MC Library Research Guides: BIOL 150: Find Sources: Biology 150

Background Information and Applications Resources For Lab Report

Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Environment Complete offers coverage in areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.
Gale In Context: Environmental Studies This link opens in a new window
Explore topics and events within Earth systems, global change, pollution, populations, and more. Integrates case studies, news, reference materials, academic journals, videos, and more.
Biological Science Collection (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text journal articles, abstracts, and citations to a wide range of research in biomedicine, biotechnology, zoology and ecology, and some aspects of agriculture and veterinary science.
Gale In Context: Science This link opens in a new window
Includes thousands of topic overviews, experiments, biographies, pictures, illustrations, and the latest scientific developments covered in articles from over 200 magazines and academic journals and links to quality web sites.
Merck Index Online This link opens in a new window
An encyclopedia of chemicals, drugs, and biologicals that contains more than 10,000 monographs. Each monograph in this authoritative reference source is a concise description of a single substance or a small group of closely related compounds.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
Provides openly-available, peer-reviewed scientific research in biomedical and life sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. PubMed is developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information in the National Library of Medicine.
ScienceDirect Elsevier Science Journals This link opens in a new window
Online access to Elsevier journal subscriptions in the physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.

Amylase overview from ScienceDirect
Maltose overview from ScienceDirect
PubChem
Technical info on maltose, especially structure.

CDC: Data & Statistics
Centers for Disease Control list of statistics by topic. Use for health, medical, and disease related topics.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista provides access to statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on more than 600 industries. In addition to tables and charts, Statista also provides infographics and studies on selected industries and topics.
Statistical Abstract of the United States This link opens in a new window
Online version of the Statistical Abstract of the United States; provides a comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.

Search Strategies

The MC Library has access to different kinds of search tools:

RaptorSearch: Searches across most of the information that you can access through the MC Library. Find books, e-books, streaming audio and video, and DVDs and CDs as well as articles and other electronic resources from databases available through the library.
Databases: Collections of articles, videos, images, or other types of sources. Some databases cover a wide range of subject areas or source types (multidisciplinary), while other databases are discipline or format based (e.g., PsycINFO or AP Images).

Use the tabs in the box below to find suggested databases or other search tools to use for a variety of types of sources.

MC students, faculty, and staff can access all of our search tools and online resources from on or off-campus.

Research Skills & Tips:

How to Access Library E-Resources

Identify Different Types of Information Sources
by Niyati Pandya Last Updated Oct 9, 2023 496 views this year

Unlike Google, library databases can't understand an entire sentence. You'll need to break your topic down into the most important ideas: the keywords.

Keywords are individual words or short phrases that represent the main ideas in your topic, thesis, or research question.

Example Question: Enzymes in industry?

Keywords: enzyme, business

After you've identified your main ideas and some keywords to start with, think of additional search terms for each concept. These can be synonyms, related ideas, broader terms, or narrower terms. Since a database will match only what you type, using different terms for similar ideas can help you find more articles.

Example Search Terms:

industry: manufacturing
enzyme: amylase, maltose, catalyst, protein
food: nutrition, diet
living cells: molecules, atoms

Now that you have identified keywords, you will enter them in your chosen search tool's search box. Try more than one combination to find different sources.

Use the search operators AND & OR to combine your search terms. Use quotation marks to search for a specific phrase, with the words in that exact order: "social media"

Use AND between your main ideas to narrow your search (all words will be found in each source):

enzymes and "living things"
enzymes and digestion and "weight loss"

Diagram shows overlap between gov't & free speech

Use OR to look for related search terms, in one search (at least one of the search words will be found in each source). This will increase the number of sources you find. Put related search terms in parentheses, and combine with other terms:

enzymes and (food or nutrition)
endangered or threatened species

Diagram shows social media & internet highlighted

Research Skills & Tips:

Search Library Databases Effectively
by Niyati Pandya Last Updated Dec 6, 2023 206 views this year

Filter Results:

To make your results more manageable, use the database filters to limit your search results. For example:

Full-text access: To ensure that all items from your search results include the entire article or publication, select "full text" from filtering/refining options on the search results page.
Source types: If you know you only need peer-reviewed journal articles, select peer reviewed. Or, if you want to see only magazine articles, e-books, or another type of source, you can select only what you need.
Publication date: If your sources must be from within the last five years, you can set the year of publication to reflect that.

These options may be found in different locations of a database’s results page. In RaptorSearch, filter options are found on the left.

You can also set these options before you search from the Advanced Search screen in most databases.

Sort Results:

Most database search results will be sorted by relevance. You can change this to sort by newest first, oldest first, etc. Look for the sort options near the top of the results list.

Find Sources

This page will help you choose where and how to search for your sources. As you search, use the tips on this page to help you evaluate each source you find.