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Blackwell Resources for
Research
-Part A-
When you start to
search for information, you will need to first
understand both the information sources and the search
tools that you have to choose from. Online library
catalogs, journal article databases, electronic books or e-journals,
and independent web search engines - they're all geared
towards finding specific types of information. As
such the
search tool that you chose to use should ultimately
be geared towards the information (type) you need to find.
In Part A of this module, I'll
review the databases that the library provides and
recommends when looking for chemical information, and how
these databases differ from the independent search
engines that are everywhere on the web. Part B of
this module will cover our E-Book and E-Journal holdings,
and lastly will discuss how to search for monographic
(book) holdings within Blackwell Library's collection.
While there are
certainly a ton of independent web search engines out
there (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.), bear in mind that the
Blackwell-purchased databases have been chosen
specifically to support the classes taught at Salisbury.
They contain resources that have been selected,
organized, and indexed by experts in the field and as
such are easy to search. Also they provide valid and scientific
articles as search results, all of which will greatly
contribute towards your academic success.
Recommended
Databases for Searching Chemical Literature
American Chemical Society Journals:
(on-campus link)
The Publications Division of the American Chemical
Society provides the worldwide scientific community with
a comprehensive collection of the most-cited,
peer-reviewed journals in the chemical and related
sciences.
ACS Publications
publishes more than 35 journals,
Chemical & Engineering News,
ACS Legacy
Archives, and
the ACS
Symposium Series
via its award-winning web-based platform. ACS journals
are #1 in citations or Impact Factor in the seven core
chemistry categories as well as eight additional
categories.
BioMed Central:
(on-campus link)
BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and
Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access
publishing model.
All original research articles published by BioMed
Central are made freely and permanently accessible
online immediately upon publication. BioMed Central
views open access to research as essential in order to
ensure the rapid and efficient communication of research
findings. BioMed Central provides all
content/open access searching of the following
biochemistry-related journals:
- BMC Biochemistry
- BMC Structural Biology
- Cell Communication and Signaling
- Cell Division
- Chemistry Central Journal
- Nutrition & Metabolism
- PMC Biophysics
- Proteome Science
- Silence
MEDLINE:
(on-campus link)
Created by the National Library of Medicine,
MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)
indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and
explosion capabilities to search citations from over
4,800 current biomedical journals. MEDLINE
provides authoritative medical information on
medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine,
the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and
much more.
Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences: (on-campus link)
PNAS is one of the
world's most-cited multidisciplinary scientific
serials. Since its establishment in 1914, it
continues to publish cutting-edge research reports,
commentaries, reviews, perspectives, colloquium
papers, and actions of the Academy. Coverage in PNAS
spans the biological, physical, and social sciences.
PNAS is published weekly in print, and daily online
in PNAS Early Edition.
Science Direct: (on-campus link)
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific
database offering journal articles and book chapters
from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more
than 11,000 books. There are currently more than 9.5
million articles/chapters, a content base that is
growing at a rate of almost 0.5 million additions
per year. Elsevier has digitized as much of
the pre 1995 journal owned-content as possible,
bringing articles from as far back as 1823 (The
Lancet) to the desktop.
Web of Science:
(on-campus link)
Web of Science consists of
seven databases containing information gathered from
thousands of scholarly journals, books, book series,
reports, conferences, and more. The first
three citation databases contain the references
cited by the authors of the articles. You can use
these references to do cited reference searching.
This type of search allows you to find articles that
cite a previously published work.
The two conference proceedings citation indexes
include the published literature of the most
significant conferences, symposia, seminars,
colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide
range of disciplines. Use these databases to track
emerging ideas and new research in specific fields.
The two chemistry databases allow you to create
structure drawings to find chemical compounds and
reactions. You can also search these databases for
compound and reaction data.
How These
Databases Differ From Free Sites
Search engines such as
Google most certainly have their place in the world of
research - just not in the research that you need to be
doing for your Chemistry assignments. A Google
search on "nuclear energy" , for example, will get you
tons and tons of information. The slick
(super-secret, copyrighted, patented, highly-guarded)
Google algorithm that provides you with your search
result will most certainly work well, providing you with
a Wikipedia page first and foremost - giving you a
decent amount of information on what nuclear energy is.
Next it will give you a nuclear industry lobbying firm,
talking about clean, safe nuclear energy that isn't
nearly as polluting or harmful as fossil-fuel sources of
energy. Third you get a U.S Department of Energy
juvenile-focused site that would work for your kid
cousin who needs a quickie colouring page to keep them
occupied while the waitress brings dinner.
However to get a true
sense of what "nuclear energy" means to the United
States - both in the past, current, and future sense -
you've got to wade through three or four pages of search
results to get the full picture. And who has the
time or motivation for that?
Using a
Blackwell-Library provided database to search in, you
can get balanced, educated articles written by experts
in the field each and every time you search. In
the JSTOR journal-article database, a search on the term
"nuclear energy" gets you the following five search
results:
- The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy
Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of
Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe. By
Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak. In:
Social Problems, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May,
1995), pp. 235-251.
- The Promise of Nuclear Energy. By James T.
Ramey In: Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol.
410, The Energy Crisis: Reality or Myth (Nov.,
1973), pp. 11-23.
- Sociologists Should Reconsider Nuclear Energy.
By Otis Dudley Duncan. In: Social
Forces, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Sep., 1978), pp.
1-22.
- Elite Ideology and Risk Perception in Nuclear
Energy Policy. By Stanley Rothman, S. Robert
Lichter In: The American Political
Science Review, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Jun., 1987),
pp. 383-404.
- The Dissemination of Geographical Findings
on Nuclear Power. By Martin J. Pasqualetti.
In:
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
New Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1986), pp. 326-336.
Right from the
beginning, the difference and value between the Google
search and the JSTOR search is tangible. Now, of course, the
obviousness with which you find valuable information in
a scholarly database versus a search engine is
indirectly proportional to the complexity of the issue.
That is, if you search for a lower-academic topic such
as automobile recalls, there are going to be dozens and
dozens of popular/academic articles on your topic that
you can find via the Google search engine. Not
necessarily great articles, or the best articles
for your research paper, but you will still find results
that you could use. The higher up the
academic/scholarly food chain that you go, the less
likely you are to find workable search results in search
engines such as Google or Bing, and the more likely you
are to find a plethora of scholarly sources in academic
databases.
I mean, think about it - how
many members of the general public are frequently
blogging with any sort of authority or accuracy on
made-to-order glycoproteins?
After taking the quiz below, be sure
to check out Part B of this module
which will cover our E-Book and E-Journal holdings,
and lastly will discuss how to search for monographic
(book) holdings within Blackwell Library's collection.
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