Biology

Getting Started

Learning Strategies for Biology Students
• Search Strategies for the Searcher Here is a view that ties the sequence of searching for information to the various levels and types of resources available.
• How to Narrow or Broaden Your Topic
  http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/topic/index.htm

• Is there a difference between a scholary & a popular publication? How do you find out?
  http://www.usd.edu/library/instruction/tutorials/scholarly.htm
  
  
• Check out more differences between scholarly and popular journals.
  http://www.ithaca.edu/library/course/periodical.html
  

• Scientific Literature Structure and its Evolution a schematic that illustrates how science information is formed and organized.

• Flow of Information … a look at linear time and information.
  http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/flow/index.htm
  
  

Evaluating Web Resources
Here are some sites providing exercises about the use and evaluation of Web resources.

• Critical Thinking Exercises
  http://www.ithaca.edu/library/Training/hott.html
  
  
• Hoax? Scholarly Research? PersonalOpinion? You Decide!
  http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/hoax/index.htm

• Who Dunnit: What kind of Web Page is this??
  http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/whodunnit/index.htm

Science Writing
• Science Writing and Publishing - from the Michigan Electronic Library, a collection of web-sites focused on scientific writing.

• Style Sheets and Grammar - a collection of websites focused on grammar and formats from the Michigan Electronic Library.

• Reading & Writing Aids section of the MBL/WHOI Library’s Reference Sources.

• Your Dictionary - a comprehensive site of dictionaries (language, subject and multilingual).

Guides to Biological Literature

Information Sources in the Life Sciences. 4th edition. H. V. Wyatt, ed. Bowker Saur: London, 1997. (Ref QH 303.6 .I54 1997) 

Guide to Information Sources in the Botanical Sciences. 2nd edition. Elisabeth B. Davis and Diane Schmidt. Libraries Unlimited, Inc.: Englewood, CO, 1996. (Ref QK 45.2 .D38 1996) 

A Guide to the Zoological Literature: the Animal Kingdom. George H. Bell and Diane B. Rhodes. Libraries Unlimited, Inc.: Englewood, CO, 1994. (Ref QL 45.2 B44 1994)

Library Catalogs for Locating Books, Periodicals, Government Documents

PALS
USD’s public access library system (online catalog). Provides access to the I.D. Weeks Library collections, as well as Lommen Health Sciences Library and South Dakota Library Network library members.

WorldCat (via FirstSearch)

Most comprehensive database contains holdings information from libraries around the world. Coverage dates back to the 11th century. Includes the LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) thesaurus.

Indexes for Finding Journal Articles

AGRICOLA (via FirstSearch or NAL)
AGRICOLA (Agriculture Online Access) is a bibliographic database containing selective worldwide coverage of agriculture and related fields from 1970 to the present. AGRICOLA is produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL) and reflects the Library’s collections and records from other cooperating insitutions. Includes over 5000 journals, series, etc.

Biosis Biological Abstracts

BA covers the entire field of life sciences: biological, biomedical and biochemical areas, field, laboratory, clinical, experimental and theoretical work from 1980 to present. This is the main source for accessing the primary journal literature (6000+ titles) for biology.

Biological & Agricultural Index (via FirstSearch)

Biological & Agricultural Index provides information from groundwater pollution to genetic engineering and covers the entire range of sciences related to biology and agriculture. Indexes 226 key periodicals in the life sciences and agriculture. Includes book reviews. Coverage is from 1983 - to the present.

Biology Digest (via FirstSearch)

Biology Digest covers the life sciences for undergraduates and high school students. Comprehensive abstracts of articles in over 200 journals. Coverage is from 1989 - to date.

Dissertation Abstracts (via FirstSearch or ProQuest)

Covers doctoral dissertations completed in the U.S. at participating accredited institutions for the last 150 years. Includes some master’s theses and foreign language dissertations.

Fish & Fisheries Worldwide (via BiblioLine)

Fish & Fisheries Worldwide (FFW) provides thorough coverage of thousands of journal articles, books, monographs, pamphlets, conference proceedings, symposia, government reports, theses, dissertations, and scientific periodicals. Coverage of journals is selective. This is an index.

JSTOR (via JSTOR)

Collection of full-image journals of use for historic literature searching. Contains some science titles. More science titles are being added to the collections.

Medline (via Ovid)

Medline covers all areas of medicine, including clinical and experimental medicine, dentistry, nursing, health services administration, nutrition, … Indexes 3900+ journals (most with abstracts), covering from 1965 to present. Includes MeSH (medical subject headings) thesaurus.

PubSCIENCE

The equivalent of PubMed for the other sciences, indexing over 1000 scientific and technical journals. This does not include PubMed’s “more like this” feature, but since abstracts do include subject headings, you can use these to modify your search as needed. Courtesy of the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)

Science Citation Index (via LAN)

Science Citation Index (SCI) indexes leading scientific and technical journals ( 5700+ titles ). Enables researchers to search and trace citations in articles. Covers all field of science from 1985 to present.

ScienceDirect (via Elsevier)

A web-based database covering 1,100+ Science, Technical and Medical journals. Contains over 1 million full-text articles and 1.7 million abstracts from 33 major STM publishers. Browse by journal title, subject, publisher or issue. Search on title, author, keyword, affliation, references, journal title, ISSN or full-text.

Ingenta (formerly Uncover by Carl) via CARL

This database indexes over 17,000 journal titles in all disciplines.

Wildlife Worldwide (via BiblioLine)

Wildlife Worldwide is the world’s largest index to literature on wild mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians - over 345,000 records. The databases in this exclusive collection offer a global perspective.

Biological Reference Works

Animal Diversity Site - multimedia database of over 1000 species, with habitat, physical characteristics, conservation methods

Biotech Life Science Dictionary

GardenWeb Glossary of Botanical Terms

Genomics Lexicon - this defines terms and provides hyperlinks to sites explaining the concept in greater detail.

Gray Card Index - The Gray Card Index Database (searchable) currently includes over 325,000 citations of names of New Would vascular plants at the rank of family, genus, species, and their ifra ranks (e.g. subfamily, tribe, subgenus, section, series, subspecies, variety, form, etc.)

Plant Dictionary - which is also a plant image database

Species Information Library (via LAN) - Species Informatin Library includes detailed full-text records on over 7,200 North American found species drawn from ten state and federal databases, under the auspices of the Fish and Wildlife Information Exchange (FWIE) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Each record contains autoritative information about habitat and environmnetal associations, food habits, taxonomy, life history, federal and state statutes, and management practices.

Biological Images

BIODIDAC - biological images for teaching purposes. Use is free with registration. 

BirdSource - from Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology 

Cells Alive - great microscopic images and video. Check out the links for teaching resources. 

eNature - produced by the National Audubon Society includes color photos of plants, animals, birds, shells, etc. as well as description and narrative derived from the Audubon Field Guide Books. Web links are great. 

Image Library of Biological Macromolecules

Kohler’s Medicinal Plants - over 300 illustrations from this 19th century classic.

Metabolic Pathways for Biochemistry - this site is designed to graphically represent all major metabolic pathways, primarily those important to human biochemistry 

Molecular Expressions: Images from the Microscope - electronic microscopy images. Also has links to other microscopy files. 

Natural History Museums and Collections - visit every natural history museum online. Good resource for teachers to be. 

Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations - also check out the main page for the Botany Dept. of the Smithsonian Institutes for more links. 

Vascular Plant Image Gallery - alphabetical or by family 

Virtual Dissections - Yahoo’s guide to online dissection sources

Data Collections

Annual Reviews of Biomedical Sciences - (1984 - Current) though full text is now only available by subscription, you an do keyword, author or title searches through the archives and current issues of 17 annual reviews. Recent years with abstracts and some full-text.

Biological Control: A Guide to Natural Enemies in North America. Good source for entomological material.

Biology Place: for the categories of Cells, Chemistry, Evolution, Genetics, Diversity, Plants, Animals, Ecology, gives faculty affiliates, student activities, best of the web, research reports. Subscripton needed after free trial. 

Biology Software and Data Archive from Indiana University - an archive of biology data and software, est. 1989 to probote public access to freely available information, primarily molecular biolog field. Molecular data, software, biology news, documents and information sources. 

CMS Molecular Biology Resource - includes databases on biomolecular modeling, bioinformatics, DNA/Rna/Analyses, protein analyses, and molecular evolution. 

Conservation Databases - produced by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, provides links to databases on forest preservation, endangered species, protected areas, marine resources, biodiversity, etc. 

National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII)  - USGS -- electronic clearinghouse for biological data, from the following sources: State and Federal government agencies, universities, museums, libraries, and private organizations 

National Library for the Environment - Committee for the National Institute for the Environment website includes online access to a repository of research reports (140 Congressional Research Service reports on environmental issues), environmental laws and treaties, news, career information, climate data, and more. 

National Plant Data Center - USDA, National Resources Conservation Service, Ecological Sciences division. 

North American Amphibian Monitoring Program - a central depository for information and research on declining amphibian populations.

North American Reporting Center for Amphibian Malformations

Other Directories and Databases

Biology Journals on the Net - links to them and tells you which journals are available full text, which include abstracts, which are tables of contents only 

Biosis: Resources for Biologists - especially taxonomy, zoology terminology 

Ecology WWW Page - from the University of Lyon, a very complete set of links in alpha order. 

Entomology Resource List 

Genome Database 

Microbiology Network

Molecular Biology Protocols 

SciCentral’s Biology Gateway - a beautifully organized site, with “gateways” to sub-disciplines, to databases, research reports, educaitional materials, conferences, employment, funding, and more. 

Searchable Index for the WWW Virtual Library of Bioscience
(http://mcb.harvard.edu/BioLinks.html) or (http://vlib.org/Biosciences.html)

Significant Events of the Last 125 Years in Microbiology

Yahoo Directory to Biology

Biology Education

Access Excellence (“A Place in Cyberspace for Biology Teaching and Learning”)

Beyond Bio 101: The transformation of Undergraduate Biology Education - a book simultaneously published in print and web versions, about the changes being made in the undergraduate biology curriculum. 

BioChemLinks - selected Web resources for biology and chemistry teachers and students 

BIODIDAC - biological images for teaching purposes. Use is free with registration.