Databases & Search Guides

List of Databases

• SPORTDiscus
• Héraclès
• Atlantes
• SPOLIT / SPOFOR / SPOMEDIA
• SPONET
• Sportlit
• Chinese Sports Database
• LIN (Lifestyle Information Network)
• PubMed (Medline)

Databases

SPORTDiscus

Updated monthly, SPORTDiscus contains over 650,000 records (from 1830 to date), to periodical articles, books, book chapters and essays, conference papers, reports, videotapes and URLs to fulltext documents/sources. Subject coverage includes all aspects of sports sciences, psychology, administration, sociology, history, coaching, training, physical education, physical fitness, health and recreation. Each record is assigned a level of difficulty:

• advanced (scientific research),
• intermediate (based on scientific research but easier to understand), and
• basic (popular and easy to read). (Most of the advanced level records have an abstract).

The University of Oregon, Kinesiology Publications records from 1949 to date are included along with the sociology of sport records from the discontinued SIRLS database, records from the Canadian sport history project 1900-1995 and other projects. Records from the major indexing partner, the Australia National Sport Information Centre, 1987 to date are also integrated. Other databases that have been incorporated into the SPORTDiscus database include:

• Héraclès, the French database produced by the INSEP in Paris,
  http://www.sportdoc.unicaen.fr/heracles/
• the Catalogue du Musee Olympique, Lausanne, Switzerland
  http://www.olympic.org/uk/passion/studies/index_uk.asp
• Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles online catalogue
  http://www.aafla.org/
• Atlantes, the Spanish language sport database

For SPORTDiscus subscription information consult
http://www.sirc.ca/products/sportdiscus.cfm

For information on the SIRCThesaurus, consult:
http://www.sirc.ca/products/sircthesaurus/index.cfm

Héraclès

A database of mainly French language sport and sport sciences sources, Héraclès has 14 contributors to the database with the INSEP Library the major indexing partner. The database contains over 100,000 records with an annual input of approximately 5,000 records. Topics include sport sciences, physical education, and others closely related to sport. The database focuses on national and international periodical articles (from approx 800 periodical titles), conference proceedings and audiovisual material in French, but has English and German articles also. The INSEP website lists the periodical titles indexed by each contributor. Héraclès is also incorporated in SPORTDiscus
Website: http://www.sportdoc.unicaen.fr/heracles/

Atlantes

This Spanish-language sport database of approximately 10,000 periodical article records (to 2000) is also incorporated in SPORTDiscus.
SPORTDiscus website: http://www.sportdiscus.com/atlantes.html

SPOLIT / SPOFOR / SPOMEDIA

Produced by BISp, the Bundesinstitut for Sportwissenschaft (Federal Institute of Sport Science) this mainly German language sport sciences database is freely available via the BISp website. This database has over 130,000 advanced-level records (40,000 on sports medicine) from 1970 to date. Includes citations to periodical articles, books, dissertations, and conference papers. Approximately 85% of the records are in German or English. The database is updated monthly. Formerly called: Sportliteratur.

Also available on the same website is the complimentary databases, SPOFOR and SPOMEDIA. SPOFOR is a database of approximately 6,000 research projects and SPOMEDIA is a database of audiovisual resources.

SPONET

http://www.sponet.de

This database, produced by the Institute for Applied Training Science (IAT) in Leipzig, has over 9,000 references to fulltext periodical articles and essays. theses, and conference papers on all aspects of sport sciences with special emphasis on elite athlete training and competition. An English and German search engine on the website provides an author, title, subject approach, level of difficulty to finding information. The database is freely available.

Sportlit

Produced by the South African Sports Commission's Documentation Centre, this database freely available online database contains over 22,000 records, from 1997 to date of mainly periodical articles. Also includes books, information booklets, and video material. Topics include sports sciences and psychology, social history and philosophy, education and recreation.

Chinese Sports Database

Produced by the China Sport Information Center (CSIC) in Beijing, this is a database of over 103, 500 records from 1987 to date (as of Sept 3, 2001) from over 75 periodicals (55 are scientific and 16 are intermediate in level). An additional 28 periodicals are occasionally indexed. Also includes theses, report and conference papers on all aspects of the sports sciences and includes sociology and history of sport, coaching and training. Database used to run on CDS/ISIS software but now runs on QMIS.
Subscription: Full database cost (as of Sept 2001) 10,000 yuan. Approx. 2,000 yuan for yearly subscription. Subscriptions available within the People's Republic of China only.

LIN (Lifestyle Information Network)

This National Recreation Database is an index and fulltext resource, mainly from North America, on all aspects of leisure, recreation, sport safety, active living and healthy lifestyles. The freely available database consists of fulltext access to hard-to-find documents including unpublished reports, policies, training manuals and other grey literature not available elsewhere on the web. Leisure/recreation/education/health organizations, municipalities and governmental bodies produce most of the documents. A search engine allows searching by keyword and title. The database contains over 2,500 fulltext documents, as well as 3,500 links to fulltext documents and listings of items for sale by non-profit organizations.

PubMed (Medline)

Produced US National Library of Medicine, PubMed provides citations to over 12 million periodical articles from over 4600 biomedical journals published in 70 countries. Covers clinical and experimental medicine, pharmacology, and, for the sport researcher, sports medicine, physiology, exercise science, doping and drugs. The PubMed database, available free for personal use only.