Science.gov- Gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by twelve U.S. government agencies.
Wellesley College Library · Information Services · last modified: September 24, 2008