Databases of Interest to Physicists

INSPEC -- Comprehensive Physics Index (covers 1896-present) older years available in print in Physics Library as Physics Abstracts and Science Abstracts.

Compendex -- Comprehensive Engineering Index that also covers Applied Physics topics. (covers 1884-present) older years available in the Engineering Library as Engineering Abstracts

Web of Science(Science Citation Index) -- Trace the citation history of articles, especially articles that cite a given article (1900-present)

Web of Science Proceedings -- (Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings) Indexes about 10,000 sci-tech conferences a year, and gives users access to 1.9 million papers from conference literature published since 1990.

Applied Science and Technology Abstracts (be sure to select a database when you click this link) -- an index of undergraduate level science and technology articles (e.g., Scientific American level)

ADS (Astrophysical Data System) -- NASA funded abstract service covering Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Physics and Geophysics, and the Los Alamos Preprint Server.  Also provides full-text access to several Astronomy and Astrophysics journal articles (not the current issues though).

ARIBIB (Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts) -- Online equivalent to Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts and preceeding Astronomischer Jahresbericht, (1899-present, with gaps)

Current Contents -- Current awareness service covering many (but by no means all) physics journals. Typically contains more up-to-date information than INSPEC (up to three months), but only provides author, title, and journal name access to information.

MathSciNet -- Mathematical Reviews (1940-present) and Current Mathematical Publications.

WorldCat -- Most comprehensive library catalog in the world. If you cannot find what you need at Purdue, check here. If it is not there it (probably) does not exist.

Chem Abstracts Online -- (called SciFinder Scholar).

Preprint Servers -- Links to a selection of major preprint servers in physics.

Federal Research and Development Project Summaries -- U.S. Government Printing Office provides database of projects funded by the NSF, DoE, and NIH.