Barnard College Library Research Guide
BC3373: Ecology Lab
Spring 2006
Instructor: Paul Hertz
Librarian: Lois Coleman

• Title search: leave off the initial article (The, An, La, etc.)

• Author search: put last name, then first name

• Keyword search: use and, or or not between the terms, or quotes for a phrase, and use ? for truncation (to find variant endings of a word)

• Limiting to books in Barnard Library: use the Pre-select Limits or Post Limits options

• Note that although the Barnard Library is in Lehman Hall, CLIO location Lehman means the Social Sciences library at Columbia

CLIO Online Tutorial
 

Library Locations at Columbia

• Biology Library (601 Fairchild) homepage / directions
• Health Sciences Library (701 West 168th Street) homepage / directions
• Mathematics/Science Library (303 Mathematics) homepage / directions (in CLIO the location code for this library is SCIENCE)
• Geology Library (601 Schermerhorn) homepage / directions
• Geoscience Library (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY 10964) homepage / directions
• U.S. Government Documents (Lehman Social Sciences Library, 300 International Affairs) homepage / directions

• Bobcat for NYU (Washington Square South)
• CATNYP for New York Public Library research libraries: Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), Madison Avenue and 34th Street, 212-592-7000.
• WorldCat, a composite catalog of thousands of libraries worldwide, can help you to decide whether you need to request an item on Interlibrary Loan or BorrowDirect

Borrow Direct

• for books only - a consortium of the university libraries of Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton and Yale
• takes about 4 days

• for books, dissertations or articles
• you can also go in person to the ILL Office at 505 Butler Library; the phone number is 212-854-3542 and the email address is ill@libraries.cul.columbia.edu
• use ILL for requesting books or non-science journal articles
• can take up to 2 weeks

Science Journal Article Request Service

• you can request articles from journals that Columbia does not own in the areas of science, technology, engineering and medicine
• articles from journals at the Health Sciences Library can be ordered
• you can submit the on-line request form or fill out a printed request form at a Columbia branch science library
• when the article arrives, the relevant Columbia branch library will notify you by telephone or e-mail so that you can pick it up

• an OCLC FirstSearch Database with citations and abstracts for articles in animal science, chemistry, energy, entomology, food science, forestry, life sciences, natural resources, and plant diseases, published from 1970 to the present
• use quotes to search for a phrase
• for truncation, use * (phenotyp* will find phenotype or phenotypic)
• FirstSearch also includes Medline; you can switch databases and repeat your searches by using the drop-down list next to "Search in database:"

Biological Abstracts

• An Ovid database with citations and abstracts for articles in biology, plant and animal science, ecology, paleontology, pharmacology, biochemistry, biophysics and bioengineering, published from 1969 to the present
• Multiple words together are taken as a phrase; for truncation, use $ (environ$ will find environs, environment, environmental, etc.)
• For a Keyword search, uncheck the box next to "Map Term to Subject Heading"
• For a more focused search using subject terms, check the box next to "Map Term to Subject Heading"
• To combine previous searches, click on "Combine Searches," check appropriate boxes, then click "Continue"

• Provides access to biomedical research including biology, medicine, biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics, genomics, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, neurosciences, physiology, plant physiology and structural biology
• Click on Advanced Search at top
• Initially it is probably best to search the database record rather than the full text of articles, so select CITATION + ABSTRACT from the drop-down list under ALL FIELDS (FULL TEXT)

BioOne

• Full-text journal articles focused on the biological, ecological and environmental sciences
• Click on Search at the top, and enter terms in the Abstract field

• Huge database produced by the National Library of Medicine with citations and abstracts for articles in biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, published from 1966 to the present
• For Ovid version, use same search methods as for Biological Abstracts; you can switch between Ovid databases and repeat your searches by clicking on "Change Database"
• For Web of Science version, use same search methods as for Science Citation Index; you can switch between databases using the drop-down list at the top, but searches are not automatically saved and repeated if you switch between databases

• Citations and abstracts for technical literature on marine environments
• To include other databases in your search, click on "Specific Databases" below search area

• Full-text articles and abstracts from U.S. newspapers, scholarly journals and magazines in many disciplines, including international affairs, law, psychology, public affairs, sociology, women's studies, etc.
• Includes major newspapers in the Historical Newspapers collection, e.g., the New York Times back to 1851
• Two words together are treated as a phrase; for longer phrases use quotes
• Use * for truncation

• A Thomson-ISI Web of Science database that lists all the citations used in every article in the database; useful for determining if any articles have cited a specific article or book, for tracing the development of an idea, or to examine the references of an article you cannot obtain
• Limit document type to "Review" to obtain articles that provide an overview of a topic
• "Times Cited" is a rough measure of how influential the paper is in the field

• American Museum of Natural History
• Biology Internet Resources: useful biology links, provided by Columbia's Biology Library
• National Biological Information Infrastructure: maintained by the Center for Biological Informatics of the U.S. Geological Survey
• Sustainable Energy and Ecology Network: a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, DC and the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: homepage, includes links to reports, news releases, and an online library
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution