University of Guelph Library
Find Information on Genes & Immunity: UNIV120025
Step 1: Background Information
Step 2: Finding Journal Articles
Step 3: Organizing Your Information — RefWorks and PowerPoint
Step 1: Background Information
A. Reference Books and Other Book Material
While the topic you choose for your paper or seminar presentation may be of interest to you, you might not initially have the depth of knowledge required to effectively research it. Using basic sources such as textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the Internet can help you gain insight into the subject and make approaching the journal literature much easier.
You will need to search Primo (the Library's catalogue) to find books.
B. Using the Internet
The Internet is a very rich source of information for students. The open nature of the 'net' — anyone can "publish" anything — means that you should be cautious about what you find there, especially if you are going to cite Web-based information in a paper. There are lots of issues to consider when evaluating Web sources.
Step 2: Finding Journal Articles
To find journal articles and current research about your topic you have to use a journal index.
- One of the hardest things for people early in their academic career in the sciences is to understand with the journal literature and journal articles. Academic/scholarly articles are written for other academics not for undergraduate students. Sometimes the best way to ease into journal articles is by looking at some articles written more for lay-people than scientists. Journals like Scientific American, New Scientist, and Nature are a good source for these types of articles.
- Searching Google for journal articles can be a big time waster. There's not enough free, full text content available on the web to meet your needs. Searching Google Scholar can be more rewarding since it focuses on academic literatures and because there are links to resources at Guelph built into Google Scholar.
- Remember, there's no such thing as "one stop shopping" when you're looking for journal articles. In most situations you should search more than one journal index to make sure that you've found all the information you require. Below are listed some of the journal indexes that can be useful for your research.
Readers' Guide Full Text
The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature (Readers' Guide)
covers popular, general interest magazines published in the United
States and Canada. Examples of major periodicals included with full
text are: Consumers' Research Magazine, Foreign Affairs, Saturday
Evening Post, Smithsonian and U.S. News & World Report.
Biology Digest
Biology Digest is a compilation of abstracts and indexes
of domestic and international literature in the area of life sciences.
It is primarily intended for an audience at the high school or undergraduate
college level. Its purpose is to aid in keeping students and instructors
current on the latest developments in biological research.
Biological Sciences (CSA)
Biological Sciences is an interdisciplinary database
offering abstracts and citations to research in biomedicine, biotechnology,
zoology and ecology, and some aspects of agriculture and veterinary
science. This CSA database provides access to literature from over
6000 sources including serials, conference proceedings, technical
reports, monographs and selected books and patents.
MEDLINE (CSA)
The premier human medicine journal index. MEDLINE
is a good source for the veterinary literature but not a comprehensive
one. The CSA environment provides links to full text online articles.
Science Citation Index (Web of Knowledge)
The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a unique and very powerful
tool that allows you to find out who has cited a paper since the date
that paper was published. All other journal indexes provide retrospective
searching (i.e. back in time). SCI allows you to search forward from
a given date. SCI is not a good journal index for comprehensive subject
searching since it only covers the core journals in a discipline.
Step 3: Organizing Your Research - RefWorks / PowerPoint / Learning Commons
RefWorks
RefWorks allows you to collect and organize references to journal articles and books, then generate a formatted bibliography using MS Word. RefWorks classes are held weekly during the fall and winter in the McLaughlin Library.
PowerPoint
A Yale University School of Medicine PDF guide (PDF – 103kb)to effective presentations, Wesleyan University Library's PowerPoint tutorial is a good overview.
The University of Guelph Learning Commons
The Learning Commons provides excellent resources for students — check out their Web site!
Take the Academic Integrity tutorial to protect yourself! Make sure you understand what constitutes plagiarism.