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The Oxford English Dictionary, or OED as it's more popularly known, is a historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present day. It aims to show not only the current meanings of words, but also to trace their development through time. Entries contain detailed etymological analysis, and are illustrated by quotations from a wide range of English language sources from around the world, making the OED a unique historical record. Available in print and in electronic version.

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OSTI.GOV is the primary search tool for Department of Energy (DOE) science, technology, and engineering research and development information.

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Science Direct is the search engine for journals published by Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of peer-reviewed science, technical, and medical journals.

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Oxford Reference Online is the home of Oxford’s quality reference publishing, bringing together over 2 million entries, many of which are illustrated, into a single cross-searchable resource. The Hekman Library has purchased 60+ reference titles, and they span all subject areas, with strengths in the humanities.

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CMPI is an index of articles from Canadian music journals, newsletters and magazines provided by the Library and Archives Canada. The CMPI database indexes content dating from the late-19th century to the present day.

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Established by the American Geosciences Institute, GeoRef provides access to the most comprehensive geoscience literature of the world. It includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. Master's theses and doctoral dissertations from US and Canadian universities are included. Coverage for North American resources starts in 1669, and worldwide coverage in 1933.

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In many cases, MeLCat will replace InterLibrary Loan, especially for books held in Michigan libraries. InterLibrary Loan is still the preferred method of delivery for books held outside Michigan and for all journal article requests.

For help using MeLCat, try these links:

• MeLCat Help
• YouTube: MeLCat Tutorial

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If you do not have a user name and password for SciFinder, please go to this page!

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Oxford Music Online includes as its foundation the premiere music encyclopedia, Grove Music Online, as well as the Oxford Companion to Music and the Oxford Dictionary of Music. It offers extensive, peer-reviewed coverage and summary sources on different music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship; it is also searchable by topic, instrument, era, region, place type, and occupation.

Note: There is a sign-in limit of one simultaneous user. This means that if one person is signed in, a second user will have to wait in line until that person signs out and a log-in becomes available.

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Early American Imprints, Series I. Evans is a full-text collection of virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America from 1639-1800. It is a definitive resource for researching every aspect of 17th- and 18th-century America.

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Published by the Association of Christian Librarians, this database indexes journal articles and book reviews written from an evangelical Christian perspective or of interest to the evangelical community.

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Electronic Collections Online is a collection of peer-reviewed, full-text journal articles with images in a variety of subject areas including biology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, medicine, psychology, science and technology.

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Gale eBooks is a collection of authoritative ebooks, encyclopedias, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Individual titles may be searched by logging into the database and then narrowing to a specific title.

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Project MUSE offers full-text current and archival articles from 600+ scholarly journals from major university presses covering literature and criticism, history, performing arts, cultural studies, education, philosophy, political science, gender studies, and more. Updated continually.

Alumni Access

Alumni of the college and seminary have access to Project MUSE by logging in to their library account using their Alumni library card barcode. See the Guests and Alumni page for details.

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SciFinder is the interface to the database of chemistry literature, Chemical Abstracts. It provides full-text access to the world's most comprehensive and authoritative source of substances and reactions in chemistry and related sciences. In addition to the reference, substance, reaction and supplier content found in CAS SciFinder®, CAS SciFinder-n includes relevance-ranked results, step-by-step procedures and protocols, citation mapping, biosequence searching, retrosynthetic analysis, patent landscape mapping, touch-screen enabled structure drawing and much more—all accessible in a simple, easy-to-use interface.

You must be a Calvin student in order to use this database, and you will need to request registration from this page before using the site for the first time.

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CiteSeerX is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science. CiteSeerX aims to improve the dissemination of scientific literature and to provide improvements in functionality, usability, availability, cost, comprehensiveness, efficiency, and timeliness in the access of scientific and scholarly knowledge.

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Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages.

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PubChem is an open chemistry database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (“Open” means that you can put your scientific data in PubChem and others may use it). PubChem is a key chemical information resource for scientists, students, and the general public. Records are contributed by government agencies, chemical vendors, journal publishers, and more.

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Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals contains the table of contents for 45 British periodicals, many of which are not indexed elsewhere. Hekman Library owns this index on CD-ROM and in print. (See full annotation for further access information).

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Film Literature Index searches film and television periodicals, cover-to-cover, from most film-producing countries, and a selection of other periodicals for articles on film and television.

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ECCO provides access to the digital images of every page of thousands of books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching, it gives researchers access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, and science.

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SpringerLink is an integrated full-text database for journals and books published by Springer. Disciplines covered include: architecture & design, biomedical sciences, business & management, chemistry, earth sciences & geography, economics, education & language, engineering, environmental sciences, food science & nutrition, medicine, philosophy, physics, psychology, public health, and social sciences.

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IoPScience is an online service for journal content published by the Institute of Physics Publishing.

A number of short tutorials have been designed to help you search the database.

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Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819, is a definitive resource for teaching and researching the Early National Period in American History. This full-text digital collection contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America during the first two decades of the 19th century. Subjects covered range from history, literature and culture to politics, government and society.

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Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas.

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RIA Checkpoint is an important accounting resource, delivering comprehensive tax and accounting content from leading industry experts like RIA, WG&L, IBFD, EBIA and more. It also integrates content with additional tools.

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WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services. Updated daily, this database contains dissertations, theses, and other published materials cataloged around the world.

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MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information, produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM, United States). It contains millions of references to journal articles in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. It indexes literature published from 1966 to the present.

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United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) gives access to full-text copies of US patents since 1976.

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NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) is a cross-database search engine for multiple life science databases. Some of the subjects covered include: gene sequences, molecular structure, proteins, and nucleotides.

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Early Canadiana Online is a digital library of primary sources in Canadian history from the first European contact to the early 20th century. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of literature, women's history, travel and exploration, native studies and the history of French Canada.

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Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science and humanities.

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Oxford Art Online is the gateway to Oxford’s art reference works, including the peer-reviewed, regularly updated Grove Dictionary of Art and the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. It includes reference articles on topics that span ancient to contemporary art and architecture, and also provides thousands of images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures.

Note: There is a sign-in limit of one simultaneous user. This means that if one person is signed in, a second user will have to wait in line until that person signs out and a log-in becomes available.

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EDGAR: SEC Filings and Forms provides extensive and reliable full text information about companies required by law to file forms with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including financial performance, acquisitions, and major business initiatives.

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The RBL database, expanded weekly, contains thousands of published reviews. It is considered the most comprehensive review of monographic literature in the field of biblical and related studies. All reviews are available in full text.

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The Civil Engineering Database (CEDB) is designed to provide easy bibliographic access to all ASCE publications. The database covers all the journals, conference proceedings, books, standards, manuals, magazines, and newspapers. 

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