For an old school programmer when I hear the term ‘database’ I think relational data or no sql document based data, learning to use research databases is a skill in itself. Most are proprietary and actively restrict open access. So to use most of them they have a simple or advanced interface. Authenticating can be done using a tool like ezy proxy or some such which is really the only ‘open’ part of most of them.
Use the search interfaces is a learning curve and somewhat of an art itself. While there seems to be some consistency in the user experience most have their own features or functions and accessing them is a matter of running through each interface and clicking on all available UI components. While I’m sure there is endless blogs, tips and techniques you can search for and learn from, the best learning method is to keep using them over and over to each become familiar.
It would be lovely to aggregate these databases and use a single UI to search against all of them – but I don’t see that happening soon.