Transcript Zoology 305 Library Databases/Indexes Lab

Zoology 305 Library
Databases/Indexes Lab
Goals for session:
1) Meet your librarian
Kevin Messner ([email protected])
2) Understand tools for journal literature searches, as
well as other library resources (e.g. the catalog)
3) Learn search techniques for 3 literature indexes
Biological Abstracts/BIOSIS
MEDLINE/PubMed
Science Citation Index/Web of Science
4) How to get to the articles you find in the indexes
Accessing these slides and other
resources
www.lib.muohio.edu -> Resources by Subject -> “Biology” or “Zoology” ->
Click the “Course Guides” tab for these slides
Zoology 305
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Library Databases/Indexes Lab
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Counts as a regular lab grade -- should be a
straightforward assignment
Complete assignment sheet and turn in before you
leave
Graded sheet will be returned to you
Concepts to look for today
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How to access our library’s databases and
articles
Search methods and tips
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contents of a literature database record
interpreting a citation
searching particular components of citations
truncation
combining sets
finding “more like this”
What’s an Index? Library
Catalogs vs. Indexes
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Look for the title “Genome variation in the
symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacterium
Sinorhizobium meliloti” in our catalog.
What kind of catalog search to use?
Do we have this?
Library Catalog vs Indexes
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Catalog -- a database of
the titles the library has
in its (print and
electronic) collection
Includes the titles of
magazines and journals,
but not the individual
articles within those
magazines and journals
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Index -- a database of
literature, usually in a
particular field like
biology or medicine
Includes and allows
searches for particular
journal articles
Many items recorded in
an index are not held in
your library
Why these three indexes?
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Key tools for researching the literature of biology -- e.g., what
other work has been done that’s relevant to my research
project? (or my patient, my grant, my business)
Biological Abstracts/BIOSIS: principal life sciences index,
especially for ecology, plant biology, other non-”biomedical”
topics
MEDLINE/PubMed: principal index for health sciences and
biomedical research. PubMed is FREE -- learn now, you still
have access after graduation.
Science Citation Index/Web of Science: covers journals
across the sciences, links older articles to new ones through
citation tracking
Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS
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Covers ~6000 journals in life sciences, from
molecular biology/biochemistry through ecosystem
ecology
“BIOSIS” includes book chapters, meeting abstracts,
other literature beyond journals
Very good database for searching for info on an
organism or taxonomic group
First look at a sample record -- what exactly are we
searching through in these indexes?
Look over record for a paper titled “Considerations
for measuring genetic variation…”
www.lib.muohio.edu
Note truncation
Search history, combining sets
with Boolean operators
- What additional synonyms for DNA fingerprinting might you also search on?
Searching Taxa
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I told you to use the term amphibia*. This
captures the words amphibia, amphibian,
amphibians.
When you search for organisms, you should
search for both common and scientific names
Example – chimpanzee
Where to find scientific names? Entrez
Taxonomy; U Mich Animal Diversity Web,
Wikipedia/Wikispecies
Entrez Taxonomy
Access from www.lib.muohio.edu -> Resources by Subject -> Biology ->
Web Sites -> Bioinformatics
PubMed
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Premier lit database for health sciences and
“biomedical” research, including molecular biology,
biochemistry, physiology, genetics
Includes 16 million citations, currently going back to
1950’s
FREE -- Federal tax dollars at work -- learn now, take
with you to your next job
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You may find PubMed records in Google searches
Links to about 30 other informational databases like
OMIM, Entrez Gene, GenBank
Entrez Journal Browser
Field-specific Searching in
PubMed
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Most databases allow you to search not just for text anywhere, but also in
specific database “fields” like author, journal title, address, etc.
What if you want to find an article by someone named Silver, in the journal
Cell?
Use Advanced Search, or “tagging.”
Science Citation Index/Web of
Science
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For any given article, tracks both what other
papers it cited, and what papers have cited it
Provides quick and powerful way to find a
body of related literature
Covers 3500 major journals across
scientific/technical fields
Useful in cross-disciplinary fields (like
cognition or biomedical engineering)
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You can now search BIOSIS, MEDLINE, and
Web of Science simultaneously on the “Web
of Knowledge” site
Be aware that you’re searching different
databases, as some appear to be missing things
(e.g. MEDLINE doesn’t have‘Times Cited’
data)
Author searching is flaky at present because of
different conventions