It’s our job to help you find the information you need, whether on the shelf or on the web. Online databases offer access to studies, citations, and scholarly articles from academic journals in nearly every field.
E-Resources
Interlibrary Loan
Subscription Databases
Free Academic Databases
Other Free Resources
Interlibrary Loan
Search for physical books, DVDs, electronic articles, and more from libraries all over the country and request them to be sent to Blackburn for you to borrow. Search for your desired item and then submit a request form. Use this resource to order full-text versions of any “abstract only” articles found in other databases or online.
Subscription Databases
Multidisciplinary Databases
Academic Search Complete offers an enormous collection of full-text journals, including peer-reviewed work in STEM research, the social sciences, and the humanities. Scholarly content covers a broad range of important areas of academic study, including anthropology, engineering, law, sciences and more. Content includes nearly 6,600 active full-text journals and magazines, nearly 6,000 active full-text peer-reviewed journals, more than 4,000 active full-text peer-reviewed journals with no embargo and nearly 4,000 active full-text journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus.
Multidisciplinary digital library containing academic articles, special collections, books, images, and primary resources.
Includes full text general reference magazines and publications covering business, health, education, general science and multicultural issues.
Multidisciplinary source of academic journals. You can limit results to items we have access to using the provided search filters.
Including over forty academic journal titles, this collection from the University of Illinois Press is a strong source of humanities and social sciences content. The collection covers a wide range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, Black studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, music, immigration, and more. Click “Browse Journals” to see what’s available.
Discipline Specific
Black Thought & Culture (Alexander Street Press)
Includes approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major African American leaders (teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures) covering 250 years of history. Contains letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts of over 1,000 authors.
This database provides full-text coverage of top business, management and economics journals and periodicals. Topics cover accounting, banking, finance, international business, marketing, sales and more. Content includes nearly 600 active full-text journals and magazines, more than 350 active full-text peer-reviewed journals, more than 180 active full-text peer-reviewed journals with no embargo, and more than 300 active full-text journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus.
Carli Digital Collections (Illinois History)
This collection is a repository for digital content created or purchased by participating Illinois libraries. It contains over 3 TB of data including images, print and manuscript materials, sound recordings, and maps. It allows patrons to seamlessly browse the digital collections of many different institutions at once.
Communication & Mass Media Complete
This collection offers full text and cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for journals covering communication, mass media, linguistics, rhetoric, language, logic, and other closely related fields.
This resource provides content covering all key areas of health and wellness, from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary and holistic medicine.
The Education Resources Information Center is an authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (of the U.S. Department of Education). ERIC contains records and links to hundreds of thousands of full-text documents including journal articles, books, conference papers, curriculum guides, dissertations and policy papers. Limit search results by education level (such as Early Childhood Education) or by intended audience (such as Counselors or Teachers).
This database provides full-text articles from a wide range of publications (from specialized to general interest periodicals) covering science-related questions, topics and subjects.
HarpWeek, 1857-1912 (Historical)
HarpWeek provides electronic access to Harper’s Weekly, the illustrated 19th century “Journal of Civilization” for a 56-year period: 1857-1912.
Health Source: Consumer Edition
This full-text database covers a wide variety of subjects, including specific diseases and general health topics. Subjects include fitness, nutrition, diabetes, aging, women’s health, children’s health and more. Additionally, it includes Clinical Reference Systems reports (in both English and Spanish) and MerriamWebster’s Medical Desk Dictionary.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition
Nursing and allied health topics include: pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more. This database offers full-text scholarly journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Many of the journals are peer-reviewed.
Mary Ann Liebert Journals (STEM)
Select Range of Science, Technology, Medicine, Engineering, and Biotechnology journals. You can limit results to items we have access to using the provided search filters.
MAS Ultra: School Edition (Education)
Includes full text access to top high-school magazines. Articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Also included are full-text biographies, primary source documents, reference books, and an image collection containing photos, maps, flags and color PDFs.
Military and Government Collection
Offers full text access to materials covering all branches of the military and government via periodicals, academic journals and related content.
Access practice test questions, flashcards, and study guides for various Illinois Licensure Testing System (ILTS) exams. Multiple specializations are covered. You can also access job searching tips and tutorial videos based on different Education subjects.
The New Play Exchange ® (NPX) is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers.
Cover-to-cover full text for hundreds of national (U.S.), international and regional newspapers. In addition, it offers complete television and radio news transcripts from CBS, CNN, FOX, NPR and more.
Nexis Uni (Business, Legal, News)
Formally LexisNexis Academic. Uni features more than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources. It includes U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.
Includes full-text of popular children’s magazines, encyclopedic entries for kids, and images. Topics include endangered species, famous musicians, fitness, space exploration, and more. All full-text articles are assigned reading level indicators (Lexiles).
Professional Development Collection (Educators)
Professional Development Collection is a highly specialized database of full-text electronic information especially for educators, professional librarians, and education researchers.
Includes full-text regional business publications for the United States and Canada. Key resources include newspapers, radio and television news transcripts, trade publications, magazines, and newswires.
This source covers the latest concepts, theories, and methods (both applied and theoretical) of the social sciences. This full-text database includes the most important English-language social science journals. Topics include addiction studies, ethics, public welfare, urban studies, and more.
Women and Social Movements, Scholar’s Edition (Alexander Street Press)
This source is organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. The collection currently includes 124 document projects and archives with more than 5,100 documents and 175,000 pages of additional full-text documents, written by 2,800 primary authors. It also includes book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools.
Academic eBook Collections
Includes eBooks accessible to Lumpkin through our EBSCO subscription.
Oxford University Press eBooks
General reference academic eBooks.
General reference academic eBooks.
Mostly medical reference academic eBooks.
General reference academic eBooks.
Free Academic Databases
Multidisciplinary Databases
Multidisciplinary collection of open-access scholarly resources. The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.
Digital Commons Network: Dissertations and Thesis
Open access dissertations and thesis provided by the Digital Commons Network.
Directory of Open Access Journals
Multidisciplinary source of free and open-access academic journals.
Access to many full-text academic journal articles, author bio pages, and journal abstracts.
ProQuest: Dissertations and Thesis
Open access dissertations and thesis.
Scholars upload their work to the public here for free. You may find the full-text version of the article you are looking for. Create an account to connect with authors and request articles that are not yet available.
Federally funded scientific data for the STEM fields.
Discipline Specific Databases
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
This website is focused on Black Freedom, featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. Our intention is to support a wide range of students (see examples for using in teaching and learning), as well independent researchers and anyone interested in learning more about the foundation of ongoing racial injustice in the U.S. – and the fights against it. By centering on the experiences and perspectives of African Americans, we hope this collection imbues the study of Black history with a deeper understanding of the humanity of people who have pursued the quest for freedom, and the significance of movements like Black Lives Matter.
Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive information for historical and current publications as well as direct links to the full document, when available. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general keywords, or click on “Advanced Search” for more options.
PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science)
Peer reviewed and open access journal articles covering the science, technology, and research methodologies.
Life sciences & biomedical academic sources. This source is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. It is hosted by the U.S. National Institute of Health, and their National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
Other Free Resources
Catalog of over 40 million scanned books. Public domain items are freely accessible.
Free digital library including videos, audio recordings, photographs, maps, and more. This is a great
source of primary sources.
Trusted source for data like polls, surveys, etc. used to track social issues & demographic trends.
Citation style guides, examples, and templates (MLA, APA, Chicago). Includes examples of in-text
citations and work-cited lists with instruction on citing different formats.