LibGuides: English language and applied linguistics: E-resources

Key databases for finding journal articles

LLBA (Linguisitics and Language Behavior Abstracts) This link opens in a new window
Gives references for journal articles, monographs, recent books, technical reports, occasional papers, dissertations, and book reviews.
Gives references for journal articles, monographs, recent books, technical reports, occasional papers, dissertations, and book reviews.

Help and guidance
ProQuest LibGuide: LLBA
Education Research Complete [partial full-text] This link opens in a new window
Gives references, and some full-text access, to journals and books in education.
It provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full-text access to more than 1,200 journals and nearly 500 books and monographs.

Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing.

The dates available varies between journals – many are indexed and/or full-text back to 2000s, some back to 1990s.

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost Advanced Search Help
Viewing results in EBSCOhost
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
References to research documents, journal articles, and other materials covering education.
Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide
British Education Index This link opens in a new window
References to journal articles and theses relating to all aspects and fields of education from preschool to higher education.
Covers 1975-

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide

Other useful resources

The following databases cover a range of related subjects.

However, if you are looking for information on the use of language in a specific context, you should look at the list of E-resources relating to that subject. For instance, if you are looking for information relating to political language, you should look at the E-resources for politics too. Follow this link to view lists of e-resources for specific subjects

British Library Sounds [sound] This link opens in a new window
Over 50,000 sound recordings, includes accents and dialects.
You do not need to log in to listen to most recordings, but you will need to create an account with the British Library to download them or to access some restricted recordings.

You may use the sound recordings for teaching, learning and research - see below for more details of how you may use the content.

Access to over 50,000 sound recordings from the British Library Sound Archive. Covers:
- Accents and dialects
- Arts, literature, and performance
- Classical music
- Environment and nature
- Jazz and popular music
- Oral history
- Sound recording history
- World and traditional music

How you may use the content

Permitted:
- lecture presentations
- Blackboard
- student work
- segment recordings using audio editing tools

Not permitted:
- publicly available websites
- public display in University

Please note that some recordings are not available for download - for more information see the British Library Sounds - conditions of use.Help and guidance
British Library Sounds help page
Cambridge Histories [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 300 volumes published in the Cambridge Histories series since 1960, including the Cambridge history of the Romance languages and the Cambridge history of the English language.
Provides full-text access to over 300 volumes published in the Cambridge Histories series since 1960. Subjects range across the humanities and include:
- American history
- British history
- Economic history
- General history
- History of science
- Language and literature
- Literary studies
- Philosophy
- Political and social theory
- Regional history
- Theatre studies and performing arts
- Warfare

All titles are listed on the Library catalogue.
MEDLINE on PubMed This link opens in a new window
References to journal articles in the biomedical sciences. Covers 1950 to the present day. Includes 'In press' articles.
We also have access to PubMed on Web of Science from 1950 to the present day.

It gives references to journal articles in the biomedical sciences including: biotechnology and bioengineering; clinical medicine; drugs and toxicology; forensic medicine; health affairs; non-clinical aspects of health care; psychiatry. Covers 1950 to the present day.

Help and guidance
Help using PubMed
To save searches and set up alerts, you will need to use a third-party sign-in option, such as Facebook or Google. It is not possible to use your University login credentials for this purpose.
MLA (Modern Language Association International Bibliography) This link opens in a new window
References to publications covering literature, language, linguistics and folklore worldwide.
MLA (Modern Language Association International Bibliography) covers literature, language, linguistics and folklore worldwide.

Gives references to journal articles, monographs, working papers, conference proceedings, indexes and bibliographies, etc.

Covers 1884-. Hosted on the EBSCO platform.

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide
Oxford Handbooks Online [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Oxford Handbooks Online is a collection of review essays covering key issues and exploring major debates across different subject areas.
The University has purchased some titles in the following subjects:

-Archaeology
-Business & management
-Classical studies
-Criminology & criminal justice
-Economics & finance
-History
-Law
-Linguistics
-Literature
-Philosophy
-Political science
-Psychology

Individual titles are listed on the Library catalogue.

Help and guidance
Oxford Academic guides
Project MUSE [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Access to articles in over 500 journal titles in arts, humanities and social sciences. A list of specific language and linguistics titles on Project MUSE is available.
View a list of titles available on Project Muse (you will need to be on-campus or logged in via the off-campus link above to view this list).

Complements JSTOR by providing recent issues of many titles in that archive.

Help and guidance
Project MUSE video tutorials and search guides
PsycARTICLES [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Educational Publishing Foundation, and selected other related publishers.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Gives references to journal articles, books and chapters in psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including education, linguistics, medicine, and physiology. Includes links to full-text articles in PsycARTICLES.
Gives references to journal articles, books and book chapters.
ScienceDirect [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Access to articles in journals published by Elsevier from 1995 to the present, plus access to older articles in some subject areas. Also gives access to Elsevier e-books we have purchased.
Covering sciences, economic and social science, and some arts and humanities titles.

We also have access to older articles from 1896 onwards in the following subjects:

-agricultural and biological sciences
-economics, econometrics and finance
-environmental science
-social sciences

Help and guidance
ScienceDirect help
Sketch Engine This link opens in a new window
Sketch Engine (SkE) is a Corpus Query System incorporating word sketches, one-page, automatic, corpus-derived summary of a word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour.
To create your own corpus:

1. Click on the 'Log in' option
2. Click on the link to 'Authenticate using a single sign-on (SSO) service'
3. Search for 'University of Reading' and 'continue'
4. Login with your University username and password
5. You will then see the 'Create corpus' option in the menu on the left

Help and guidance
Guides to using Sketch Engine
Cochrane Library [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Systematic reviews, protocols and trials on the effects of interventions in health care.

Free to UK residents
Includes:

-The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Cochrane Reviews)
-The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
-The Cochrane Database of Methodology Reviews (Methodology Reviews)

Help and guidance
You can find training materials and videos by registering with the Cochrane Library Training Hub (requires an e-mail address).
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use to search across a number of databases covering a range of subject areas. Provides references to journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, research data and other materials.

To search the whole of Web of Science, select all databases from the drop down menu.
Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts)
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal
WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Essentially a vast Library catalogue. Gives references to books, theses, and other published materials in all subjects.
Covers ca.1000 BC to the present.

Corpora

The following corpora are freely-available online.

British National Corpus
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English, both spoken and written, from the late twentieth century.
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is a large, genre-balanced corpus of American English. The corpus contains more than one billion words of text (25+ million words each year 1990-2019) from eight genres: spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, academic texts, and TV and Movies subtitles, blogs, and other web pages.
The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)
The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) is a structured corpus of historical English and contains more than 475 million words of text from the 1820s-2010s.

Accessing online Library resources

If you are on campus you will be able to access most e-journals and e-books, and some databases, without entering a username and password because your IP address identifies you as being at the University of Reading.

For any that require a login, see the Off-campus tab.

Terms of Use

When you use our e-resources you are agreeing to our Terms of Use. Please take a moment to look at these by following the link below:

Terms and conditions of use for Library e-resources

When you are off-campus you will need to login to identify yourself as a member of the University of Reading to gain access to our protected databases, e-books and e-journals.

Your login details

You login in the same way as for Blackboard - via Microsoft. Just enter your University username followed by @student.reading.ac.uk (e.g. ab123456@student.reading.ac.uk) and your password. If this is the first time you have logged in via this method when off-campus you will be asked to complete a Multi-Factor Authentication. For more information see:

Find out more about multi-factor authentication

Getting to the login page...

For most resources, if you follow a link from our website or catalogues your login will be picked up automatically or you will be prompted to login straightaway.
If you access resources via another route you will need to look for a login option once you reach the resource you are trying to access. Look for an institutional or shibboleth login option and pick 'University of Reading' from a list of institutions. This will then pick up your login or prompt you to login. For more information about institutional login, please see the link below:

Find out more about the Institutional login

Logging in to Library resources

Watch this short video on how you login to use Library resources.

Videos: doing your literature search

This playlist of two videos shows you how to prepare for and perform a literature search. The first video introduces literature searches and their role. The second video covers using the search operators AND and OR to create a search statement, and explains the role of wildcards and truncation in constructing a comprehensive search. This information is also available in written guides - see the links below.

Related guides

Literature searching
A guide to finding articles, books and other materials on your subject
Guide to searching databases

English language and applied linguistics: E-resources