L322: Writing Workshop in Biology

Library Resources for L322

Brian Winterman (bwinterm@indiana.edu)

Life Sciences Library, Jordan Hall A304 (www.libraries.iub.edu/lifesci)

 

Encyclopedias 

• Encyclopedia of Life Sciences: contains over 3,000 articles in the life sciences broadly defined
• AccessScience: includes over 7,100 articles in 81 major areas of science and technology

 

Journal Literature Indexes 

• PubMed: provides access to bibliographic information that includes MEDLINE (PubMed help: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bookres.fcgi/helppubmed/pubmedhelp.pdf)
• Web of Knowledge: interface providing access to the Science Citation Index (Web of Science), Biosis Previews, and others

 

Books, Manuals, Encyclopedias, and Dictionaries 

IUCAT: contains records for more than 4.3 million items held by Indiana University Librarires.

 

Common Search Techniques 

• Boolean logic: using AND, OR, and NOT to explain a relationship between search terms
• Truncation: replacing one or more letters at the end of a search term with an asterisk to retrieve multiple forms of a word. Example: radia* = radiate, radiation, radial, etc.
• Nesting: grouping search terms together in parentheses with a Boolean operator (AND, OR, or NOT) to search them as one term. Example: yeast AND (UV or ultraviolet)