Databases

Art & Architecture Source is a comprehensive research database from EBSCO providing access to 448 active full-text art journals and magazines, and a collection of more than 14,000 indexed art dissertations and more than 552,000 indexed art reproductions.

It covers a wide range of subjects, including advertising art, antiques, archaeology, architecture and architectural history, art history, ceramics, contemporary art, costume design, crafts, decorative arts, drawing, fiber art, folk art, graphic arts, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, museology, non-Western art, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video art.

The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals offers extensive coverage of both scholarly and popular literature related to architecture. Its global reach includes major series from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia, as well as publications from professional associations and regional journals in the United States.

The index features articles from leading publications such as C3 Korea, Domus, Dwell, and El Croquis, alongside architectural content drawn from art and planning journals like Burlington Magazine and Urban Land.

Subject areas covered include architecture, city planning (from the 1930s to the present), conservation and restoration, interior design, museums, and sustainable design. Subject areas covered include architecture, city planning (from the 1930s to the present), conservation and restoration, interior design, museums, and sustainable design.

Engineering Village (EV) AI is an intelligent, generative AI tool integrated directly into the Engineering Village platform. Built in collaboration with the engineering community and powered by the trusted Compendex database, it transforms research workflows. EV AI helps students and professionals move beyond simple searches to efficiently navigate complex, interdisciplinary content, explore unfamiliar topics, and synthesize verified insights. With features like "go deeper" prompts, targeted summaries, and trend analysis, it accelerates the journey from discovery to actionable understanding.

Engineering Village (EV) Compendex is an engineering-focused database where researchers can access interdisciplinary scholarly and technical literature, including journals, conference proceedings, dissertations, standards, books, and recently preprints. Content for Compendex comes from thousands of publishers worldwide, including major engineering societies such as IEEE, ASME, SAE, and ACM. It offers a unified research perspective across 190 engineering disciplines.

Engineering Village (EV) Patents Plus offers expanded coverage of over 120 million patents from patent authorities including United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), European Patent Office (EPO), Japanese Patent Office (JPO), China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO), German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). The database comprises both patent applications and granted patents, with search functionalities across US, CPC, and IPC classifications.

Gale’s The English-Language Press in China, 1827–1974 is a digital archive that brings together those newspapers and periodicals from 1820s to the 1970s. This digitized archive represents an invaluable resource for scholars engaged in research and teaching on British colonialism and semi-colonialism in China, the history of treaty ports, modern Chinese history and international relations, as well as the development of English-language journalism in China.

IET Inspec Direct is a premier scientific and technical database, serving as an essential resource for subject-specific and interdisciplinary research across the global fields of physics, engineering, electronics, and computer science. It provided researchers, engineers, and information professionals with unparalleled access to a meticulously curated collection of literature.

The database’s core strength lies in its deep, expert-indexed coverage of four key disciplines:

• Physics
• Electrical Engineering & Electronics
• Computers, Control & Information Technology
• Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing Engineering

Containing over 27 million records and growing, Inspec remains a definitive tool for discovering the world’s leading research, from seminal historical works to the latest innovations.

IET.tv is the online video platform of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), offering a wide range of multidisciplinary engineering and technology content. It serves as a crucial resource for academics, professionals, and students.

The platform features 8,500+ subtitled videos and 8,500+ videos with full transcripts. It covers key sectors, including Communications, IT, Manufacturing, Control and Automation, Power, Transport, Electronics, Management, and Healthcare Technology.

Content includes university seminars, unique teaching materials, expert interviews, and keynote presentations on advanced topics. It also provides professional development resources for continuing education, recordings from major IET and external events, as well as bite-sized news and demonstrations.

Inspec Analytics is a dynamic research intelligence tool based on the Inspec database to help research professionals explore beyond the literature in Inspec to uncover global trends in physics, engineering, and technology research. Additional collaboration features and citation data in Inspec Analytics Plus enable users to deepen insights into the impact of global research with citation metrics.

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global offers a truly international perspective on academic research, providing access to over six million records, including four million full-text documents. From North America and Europe to Asia and beyond, it delivers a comprehensive view of the global scholarly landscape.

Note: The Library has subscribed to the subset A: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection (A&I) and subset B: The Sciences and Engineering Collection (Full text). The subset A: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection (Full text) is currently under trial.

ProQuest One Applied & Life Sciences offers a comprehensive collection of full-text resources, including scholarly journals, technical reports and government publications, spans subjects such as biological sciences, engineering, materials science, AI & computer science, animal science, biotechnology, chemistry mathematics, and robotics. This database comprises approximately 4,900 scholarly journals, 140,000 dissertations, 1,500 trade journals & magazines, 300,000 reports, 200,000 conference papers, and 2.7 million preprints.

ProQuest One Business supports students and researchers in building the research skills through a unique business-specific interface. It centralizes authoritative, multi-format content, including scholarly journals, market & industry reports, analyst report, business news, books, videos, and case studies. It also includes unique discipline features such as Topic Pages for 4k global companies and 119 NAICS codes, and business-specific thesauri.

This database includes approximately 2,900 full-text scholarly journals, 21,000 videos, 29,000 books, 130 news sources, 30,000 case studies & business cases, thousands of reports, 2,500 magazines & trade journals, and 55,000 dissertations. These resources cover essential topics, including Accounting and Tax, Banking, Business Law, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Human Resources, Management, and Marketing.

ProQuest One Health & Nursing is a comprehensive digital resource tailored for the academic and professional healthcare community. It brings together global scholarly literature, authoritative clinical references, and practical training materials within a single, integrated platform. The resource empowers students, educators, researchers, and practitioners to investigate emerging topics, conduct rigorous research, and seamlessly connect theoretical knowledge with clinical practice.

It offers multi-format contents with below highlights:

1. Scholarly Journals: 2,900 journals including 1,700 in active full text
2. Nursing Skills Videos: A growing collection of regularly updated demonstration and training videos
3. Comprehensive Source for Grey Literature: Reports, preprints, and other types of non-traditional research for more in-depth literature reviews
4. 700 Trade Journals & Magazines: Covering the latest news from all areas in the discipline
5. 65k Dissertations & Theses

ProQuest One Psychology is a comprehensive resource designed for teaching, learning, and research in psychology. Its specialised interface provides authoritative content, including scholarly journals, therapy videos, and eBooks, while seamlessly integrating with APA databases and organising resources via curated topic pages.

This database includes 1,100 full-text scholarly journals, 2,500 videos, 1,100 counselling session transcripts, 5,000 books, 1,100 archival materials, 70,000 dissertations, and 1 million selected articles, covering core topics such as Anxiety, Cognition Counselling, Depression, Historical Experiments, Personality, Research Concepts, Tests and Measures, and Therapeutic Approaches.

ProQuest One Social Sciences provides researchers worldwide with access to high-quality titles across regions, markets, and disciplines. The collection includes journals from top publishers such as Springer Nature, Cambridge University Press and Emerald, alongside a wide range of specialist full-text publications such as dissertations, trade publications, and grey literature. Coverage spans key subject areas including anthropology, criminology, economics, international relations, library science, linguistics, political science, public policy, social work, and sociology. The solution also integrates ProQuest’s renowned abstracting and indexing databases, including Sociological Abstracts with full-text content, valued for their reliability and authority in social sciences research. The discipline-specific thesauri also enable precision searching to support literature reviews and systematic research. With more than 7,300 indexed titles and over 22.5 million records, the database supports comprehensive exploration of the social sciences.

ProQuest One Sustainability offers a comprehensive, transdisciplinary research experience structured around essential frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the three pillars of sustainability, and the core competencies of sustainability. Created in collaboration with curriculum experts, faculty, students, continuing education learners, and librarians, this resource brings together the world’s largest and most diverse collection of sustainability-focused materials. Its content spans scholarly journals, case studies, reports, trade publications, magazines, ebooks, and more. All delivered through an interface designed specifically to support sustainability research and learning.

It offers multi-format contents with below highlights:

1. Scholarly Journals: The latest research from 1,500+ scholarly journals in ongoing full-text, including Nature Sustainability.
2. Selected Articles: Thousands of articles on sustainability from various disciplines such as politics, business, and current affairs.
3. Books: A curated collection of 7,500 ebooks from publishers such as Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Emerald.
4. Essential A&I Databases: Including AGRICOLA, Aquatic Science & Fisheries Abstracts, and Meteorological and Geoastrophysical Abstracts.
5. Case studies: 40,000 case studies to illustrate theory and promote classroom discussion, featuring CABI Cases.
6. Over 37,000 dissertations.

ProQuest One Visual Arts & Design is a resource offering a wide-ranging selection of contents in art, design, architecture, and fashion. It consolidates rare materials, leading magazine backfiles, key scholarly journals, documentary videos, and specialist indexes into a single platform. Key themes and topics include Architectural History, Art History, Arts Business/Marketing, Culture & Society, Fashion, Textiles & Dress, Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Photography, and Visual Arts. The database contains over 700 key publications and more than 11.5 million full-text items, with a time span from 1860 to the present.

Sage Campus offers a comprehensive suite of self-paced courses focused on critical academic and professional skills, covering essential topics from information navigation and research methods to data literacy and data science, all enriched with interactive content and formative assessments to support learners at every stage of their academic journey.

Remark: To get started, please create a personal account and sign up for the course you are interested in.

Sage Catalyst is a digital collection of e-textbooks in the social sciences. Subjects include Business, Psychology, Sociology, Media, Nursing, Education, and Research Methods. It offers unlimited online and offline access through dedicated platforms, featuring key functionalities such as text-to-speech 'Read Aloud' capability.

Remark: To access, please create a bookshelf account using your PolyU email address if you do not have one.

Sage Research Methods: Data and Research Literacy is an online platform designed to foster research and data literacy. It provides books, videos, and practical tools to support researchers through each phase of a project, from initial design and ethical review to data analysis and the dissemination of findings. The resource covers core concepts and detailed methodologies spanning qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research across the social, behavioural, and health sciences.

Key features include in-depth video interviews with practicing researchers, step-by-step instructional guides, real-world case studies, and practice datasets. By providing these resources and real-life examples, Sage Research Methods helps students and researchers build the skills necessary to conduct their research papers.