Finding information - ARTSSCI 1120.02 - Biological Sciences Scholars Seminar

It's complicated...

The majority of students who have taken this class cited the resources that were available through the library as the number one thing they wish that someone had told them about sooner. This ranged from the sheer amount of resources (about 10 million items) to the variety of types of items (books, eBooks, articles, educational media resources, streaming media, artwork, the list goes on...), the information available from the library is easily overwhelming! That's where subject guides and strategy come in - efficient navigation of these resources is key! So don't panic - we have people that can help!

Find Articles by Keyword/Subject

BIOSIS Previews
BIOSIS Previews, including Biological Abstracts, contains references to journal articles, reports, literature reviews, conference papers, patents, and book synopses in the life sciences. Coverage includes 5500 journals and 1500 international meetings in agriculture, biology, biotechnology, environment, wildlife, ecology, agriculture, forestry and the health sciences.
PubMed
PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, provides access to over 15 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1950's and additional life science journals. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.
Scopus
Scopus is a citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track analyze and visualize research. Tools to sort, refine and quickly identify results help researchers focus on the outcome of their work.
Web of Science Core Collection
Provides access to citation indexes which can be searched individually or as one file.
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index indexes 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals.
- Science Citation Index Expanded indexes 5,300 major journals across 164 scientific disciplines and contains searchable, full-length, English-language author abstracts for approximately 70 percent of the articles in the database.
- The Social Sciences Citation Index indexes 1,700 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals.
- Book Citation Indexes- Science and Social Sciences & Humanties indexes over 30,000 editorially selected books in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, with 10,000 new books added each year. It contains searchable, full-length, English-language author abstracts for approximately 60 per cent of the articles in the database.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a handy tool, but unfortunately can be riddled with fake information (one study showed 50% of results were fake science when searching for medical information). Avoid that by linking your Google account to OSU Libraries in your settings - if the results can also be found in the libraries, then they are aren't fake! If they aren't also in the libraries, use your critical information evaluation skills!

Find books and more

What is this searching? The OSU Library Catalog searches for print, electronic and other formats in the OSU Libraries collections. More Search Options >>

What is this searching? The OhioLINK catalog allows searching and requesting of scholarly materials located in the 90+ college and university member libraries around Ohio, plus the State Library of Ohio. More Search Options >>

What is this searching? WorldCat@OSU searches across 7 key databases for books, articles, and more. More Search Options >>

What is this searching? The SearchOhio Catalog allows searching and requesting of popular books, DVDs, CDs and other materials from 20+ public library systems throughout the state of Ohio. More Search Options >>

Setting alerts and save searches in PubMed

While setting up alert services can open you to tracking and spam in typical library databases, PubMed is the exception! Because PubMed is a government-sponsored database, they don't use your personal information for marketing purposes. The video below explains how to save searches and set up alerts!

Subject Guides

Subject guides are librarian-curated webpages that present the most useful information on a given subject area. Found at http://guides.osu.edu/, they are invaluable resources for determining what databases, websites, books, etc. are the most useful in that field.

Textbooks via the Library

There are two ways to get textbooks via the library: through course reserves and in our collections. If your instructor requests it, we can put any item on course reserves at any of our libraries. Students can then come check out that item, typically for two hours at a time. Many students scan the textbooks, and that is perfectly legal for personal use. Sometimes we have a textbook in our print collections, or it is available from a partner library, but that doesn't scale well, so we try and buy multiple-user eBooks when possible. Your instructor would need to contact their librarian to find out if the book is available as a multiple-user eBook at least four weeks before the class will need it. If a textbook is available as a multi-user eBook (and isn't entirely prohibitive in price), I will happily purchase it!