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Biology Research: How to Find Scholarly Journal Articles and Books

Everything you need to get started finding scholarly journal articles and books.

 

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Introduction 

   This Library Guide is intended as a convenient starting point for your research.  You will undoubtedly have questions that are not answered here; this is normal.  Please rely on assistance from the expert researchers, the librarians.  We are here to help you succeed!  Use our Ask a Librarian service.  You also can make Research Appointments with individual librarians.  Librarian Bonnie Petry is the Biology liaison.  Look for the big blue Ask a Librarian and Research Appointments buttons throughout our website:

Ask a Librarian and Research Appointments buttons.

     You also might find another one of our Library Guides very useful: Doing Your Research From Home.

KEYWORD SEARCH STRATEGIES

TO FIND ARTICLES OR BOOKS IN THE

RECOMMENDED DATABASES

Use quotation marks around multiple word phrases to search those words, in that order, as one unit.  NOTE: single keywords do not need quotation marks.

Examples: "jumping spiders" also "scanning electron microscopes".

Use the truncation symbol (*) to search all different endings of a word at once.

Examples: environment* will retrieve environmentally, environments, and environmental.

Use words or phrases that are spelled differently, but mean the same thing.

Examples: bird also fowl.

MORE HELP WITH KEYWORD SEARCH STRATEGIES

RECOMMENDED DATABASES FOR ARTICLES

When searching a recommended database for scholarly journal articles, add additional keywords to the strategies above in order to narrow your results.

Examples:

  • "jumping spiders" temperature habitat
  • melanoma gender survival
  • "scanning electron microscopes" tardigrades

HELP FOR NARROWING A TOPIC AND FINDING FULL TEXT

THE RECOMMENDED DATABASE FOR BOOKS

OneSearch is the database that finds books at this library, many of which are full text online.

When you begin typing a search into OneSearch, you will see a drop down menu.  Click on Books & Media CSUSB  NOT on the search button.

Biology invertebrates sample search in the OneSearch database.

Once you get your list of search results, if you only want to see the books that are online, use the left hand toolbar to click in the box next to Full-text online as shown below:

Box to click for Full-text online filter.

and then click the big green Apply Filters button:

Big, green apply filters button.

HOW OUR EBOOKS WORK

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