Research Tutorials

Get Started http://www.lib.pdx.edu/instruction/survivalguide/getstartedmain.html Find Books http://www.lib.pdx.edu/instruction/survivalguide/booksmain.html Find Articles http://www.lib.pdx.edu/instruction/survivalguide/articlesmain.html Find Web Sites http://www.lib.pdx.edu/instruction/survivalguide/websitesmain.html Boolean Operators (Laura Cohen, SUNY Albany) http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html Write & Cite http://www.lib.pdx.edu/instruction/survivalguide/writeandcitemain.htm

Finding Books

When searching for books on a topic, your best choices in the Library catalog (Vikat) are keyword searching and subject searching. Subject searching requires you to have some knowledge of the terms assigned to book topics by librarians. Some examples are listed below: Bioinformatics Biology data processing Computational biology Genomics Immunoinformatics Information storage and retrieval medicine Medical informatics Medical telematics Medicine data processing Microbial genomics Neuroinformatics Physiological genomics Plant proteomics Proteomics Structural bioinformatics Keyword searching is a more flexible way of combining search terms to retrieve books on your topic. When using keywords, be sure to think of synonyms (or related terms) for your search terms. You can also combine terms with the word and to make your results more relevant. For example: plant and genomics   Remember, too, that you are not just limited to what we own in our Library. Whenever you are searching, you have the option of expanding your results by clicking on the Search Summit button in the upper right hand corner of the results screen. This automatically repeats your search in the Summit catalog of the Orbis Cascade Alliance. If you find an item in that catalog that you'd like to see, click on the REQUEST THIS ITEM link and follow the directions on the screen. You can also browse the shelves to find books of interest. The primary call number areas to look at are: Bioinformatic: QH324.2-QH324.25 Genomics: QH447-QH447.8 Medical informatics: R858-R859.7   If you cannot find what you need in the our catalog (Vikat) or the catalog of the Orbis Cascade Alliance (Summit), then you might try WorldCat. WorldCat Contains more than 30 millions records for materials cataloged by the Library of Congress and OCLC member libraries, including most academic and many public libraries in the U.S. Catalog includes books, serials (journals, magazines and newspapers), musical scores, recordings, videos, computer software, films, maps and manuscripts. Locations for all materials are cited. Can be searched by author, title, subject, year, language, material type.

Finding Journal Articles

To find articles in journals you will need to use one of the Library's print indexes or article databases. An index or article database will allow you to look for articles by title, by author, or by a few keywords that describe your topic. Most of the Library's electronic databases can be accessed from off-campus with your Odin/Webmail account. ACM Guide to Computing Literature (early 1960s-present) One of the primary indexes to the computer science literature. This database indexes both journal articles and conference proceedings. Much of the material in this index is available full-text. BIOSIS Previews (1990-present) BIOSIS Previews is the primary index for the biological sciences. It comprehensively indexes the biological literature. Older years are available in print form in Biological Abstracts (Reference Z5321 .B56).   CiteSeer A major full-text computer science database. Items are submitted by the authors themselves, so it is not comprehensive. Also includes citation indexing. Health Source Plus: Nursing/Academic Edition An index to academic and clinical medical journals. Not as comprehensive as Medline, but has a few hundred journals full-text.   MathSciNet (1949-present) The primary index to mathematics and statistics. Medline (1966-present) The primary medical index. This is a very comprehensive database and the best source for medical informatics or for most materials dealing with human physiology.

	Finding Background Information
	Encyclopedic Dictionary of Genetics, Genomes, and Proteomics. George P. Rédei (2nd edition) Reference QH427 .R43 2003

Page developed by Michael Bowman Please send comments to bowman@pdx.edu Last updated: 5 April 2005