PubMed is the public access version to Medline, the premier database for biomedical literature. PubMedPlus is an enhanced version with links to full-text journals that the Penn Library subscribes to.

The JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic databases.

The site provides access to detailed information and title lists for major bibliographic and full text databases, and key service information for database and eBook content platforms.

Within the academic arena librarians, professors, and researchers alike, are often unaware of the rights they have to use or reproduce many copyrighted sources. Throughout time, technological advances, starting with the photocopier, have been blamed for the confusion over fair use and other legal copyright practices within the academic setting. This is because Copyright Law, though seemingly technologically neutral, does not account for advances in technology that are made between modifications of the law, which cannot change as often as people would like. Another culprit seems to be publications that, in an attempt to elucidate fair use in an understandable language, often convey the rights of academic persons to educational resources by listing what they cannot do, instead of what they can. This kind of language and approach has led many to shy away from the use of certain resources that could very well influence the effectiveness of their work, for fear that they will be sued. With the vastly increasing number of ways a computer and other technologies can be used, now, more than ever, it is crucial that students and educators become aware of their rights to the intellectual property that is so readily available to them. Though some laws have been set in place to protect the rights of publishers, printers, and authors in this respect, many of these issues must still be understood through the application of fair use principles. For this reason, my essay focuses on issues of fair use in the academic setting and the ways academic experiences can be negatively affected my common misinterpretations of it. I intend to show how such confusion over issues of fair use is disruptive and detrimental to scholarly pursuits, and argue for the incorporation of fair use education for all members of an academic setting.

This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article was written about the release of the "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education."  Ultimately it argues for the same thing that both I and the "Code" argue for, which is the importance of an understanding of how to use intellectual property within educational settings to their fullest extent without worrying that one will become liable for copyright infringement.  This article takes a different approach then some of my other resources by giving examples of educators and the media they have used to convey crucial messages about things such as health and gender relations to their students.  This article also includes some brief thoughts and opinions from these educators, including Renee Hobbs, professor of communication at Temple University who was personally involved with the development of the "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education," and one of the three principal investigators to help develop "The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy."  I believe the information in this article will add a level of agency to my own argument, not only because it will provide one with realistic examples of the ways in wich media can be used in the dissemination of important information via the academic setting, but because these examples come from the point of view of educators who understand, first hand, the importance knowing what media needs to be used to create an effective curriculum, and how many educators have reluctantly steered away from the use of effective media for fear of being sued.

In this text, Rice outlines the contractual and technological regulations that have been placed on the access of digital information.  His argument is that information is the "common fiber of science, arts, hostory, culture, and even self," and that the press to privatize control over acces to digital information "diminishes the luster of the late-twentieth-and early-twenty-first-century opening of the information society." 

Specifically Rice focuses on the implications of the privatization of control over things such cultural knowledge, including folklore, legends, and information on heritage, in cases where this information would not be legally accessible to members of the represented culture.  Rice argues that the importance of the information era is the access one has to learn about the things most intimately related to him as a person.

I find this essay useful because, though it targets the wrongfulness of privatized control from a deeply personal level, the underlying question of whether all information should be accessible to everyone is also present, because within the academic arena researchers develop relationships with information that may have no relevance to their cultural backgrounds but remains as personal to them as if it did.  This essay also asks its reader to think about the kind of information he would not want to be withheld from him.  Though the essay doesn't specifically get at the issue of confusion over copyright and fair use issues within an academic setting, it does provide an awareness of what information may be being withheld from researchers, and forces those researchers to consider the usefulness of this kind of information to there personal projects.  This kind of awareness goes hand in hand with the understanding of fair use and copyright that my thesis argues for because it emphasizes the importance of having an active and correct knowledge of fair use and copyright issues that affect university settings, in order to get the most out of ones education.

All databases for Urban Studies

This link presents the collection of electoronic resources at the Penn Library related to Philadelphia Studies.

CAB Abstracts
Formerly produced by Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux, this database comprises international coverage of veterinary medicine, agriculture, forestry and related bio-science fields, including: human health; human nutrition; animal health; and resource management and conservation. The database includes over 3 million records with 30% of the coverage relating to crop production, 24% in veterinary and human health, 13% in animal sciences, 13% in crop protection, and 19-20% of the content covering a wide array of other, related topics.
Holdings: 1910 to the present. Updated monthly.

PubMed is the public access version to Medline, the premier database for biomedical literature. PubMedPlus is an enhanced version with links to full-text journals that the Penn Library subscribes to.

Brief descriptions of over 1500 free bioinformatics databases and tools in immunology, genomics, and RNA.

From the Georgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Library & Information Services, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL), is a specialized collection of books, journals, newspaper articles, legal materials, regulations, codes, government publications, and other relevant documents concerned with issues in biomedical and professional ethics. The library holdings represent the world's largest collection related to ethical issues in medicine and biomedical research.

Here is a list of all article databases in Cinema Studies provided by the Penn Library.