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Databases
This list contains details of electronic databases available to Oxford Brookes staff and students on the web. Databases allow you to search for references for journal articles and other publications and sources in your subject area. Some databases provide an indexing service only, some also provide abstracts (summaries) and others are full text. For more information on using these services see the How to search catalogues and databases page. The Library also provides direct access to many full text electronic journals.
Note:Databases are usually available on and off-campus. Most will prompt you to log in with your Brookes ID and password. The Library Electronic Resources pages provide details of passwords for resources not covered by this.
ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation)
Circulation and distribution data for media such as newspapers and magazines, across the range of formats, in the UK and Ireland. Gives access to published ABC certificates for individual titles as well as a range of sector based reports. Our subscription also provides access to the Report Archive and historical data for individual titles, both go back to 2000.
Bookseller.com
Access to latest news, features, blogs, rights news, bestseller charts, profiles and blogs. First-time users will need to register in order to receive a password. Online full-text access to the Bookseller magazine is available via Business source complete for 2002 - 2011.
Communication & Mass Media Complete
Provides full text links to more than 200 journals and indexes many more. Particularly good for journalism and advertising.
Nielsen BookScan
Sales statistics for the UK consumer book market.
PA Export Toolkit
A resource for publishers on the business of exporting. Includes Country Profiles, information on Book Fairs, and Resources and Insights. Continually updated.
Publishers Weekly Digital Archive
A trade publication for the US publishing industry. Includes industry news and book reviews as well as coverage of the British book trade. Digitised content from 1872 to 2021.
Business Source Complete
Management, economics, finance, accounting and business. Over 2000 full text journals, including The Bookseller and Publishers Weekly, plus abstracts only from over 540 journals. Also includes books, industry reports, country reports and company profiles.
Factiva
An international news database of national and regional newspapers and trade and professional journals from 152 countries and in 22 languages. Companies/Markets section includes company profiles and share data.
Fame
UK company accounts. Covers material from the last 10 years.
Mintel
Market research, retail intelligence, leisure intelligence.
Orbis
Accounts and financial details for over 114 million companies worldwide.
Passport
Passport contains international country, consumer lifestyles, economic and market research reports from Euromonitor International.
WARC
A database from the World Advertising Research Center, it covers journals, news, case studies and data on advertising and marketing.
Lexis+
This legal database gives full-text access to UK national and regional newspapers including the Guardian, Independent,Times and Daily Telegraph. Click on Contents underneath the search box on the homepage, and choose Newspapers.
British Periodicals
Hundreds of full text periodicals from the late 17th century to the early 20th century. Covers a wide range of subjects and types of periodical.
Burney Collection
17th-18th century newspaper collection. Includes newspapers and news pamphlets published in England, Ireland and Scotland together with a selection of titles from British colonies in the Americas and Asia.
The John Johnson Collection
Includes facsimile images of posters, handbills, pamphlets and broadsides from 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Coverage includes the booktrade and popular entertainment.
Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers
Access to the full text of a wide variety of national and regional British newspapers from the 19th century.
Nineteenth century UK periodicals, series 1
Access to digital editions of nearly 100 periodicals, including many full runs, published between 1800 and 1900. Series 1 relates to new readerships and covers titles aimed at women and children as well as topics such as sport and leisure, humour and satire. The associated Topic Guide includes a chronology and useful essays on the relevant readership groups and subject themes.
The Guardian and The Observer (1791-2003)
The complete digital edition of both newspapers, 1791-2003, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations.
Times Digital Archive
The complete digital edition of The Times newspaper, 1785-2019, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations
Vogue archive
Access to the complete run of US Vogue from 1892 to the most recent edition. Contains over 400,000 pages produced as high resolution full colour images. Searchable by, for example, designer, model, photographer, collection, garment or brand.
Academic Search Complete
A multi-disciplinary database offering full text access to more than 5,300 scholarly publications, including more than 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. Includes abstracts to more than 4,000 additional periodicals, plus some books, reports and conference proceedings.
British Standards Online
This includes access to the full text of all current British Standards.
Early English books online
Digital facsimile page images of virtually every book published in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works printed elsewhere in English from 1473 - 1700. This amounts to 97,905 works in their entirety with bibliographic records for a further 8,500.
Eighteenth century collections online
Digital images of nearly 200,000 books published in the eighteenth century.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
An illustrated collection of articles providing the life stories of over 50,000 people who have shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to those who died in recent years. Includes writers, publishers, editors and booksellers.
Sociological Abstracts
Covers a broad range of subjects including sociology, political theory, social anthropology. Covers material published since 1952. Also includes cited references for all journal articles indexed on the database since 2002.
UK data archive
The largest collection of digital data in the social sciences in the UK. Also houses a major collection of computerised historical material.
E-journals
A range of journals relevant to Publishing are available online. Use the Journal titles tab from the Library homepage to search for a specific journal. Alternatively, you can browse an alphabetical list.
If you are looking for journal articles on a specific topic the best place to start is by using an electronic database. See the Databases section above for more information.
E-books
EBooks Central : a collection of academic e-books for a range of subjects, many business books are to be found here. Individual titles appear on LibrarySearch. You will need your Brookes login for on and off-campus access.
O'Reilly Safari Learning Platform : this is a collection of e-books, videos, tutorials (Learning Paths) and Case Studies on various aspects of information technology. The selection includes computer science, desktop publishing, digital media, e-commerce, programming, IT management and business applications. O'Reilly titles can also be found via LibrarySearch. O'Reilly is available on- and off-campus.
Open Access e-books : are growing in availability. See, for example, the Open Research Library or this list on Project Muse.
Go to the Library's Ebooks page for more information.
Internet sites
Journal Sites
- The Bookseller.com : access to latest news, features, blogs, rights news, bestseller charts, profiles and blogs. First-time users will need to register in order to receive a password. Online full-text access to the Bookseller magazine is available via Business source complete from 2002 - 2011
- InPublishing : a bi-monthly magazine (formerly known as InCirculation) for UK magazine, newspaper and online publishers covering marketing, circulation and distribution. The Knowledge Bank is searchable and freely available, it contains articles on all aspects of the business. The home site also has podcasts, an events diary and job vacancies
- Publishers Weekly : access to breaking news
- The Journal of Publishing Culture : an open access journal written and produced by postgraduate students at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University
- Alliance of Radical Booksellers
- Association of Authors' Agents
- Book Marketing Society
- Booksellers Association
- ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers)
- European and International Booksellers Federation
- International Publishers Association
- National Literacy Trust
- OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)
- OPUS (Oxford Publishing Society)
- Professional Publishers Association : represents the interests of the magazine publishing industry
- The Publishers Association : a representative body for book and journal publishers in the UK
- Publishers Publicity Circle.
- SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing)
- Society of Authors
- Society for Scholarly Publishing
- SYP (Society of Young Publishers)
- Translators Association
- UK Association for Online Publishing (AOP)
- John Murray Archive : held at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Online gallery of items from the Archive including letters from Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott
- Records of British Publishing and Printing at Reading University : details of the special collection of publishers' records at Reading University. The records comprise correspondence, file copies of books and other publications, drawings and designs, stock catalogues, agreements with authors, leases, deeds and other papers from many of the leading publishing firm
Magazine and journal publishing
- Content Marketing Association (CMA) : professional body representing publishing and content marketing agencies in the UK. Some free content including case studies and research news.
- European Publishers Council (EPC) : made up of senior representatives from European media corporations. Their remit is to monitor and react to proposals for EU legislation or regulation that affect the media industry. Position papers and fact sheets are freely available
- FIPP : worldwide magazine media association. Lots of freely available content
- MagazineArt.org : a database of magazine covers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
- Magforum : all kinds of information about UK magazine publishing. Includes listings of publishers and publications and sector analysis and profiles
- PAMCo: The Publishers Audience Measurement Company : oversees audience measurement for the published media industry. It replaced the National Readership Survey (NRS) and is able to measure audiences of print and digital, across all platforms. Topline data is available on the website. More detailed data can be found via BRAD.
- Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media : research into the U.S. news media industry.
- Professional Publishers Association : represents the interests of the consumer, business and professional magazine publishing industry
- Science in the 19th Century Periodical: useful for the profiles of 16 periodicals, including The Boy's Own Paper and the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. The profiles include circulation figures where these exist
- UK Serials Group (UKSG) : international body for those involved in the publication, provision and management of print and electronic scholarly journals
Other sites you might find interesting...
- BookTrust : the UK's largest children's reading charity
- British Book Design and Production Awards
- British Council: Literature
- Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh
- English Pen
- Europeana : explore 53,182,462 artworks, artefacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe
- Google Book Search : Google's mission is to make offline information available online. In partnership with five libraries world-wide and with publishers it is in the process of digitising book content. Go to the site for more information or to search content currently available
- Gutenberg Digital: the complete Gottingen Gutenberg Bible freely available on-line. A wonderful resource for students of book history and design
- Internet Library: Open Access Text Archive : a non-profit organisation offering free access to historical collections that exist in digital format
- Monday Note :An online newsletter giving the European perspective on media, technology and business models. Subscription free
- Open Research Library : a single access point to open access books. Good for the arts and humanities, books are from a range of publishers. Curated by Knowledge Unlatched. This is the beta version.
- Oxford International Centre for Publishing : the Publishing Centre's own web pages including news and details of seminars, work experience opportunities and job vacancies.
- Penguin Archive: held at the University of Bristol
- Project Gutenberg : this is a collection of over 10,000 free electronic books, most of which are older literary works
- Publishing in Africa : the Web site for Oxford Brookes University Library's Special Collection on Publishing in Africa. The site provides links to other related websites around the world
- Publishing Perspectives : an online journal of international publishing news and opinion. Sign up for a free subscription to the daily email version
Company Information
Annual reports and accounts
A number of annual reports of UK publishing companies are available at Headington and can be found in filing cabinets against the wall in Zone D on Level 2.
Many annual reports are also available over the Internet.
Industry survey
The most up-to-date sources of market, industry and company information are now to be found online, however, the following is a very useful print resources:
- PA publishing yearbook. 070.5021 UKB
Finding journal articles and online company information
- Business source complete : This database is a good source of publishing company information. It provides access to very useful and up-to-date Publishing Industry Profiles and Company Profiles as well over 2000 full text journals plus abstracts only from over 540 journals. Company Profiles consist of Marketline Reports, which contain a company overview and information about key products and services, subsidiaries and top competitors. To get a snapshot of a company and links to relevant articles in other sources such as academic journals, trade publications, newspapers and country reports search under the Company Information tab.
- Factiva : an international news database of national and regional newspapers and trade and professional journals from 152 countries and in 22 languages. It also provides share data and company and industry profiles, these can be found under the Companies/Markets tab.
- Fame : provides details of 150,000 UK companies with a turnover in excess of £700,000, or with profits over £50,000. Addresses, telephone numbers, activities, directors, parent and subsidiary relationships, and approximately 150 accounting items, including ratios for the past five years are given. A variety of graphs may be produced from the accounting information. Searches may be made using any of the data above to produce mailing lists, or, more importantly to run a variety of industry analyses.
- Mintel : UK market research reports including market, retail and leisure intelligence reports. Date coverage varies but continually updated.
- Orbis : an international version of Fame providing company information for over 114 million of the world's top companies.
- Passport: UK and international market research reports, analytics, consumer, country and company profiles.
Publishing catalogues
The Library has a collection of print publishers' catalogues. These are useful when studying marketing, branding or design and also, in conjunction with other sources, in obtaining a picture of a company's activities. They are kept in a filing cabinet against the wall, to your right just inside the door, in Zone D on Level 2 of the Headington Library.
Many publishers now produce online catalogues as well as, or instead of, the print version. Wikipedia has a list of publishers.
Need help? Contact your librarian
Please get in touch if you have any queries about:
- finding information and resources for assignments
- finding online resources
- referencing your sources

Saffron Shore
Email sshore@brookes.ac.uk