Because of licensing restrictions, most of the online databases, articles, and ebooks linked on the Falvey website are available only to current VU students, staff, and faculty.
This page provides a list of database that are freely available to alumni, guests, and the general public, with no Villanova login required. All of the resources on this site were selected by Falvey librarians.
The resources listed below cover all subject areas. For subject-specific databases, consult the pages for Humanities, Social Sciences & Business, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).
Best place to start
- Google Scholar is a powerful, free search engine that indexes scholarly articles, books, theses, dissertations, pre-prints, reports, and patents across disciplines, time periods, and languages.
- Enter your search terms in the box to quickly find relevant items. If a version of the full text is freely available online, you'll see a link in the right-hand sidebar. If it's not available, you can place an interlibrary loan request at your local library.
- For more information on this useful resource and for search tips, visit Google Scholar's help pages.
Other sources of open/free journal articles
DOAJ (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. Browse by subject or search by keyword and limit by peer review process, country of publisher or copyright policy. Also allows searching of articles within open access journals.
Internet Archive Scholar Tutorial
Offers full text access to millions of research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. Covers all disciplines; includes older digitized content, recent Open Access material, and pre-prints and other materials from academic repositories.
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Browse by subject or search by keyword and limit by peer review process, country of publisher or copyright policy. Also allows searching of articles within open access journals.
Internet Archive Scholar Tutorial
Offers full text access to millions of research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. Covers all disciplines; includes older digitized content, recent Open Access material, and pre-prints and other materials from academic repositories.
Is this book in my library?
WorldCat.org
WorldCat.org is a combined catalog of content in thousands of library collections worldwide. Includes listings for books, videos, serials, digital images, music scores, films, and many other formats. Enter your zip code to see a list of libraries near you that hold the item.
WorldCat.org is a combined catalog of content in thousands of library collections worldwide. Includes listings for books, videos, serials, digital images, music scores, films, and many other formats. Enter your zip code to see a list of libraries near you that hold the item.
Sources for Open/Free Full-text Books
Project Gutenberg
Provides full text ebooks on all subjects, including many classics, for which U.S. copyright has expired.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Provides full text access to digital copies of books, pamphlets, and journals available in the public domain. Most of the freely available texts are pre-1923 imprints and government documents. Also allows full-text searching of millions of publications that are still under copyright in order to aid discovery of relevant materials. The Hathi Trust collection largely mirrors content available through Google Books, but only the latter platform permits the exports of public domain content.
Google Books
Search the full text of digitized books contributed by libraries and publishers. View either brief excerpts, bibliographic information or if not protected by copyright the full text.
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
Index of open access books of all kinds
JSTOR - Open and Free Content
Offers full-text scholarly ebooks, book chapters, and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines. All content is freely available to all: either the material was published with an Open Access license, or is out of copyright (published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere).
Provides full text ebooks on all subjects, including many classics, for which U.S. copyright has expired.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Provides full text access to digital copies of books, pamphlets, and journals available in the public domain. Most of the freely available texts are pre-1923 imprints and government documents. Also allows full-text searching of millions of publications that are still under copyright in order to aid discovery of relevant materials. The Hathi Trust collection largely mirrors content available through Google Books, but only the latter platform permits the exports of public domain content.
Google Books
Search the full text of digitized books contributed by libraries and publishers. View either brief excerpts, bibliographic information or if not protected by copyright the full text.
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
Index of open access books of all kinds
JSTOR - Open and Free Content
Offers full-text scholarly ebooks, book chapters, and journal articles in a wide variety of disciplines. All content is freely available to all: either the material was published with an Open Access license, or is out of copyright (published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere).