Depending upon the type of information you are looking for, you need to distinguish between catalogues and bibliographies.
Catalogues
Catalogues list what publications are hold by libraries: e.g. (e-)books, electronic databases and (electronic) journals. LibSearch can be used to search in the collection of the VU University Library.
In this module, you find more information on LibSearch.
Bibliographies
Bibliographies provide references to publications in a particular subject area, on a particular topic or by a particular author. These can include books, chapters of books, articles in journals, reviews and so on, regardless of where these are to be found. Use bibliographies when you want to find out about everything an author has published, for example, or about what publications have appeared on a subject.
The advantage of consulting a bibliography is that you can carry out a more specific and complete search regarding a particular topic.
The drawback is that not all the publications listed may be easy to obtain.
Web of Science and Scopus are large databases covering all research areas. Other databases cover a more specific field of study. For instance PubMed for biomedical research or PsycInfo for psychology and related fields.
In this module, we focus on Web of Science and Scopus.
University Library