A full text database or a complete text database is a database that contains the complete text of books, dissertations, journals, magazines, newspapers or other kinds of textual document

Document

The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...

s. It is opposed both to a bibliographic database

Bibliographic database

A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents, books, etc...

 (only covering bibliographical information and possibly abstracts and thus being a partial text database) and to a non-bibliographic database (such as, for example, a directory

Directory

Directory may refer to:* Directory , or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files* Directory , stored information about a database...

 or a numeric database).

Full text databases became common about 1990 when computer storage technology made them economic and technological possible. There are two main classes: An extention of the classical bibliographical databases into full text databases (e.g. on hosts such as BRS

BRS/Search

BRS/Search is a full-text database and information retrieval system. BRS/Search uses a fully inverted indexing system to store, locate, and retrieve unstructured data...

, Dialog

Dialog (online database)

Dialog is an online information service owned by ProQuest, who acquired it from Thomson Reuters in mid-2008.Dialog was one of the predecessors of the World Wide Web as a provider of information, though not in form. The earliest form of the Dialog system was completed in 1966 under the direction of...

, LexisNexis

LexisNexis

LexisNexis Group is a company providing computer-assisted legal research services. In 2006 it had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information...

 and Westlaw

Westlaw

Westlaw is one of the primary online legal research services for lawyers and legal professionals in the United States and is a part of West. In addition, it provides proprietary database services...

) and Internet based full text databases (based on search engine

Search engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

es or XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

).

Examples

• International Governmental Organizations' full-Text databases: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/doemoff/govinfo/intl/gov_intlfulltxt.html
• JSTOR
  JSTOR
  JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
  
   Full-text periodicals covering a wide range of topics, including humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
  Proquest Dissertations and Theses
  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is an online database that indexes, abstracts, and provides full-text access to dissertations and theses. The database includes over 2.4 million records and covers 1637 to the present. It is produced by ProQuest and was formerly known as ProQuest Digital...
  
  
• U.S. Patents Fulltext dtabases: http://patft.uspto.gov/
• Wiley Online Library (Covering about 1400 electronic journals in the sciences and social sciences)