Open Access Resources

DIGITAL LIBRARIES:

World Digital Library (WDL): The World Digital Library is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress. The WDL has stated that its mission is to promote international and intercultural understanding, expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences, and to build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and among countries. It aims to expand non-English and non-western content on the Internet, and contribute to scholarly research. The library intends to make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

National Digital Library (NDL): The National Digital library of India (NDL) is a project under Ministry of Human Resource Development, India. The objective is to integrate several national and international digital libraries in one single web-portal. The NDL provides free access to many books in English and the Indian languages.

Shodhganga:  Shodhganga : a reservoir of Indian theses The Shodhganga@INFLIBNET Centre provides a platform for research students to deposit their Ph.D. theses and make it available to the entire scholarly community in open access. The repository has the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate and preserve ETDs submitted by the researchers

Epg-Pathshala:  Epg-pathshala is project of MHRD, under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT), has assigned work to the UGC for development of e-content in 77 subjects at postgraduate level. The content and its quality is the key component of education system.

E-Theses Online Service (EThOS):  E-Theses Online Service is a bibliographic database and union catalogue of electronic theses provided by the British Library, the National Library of the United Kingdom. As of September 2017 EThOS provides access to approximately 465,000 doctoral theses awarded by over 140 UK higher education institutions

Global Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Search:  Global Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Search is a Central portal to search and locate Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) from universities around the world. Exciting new service launched by The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) in July 2015. Once researchers have located the ETDs of interest, they are able to access the original documents from the originating institutions.

Open Access Theses and Dissertations: OATD aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 600 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes over 1.5 million theses and dissertations.

E JOURNAL DATABASES

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.

INTERNATIONAL DATA SOURCES

These sources provide access to data sets that include foreign and international statistics.

Data.go.jp: This site offers access to over 10,000 datasets from Japan, all licensed under a CC-BY license.

Data.gouv.fr: This site provides access to public datasets from France under an Open License.

Data.parliament.uk: This site offers access to data from the parliament of the United Kingdom.

DevInfo Online: According to their website, "di Online provides online access to data on human development using DevInfo database technology." A good source of data sets on human development from around the world.

EdStats: This site, maintained by the World Bank, presents data on education from around the world.

National High Courts Database: This database offers data on courts in the following countries: Australia, Canada, India, Namibia, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, United Kingdom, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

UN Data: This search engine allows users to search for data from a wide range of UN data sources. According to the website, it includes "numerous databases, tables and glossaries containing over 60 million data points cover a wide range of themes including Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health, HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information and Communication Technology, National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals indicators."

World Bank: The World Bank offers access to a wide range of data from around the world. Data sets are both browseable and searchable.

Data Portal India: Currently in beta release, this site has been designed to host data that is part of the new Open Data initiative of India's government. The goal is for India's departments and ministries to publish their data here. Additional sources are available on the Harvard Law School Library's website.

BOOKS, DICTIONARIES, ENCYCLOPEDIAS, TREATISES, DISSERTATIONS, ETC.

Secondary sources are also increasingly available online for free.

WEX: WEX is the Legal Information Institute's free legal dictionary and encyclopedia.

Law.com: This site offers a free legal dictionary that defines important legal terms. It is a good resource when getting started with a new legal topic.

Justia.com Dictionary: Justia also offers a legal dictionary that is both searchable and browsable by major legal topics.

NOLO: This legal encyclopedia offers articles on a wide range of practice areas including Bankruptcy, Disability law, Family Law, IP, Real Estate and Finance.

Zimmerman's Research Guide: This legal encyclopedia is owned by Lexis, but is provided free of charge on their website. Search or browse for content on a host of legal topics.

Directory of Open Access Books: This database provides access to open access books on a wide range of topics, including law. It is searchable or browseable by title, subject or publisher.

World Bank Open Knowledge Repository: It currently contains works from 2009 onwards across a wide range of topics and all regions of the world....Starting in 2013, the repository will also provide links to datasets associated with research. While the vast majority of the works are published in English, over time translated editions will also be added.

Wiki Books: Wikibooks (previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks) is a wiki-based Wikimedia project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the creation of free content e-book textbooks and annotated texts.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES

WorldCat :  WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories that participate in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. The subscribing member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services

IndCat: IndCat is Online Union Catalogue of Indian Universities is unified Online Library Catalogues of books, theses and journals available in major university libraries in India. The union database contains bibliographic description, location and holdings information for books, journals and theses in all subject areas available in more than 181 university libraries across the country. A Web-based interface is designed to provide easy access to the merged catalogues. The IndCat is a major source of bibliographic information that can be used for inter-library loan, collections development as well as for copy cataloguing and retro-conversion of bibliographic records.