HU Interlibrary Loans

Biology Seminar @ Harding University

Searching the Literature

Once you have chosen a general topic for your seminar you will be ready to search the primary literature. In addition to shelved library materials you should take advantage of the online search services available to you. Another great place to find articles related to a particular paper of interest is in the literature cited section of papers you have already selected.

Below are some good on-line places to start searching for your literature. This list is not intended to be exhaustive. You are free to search for literature outside of these resources provided the information is from a sanctioned source.

1. Google Scholar Search (www.scholar.google.com) - This is a beta version of what many believe will become the world's most exhaustive academic library.
   
   
2. Full Text Electronic Journals - On the HU Library Home Page, click on Full Text Electronic Journals
   
   
3. BioOne (www.bioone.org) - a full-text database that is focused on the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. Entire articles may be printed directly from the screen as printable document format (.pdf) files. Full text available only on campus.
   
   
4. MedLine - On the HU library home page (http://quest.harding.edu), choose Reference Resources from the left column. On the next screen, select Online Databases and the alphabetical listing for MedLine. Available only on campus.
   
   
5. PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) - a service of the National Library of Medicine.
   
   
6. PDF Search - It is becoming increasingly common for biologists to provide PDFs of their papers on their personal web sites. Consequently, if you know the name of a researcher in a given field, you can go to their personal web site to possibly obtain PDFs. For example, a prominent researcher in ecological and evolutionary herpetology is Rick Shine. Searching for “Rick Shine” on Google yields www.bio.usyd.edu.au/Shinelab/shine/shine.html. Clicking on this URL followed by the “Publications” link on Shine’s web site sends you to more than 400 papers he has published, each in PDF format. If searching by researcher name does not produce the desired results, try searching for the university/lab/agency where the researcher works and then search for his/her name.
   
   
7. FirstSearch (http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org) – enter your authorization number and password on the login screen (for 2005-06 the HU authorization number is 100-104-862 and the password is JOSHUA21). You may search one or up to three of the four available databases simultaneously (GEOBASE, BasicBiosis, BioAgIndex, and AGRICOLA). Only GEOBASE and BasicBiosis provide abstracts. Articles may be ordered through HU interlibrary loan directly from the FirstSearch screen. Available only on campus.
   
   
8. Directory of Open Access Journals (www.doaj.org/home) provides free pdfs. The Biology & Life Sciences section contains 81 journals and the Earth & Environmental Sciences section contains 76 journals.
   
   
9. BiologyBrowser (www.biologybrowser.org) - serves as a starting point for anyone seeking biology information on the Internet. Managed by BIOSIS, BiologyBrowser features free resources and useful links, and provides a forum for connecting hundreds of researchers and information scientists worldwide.
   
   
10. ActionBioscience (www.actionbioscience.org) - An educational resource of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, aiming to promote literacy. The site provides peer-reviewed articles by scientists, science educators, and science students in issues related to the seven bioscience challenges: environment, biodiversity, genomics, biotechnology, evolution, new frontiers in science, and bioscience education.
11. Ingenta (www.ingenta.com) The most comprehensive collection of academic and professional publications available for online, fax and Ariel delivery.
    
    
12. Scirus (www.scirus.com) - searches for scientific information from both free and journal sources and web sites that contain scientific content, such as university web sites and author homepages. Scirus currently covers the Web, ScienceDirect, MEDLINE on BioMedNet, Beilstein on ChemWeb, Neuroscion, BioMed Central and Patents from the USPTO. Covers more scientific sources than any other search engine.
    
    
13. Science Direct (http://quest.harding.edu/) - HU subscribes to this service for access to many full-text journals otherwise unavailable online. Accessing articles requires entering this database from the HU system to confirm an HU association. To access this sight through HU go to the quest link given above, choose "Online Databases", then scroll down the recommended database to the Science choice and select the Science Direct database. First time users of Science Direct will need to register and select a unique username and password. This site is a collection of science, technology, and medicine full-text and bibliographic information. HU subscribes to the Health and Life Science Journals Collection database provided by this site.
    

Maintained by J. M. Goy - Questions or Comments? jmgoy@harding.edu