Guides: Philosophy: Databases

Philosophy Databases

The following databases contain books, articles, and abstracts related to philosophy.

English Philosophical Texts Online
English Philosophical Texts Online is part of a project at the University of Oxford. They aim to provide high-quality digital editions of a broad canon of English language philosophical works published in Britain between 1650 and 1830, to make them freely available in one place, and to provide intuitive software for performing sophisticated searches and computational analyses of these works.
Hume Texts Online
Hume Texts Online is a free and open access collection of works by the great Enlightenment thinker, David Hume, together with bibliographies and links to Hume scholarship on the web. The site includes every philosophical text that Hume published, in accurate editions that faithfully represent the original 18th century publications, but without neglecting the advantages of modern online texts.

Oxford Handbooks Online
Oxford Handbooks are a series of books covering Classical Studies, Law, Music, Philosophy, Political Science and Religion which provide students with authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area. They offer a critical examination of the progress and direction of debates as well as a foundation for study and research.
Each Oxford Handbook offers an authoritative and state-of-the-art survey of current thinking and research. Specially commissioned essays from leading international figures in the discipline give critical examination of the progress and direction of debates, providing scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives.
From economics and politics to literature and philosophy, you can discover more than 1,000 Oxford Handbooks on a wide range of subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and law. With new books and articles published online every month, you can be certain that you are accessing the most current information you need for your research.
Watch the video for a demo of Oxford Handbooks Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Access to a selection of high quality, fully cross-searchable full-text monographs from the subject areas of Classical Studies, Law, Philosophy and Political Science.
Philosophers Index
Philosophers Index provides access to the full text of over 220 academic journals in philosophy, covering all major fields of philosophy, and including more than 500,000 indexed records.

Other Useful Databases

Research databases contain abstracts, journal articles and conference papers on specific subjects. They should be used for searching around a topic and for when you need to conduct a more focussed search than the Library Search provides. The key databases for research in Philosophy and other humanities subjects are listed below.

Academic Search Complete
Multi-disciplinary journals, reports and proceedings.
Cambridge Journals Online
Abstracts and some full-text scholarly articles from Cambridge University Press on the humanities, social sciences and STEM displines. Includes the Digital Journals Archive.
JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
A not–for–profit organization dedicated to helping the scholarly community discover, use, and build upon a wide range of intellectual content in a trusted digital archive.
Searching on JSTOR is different from other search engines such as Google because of the scholarly content and focus on research that we make available. To get started with searching on JSTOR watch this quick getting started video:
Admin: reviewed 16/07/2024
Literature Online (LION)
Contains works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies, criticism and reference resources.
Project MUSE Premium Collection
Project Muse provides full-text, high quality articles for the humanities and social sciences from over 120 publishers
Taylor & Francis Online
Access to journal articles and e-books for the academic, professional and business communities.
Please be aware that we do not have access to all volumes of every title in this collection. Full text coverage varies by title due to publisher restrictions.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Online collection of biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past, from the fourth century BC to the year 2001. Includes portraits, photographs and illustrations.
Humanities International Complete
Access journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities.
- Database help guide

Dissertation Databases

The library subscribes to a number of PhD and MA dissertation databases which you may find useful when writing your own dissertation or exploring a subject in depth.

EThOS This link opens in a new window
Searchable index of UK theses with full text available to order.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations This link opens in a new window
Information and a searchable index of international electronic theses and dissertations, including some open-access titles.
Open Dissertations This link opens in a new window
Search and view open access theses and dissertations.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (incl. UK & Ireland) This link opens in a new window
The most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day and offering full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. It contains a significant amount of new international dissertations and theses both in citations and in full text.

If you wish to access full text theses, please make sure the "Full text" option is ticked under the search bar.