Business Library Resources for Ph.D Students: Finding Library Content

Below is a list of scholarly databases and collections that offer some form of API access, online tools to access data, or raw data downloads. (What's an API?)

arXiv API
API access to Cornell's open-access arXiv e-print repository, used primarily by physics, mathematics and computer science communities to share cutting-edge research.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) API Codex
Access data from the DPLA repostiory of cultural and scientific knowledge, including partner data from Harvard, NY Public Library, ARTstor, the David Rumsey Historical Map collection and more. Zipped json files of partner data and the entire repository are available for bulk download. 

• See also Harvard Library's bibliographic dataset of over 12 million MARC records.

Google Books Ngram Viewer datasets
The Google Books Ngram Viewer provides a frontend to explore word counts from the entire corpus of digitized Google books. Google also provides access to the thousands of raw datasets on which the Viewer operates.

JSTOR Data for Research
Not an API per se, but you can use DFR to select and interact with data and metadata from JSTOR's archive of scholarly journal literature (more than 7 million journal articles) and primary resources (26,000 19th Century British Pamphlets).

ORCID API
Query the ORCID researcher identifier system (including individual researchers, universities, national laboratories, commercial research organizations, research funders, publishers, national science agencies, data repositories, and international professional societies) to obtain researcher profile data.

Springer API Portal
Robust set of APIs for metadata, images and articles from this scientific publisher of books and journals, including close to 500 academic and professional society journals.

UN Comtrade Web Services
Access data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics database, including International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) and the work of the International Merchandise Trade Statistics Section (IMTSS) of the United Nations Statistics Division.

Web of Sciences Web Services
Query over 8,000 of the leading journals in the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, indexed by Web of Science to return limited article information including article title, authors, source data, and author supplied keywords. (UCB access)

Worldbank APIs
Three APIs to provide access to different datasets: one for Indicators (or time series data), one for Projects (or data on the World Bank’s operations), and one for the World Bank financial data (World Bank Finances API).


[Much of the above was adapted from Mark Clemente's excellent guide to APIs for Scholarly Resources at MIT.]

OskiCat is the catalog for most of the UC Berkeley libraries

• Find books and other items in most libraries at UC Berkeley.
  What's included?
• Search keywords (including author's name, title, subjects, etc.)
• Limit by library location, date, language, publication format, etc.
• See only items that are available.
• Find materials on reserve, by course or instructor.
• View status of individual volumes and journal issues.
• Follow links to the full text of some items.
• FAQ
• Help

Use My OskiCat to:

• Save and e-mail your search results.
• View your list of items checked out, and renew items.
• Get e-mail notices when your items are about to be due.
• Request items checked out to another borrower.
• Get updates on items you have requested from storage.
• Note: The Stanford University Library catalog cannot be searched, or their items requested, through OskiCat. 

Melvyl lets you search for items at UC Berkeley as well as other UC campuses.

• Find books and other items in over 10,000 libraries, including most items in the UC campus libraries.
• See which local libraries have an item, and check availability in their catalogs (items at UCB appear first, along with their current availability status).
• Find UC books digitized by Google and materials from the Online Archive of California, UC eScholarship, and UC Press.
• Find magazine and journal articles, government documents, etc. from over 20 databases, available to UCB-affiliated users.
• Share items using Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and similar tools.
• Automatically format citations for your bibliography.
• Export citations to EndNote or RefWorks.
• Read reviews from other users and Amazon.com.
• Melvyl® is a registered trademark of The Regents of the University of California.

Sign in to:

• Save searches to re-run later.
• Save items in personalized lists.
• Get updates from other users' lists.
• Write reviews for other users to read.
• Quick Reference Guide (PDF)
• FAQ

Use Melvyl as a traditional catalog (i.e., remove articles from search results)

1. Click on Advanced Search
2. Click on Add/Remove databases
3. Click on clear all
4. Check the box for WorldCat
5. Click on Save Selections