[Purpose/significance]The construction of characteristic resources database in recent years has been paid less on gradually. However, how to continue to construct characteristic resources database and integrate the teaching resources database into it to provide better service for the college teaching and scientific research, is still important.[Method/process] This paper makes a field visit and an investigation on the teaching resources and characteristic resources of national demonstrative or backbone higher vocational colleges in Ningbo, Jinhua, Tianjin and Wuhan which have been checked and accepted by the Ministry of Education of China, and discusses their relationships.[Result/conclusion] This paper concludes that the concepts of teaching resources database and characteristic resources database are both derived from the "resources database", and have homology. Libraries should determine the construction guidelines and principles of characteristics databases based on the major development planning, subject setting, academic research and regional culture, trade and industry. They should combine the characteristic of teaching resources database and the construction of characteristic resources database, so that teaching resources databases has advantages of regionalism, authority and representativeness, maintains the leading position in the literature resources field within a certain time, and plays an important role in literature resources system.