Welcome to Your Library

BIOL 3397

Your Library

• 2 million volumes

• 15,000 serials

• 250 databases

• 36 individual group study rooms

• 3 Branch Libraries• Arch/Art

• Music

• Optometry

Class Objectives

1. Able to understand and navigate Library’s web site and locate research databases

2. Understand what Peer Reviewed articles are and know how to locate them

3. Able to distinguish between primary, secondary, and tertiary literature.

4. Able to use RefWorks to compile a bibliography for a paper.

5. Understand how to formulate a computer database search and to know what databases to use

Services• Remote access– CougarNet account• Full text Journal articles• Cougar One Card• Cougar-net account• VPN account• Inter Library Loan [online]• Library Provides 500 free pages of prints• IT Central Site also 500 free prints (Library Basement –

own entrance)• Free Photocopying or you can email or save on a

flashdrive

Peer Review

Peer Reviewed Articles

• Stated in preface pages of the Journal• Contains list of cited references• Many databases provide a “peer review” limit

option• Can check in Ulrich’s database–uses “refereed “• Popular works, such as magazine and newspaper

articles, are written for the general public– and are not Peer Reviewed.

Other experts in the field reads and reviews the article to assess professional merit

Types of Research Literature

How to Distinguish Between

Primary

• Secondary

• Tertiary

• Literature

Primary Sources

• Source material that is closest to the information.

• A source with direct personal knowledge of the events being described. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. A person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person.

• E.G. Case Reports, Clinical Trials, Original reporting articles…1st person

Secondary Sources

• Cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources.

• Involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. If an article discusses old documents to derive a new conclusion, it is considered to be a primary source for the new conclusion

• E.G. Review Articles, meta-analysis [most peer review articles report new findings and thus are considered primary resources]

Tertiary Sources

• More peripheral

• Bibliographies, library catalogs, directories, reading lists and survey articles.

• Compilation of data…CRC Handbook, Biomedical handbook, Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

• Longer lead time in publishing…..

Boolean Searching

Think Boolean

Deeror

1802000

Articles on the management of deer in the Southwest U.S.

Manage*Southwest

Texas

Colorado

or

or

Ecologyor

Diet or

Arizona

670

Think Boolean

12

Articles on the management of deer in the Southwest U.S.

Deer

ManagementSouthwest

Citation Searching

Citation Searching

e.g. POPULATION-DYNAMICS OF WHITE-TAILED DEER (ODOCOILEUS-VIRGINIANUS) ON THE WELDER WILDLIFE REFUGE, TEXAS by KIE JG; 1985

– If we look up the list of references at the end of Kie’s article they may be useful --but the problem is that they will all be older than 1985….. And I want current articles on the topic?

– So I can look for articles since 1985 who “cited” Kie’s article by doing a “citation search”

– And we find the latest article was published in 2011

Assumed subject relevancy between the original paper and the references that paper cites

Traditional Search Citation Search

1984

1984

Citation Searching

1980

19751970

2011

1963

2010

1998

2010

2008

Now, let’s look at our

Specific Databases

and begin