Biology Research Apprenticeship Library Research Guide Fall 2009 Instructor: Paul Hertz Librarian: Lois Coleman

A colony of human embryonic stem cells CC License.  Photo: Ryddragyn

For help with your research, visit the reference desk (hours) on the second floor of Barnard Library, or contact a Barnard reference librarian:
       Phone: 212-854-3953
       Chat: IM BarnardReference
       E-mail: refdesk@barnard.edu
Request a one-on-one consultation with a Barnard librarian if you have an in-depth research need.

This guide is intended as a starting point in your research; the databases and reference tools listed here are just a selective list.
  

• Use CLIO to find books, journals (but not articles in journals), links to online journals, and other materials in the Barnard and Columbia libraries, including the Health Sciences Library.
• For a Keyword search, use quotes for a phrase, and ? for truncation (to find variant endings of a word).
• For a complex search, use Boolean Keyword searching: AND finds records which have all the search terms you entered; OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.  Use parentheses to group terms.
• For a known item, search by Title, Author, standardized Library of Congress Subject Heading, ISBN, etc.
• Many biology materials fall into the QH call number range. Other relevant call number areas include QL (Zoology), QP (Physiology and Biochemistry) and QR (Microbiology).

• Note that although Barnard Library is in Lehman Hall, CLIO location Lehman means the Social Sciences library.
• The Biology Library is closed at the moment. The new science library will open in 2010. 
• Health Sciences Library (701 West 168th Street) - directions
• Geology Library (601 Schermerhorn) - directions

• Links to other catalogs in New York City and elsewhere
• Worldcat: a union catalog with information about holdings in libraries all over the world
• New York Public Library: Catalog

• Teachers College Library: EDUCAT 
• Columbia Law Library: Pegasus

• Jewish Theological Seminary: Catalog
• New York University: BobCat 

• Encyclopedia of Biodiversity: Barnard Reference QH541.5.B56 E6 2001
• Encyclopedia of Evolution: Barnard Reference QH360.2 .E54 2002 and online
• Encyclopedia of Genetics
• Encyclopedia of Genetics, Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics
• Encyclopedia of Life Sciences
• Encyclopedic Dictionary of Genetics, Genomics, and Proteomics
• McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Bioscience: Barnard Reference QH302.5 .M382 2003

Finding articles using an index or database is a two-step process:
1.  Find citations to relevant articles;
2.  Find the articles themselves.  Click on to go to the online version if it exists; or search CLIO using the journal title to find out which library has a print copy.

Selected Databases in Biology
These are all on the Databases list on the Barnard Library homepage or the Columbia Libraries page. There are many other databases that can also be useful. For further help, ask at the Reference Desk on the second floor of the library.
  

• 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:"

• 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 * or $ (phenotyp$ will find phenotype or phenotypic)

• full text scholarly journals from various publishers, from their first issue up to a few years ago
• useful for historical research; contains ecology and botany journals dating back to the early twentieth century that are not indexed in other databases
• no issues from the last 3 to 6 years, depending on the journal

• citations and abstracts for articles in biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, published from 1966 to the present
• search functions are the same as for Biological Abstracts
• you can switch between Ovid databases and repeat your searches using "Change Database" at the top

• contains scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers (New York Times back to 1851)
• two words together are taken as a phrase; for truncation, use * (phenotyp* will find phenotype or phenotypic)

• database from the National Library of Medicine database containing citations to articles in Medline, additional life science journals, and the integrated molecular biology databases included in the National Center for Biotechnology Information retrieval system (including DNA and protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, and assemblies of complete genomes)
• use Advanced Search, or the Entrez Pubmed search engine

• a Thomson-ISI Web of Science database useful for determining if any articles have cited a specific article or book, or to examine the references of an article
• limit document type to "Review" to obtain articles that provide an overview of a topic
• for an author search, use last name then first initial followed by an asterisk, e.g. mckay j*

• The American Museum of Natural History homepage.
• Columbia's Biology Library provides a list of Biology Internet Resources.
• The Ecology WWW page has a huge collection of links to Web sites on biology and ecology.
• The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is maintained by the Center for Biological Informatics of the U.S. Geological Survey.
• PrimateLit provides bibliographic access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates.
• The Tree of Life is a project containing information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their history and characteristics; the information is linked together in the form of an evolutionary tree.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service homepage includes links to reports, news releases, and an Online Library.

RefWorks
Bibliographic software allows you to store your references conveniently, and cite them in papers and bibliographies using any citation style you choose.  See the guide RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero: Bibliographic software at Barnard and Columbia.

Last Modified 9/21/09
Lois Coleman
Reference Librarian