Spring 2008 - Mary Harrington
Reference contact: Rocco Piccinino x2952

BOOKS AND MEDIA

Help Finding Books

Moodle/E-Reserves
Login to course websites to access course readings, syllabi, discussions and more.

MIT Cognet Library: Brain Sciences Connection - Full Text
Full-text of 500 MIT Press books and 6 reference publications, all of MIT’s journals and the abstracts of over 30 others, conference proceedings, and Open Course Ware in the cognitive sciences, including neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics.

Book Reviews

PsycCritiques - Full Text
The American Psychological Association's (APA) publication for book reviews in the behavioral sciences. Continues APA's Contemporary Psychology.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Library Databases

PubMed (Medline) - From 1950s to present
Provides access to over 14 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950's. Check out Medline Tutorial.

Biological Abstracts - 1987 to present
Indexes articles in the life sciences and biomedical fields, including biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, zoology, agriculture, etc.

PsycINFO - 1887 to present - PsycINFO tutorial
Covers psychology and related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, sport, pharmacology, physiology, and linguistics. Worldwide coverage includes references to over 1300 journals, dissertations, and book chapters.

Web of Science - 1965 to present
Indexes and abstracts over 5,300 science and technical journals published around the world. Provides unique cited reference searching in addition to keyword and other search options.

Annual Reviews: Biomedical Sciences - Full Text
Selected full-text and index.

Expanded Academic Index - 1980 to present. MLIN - Full Text
Full text access to scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers. Covers the arts and humanities, the social sciences, science and technology, across all academic disciplines.

Google Scholar - Help
Links to scholarly books, articles and more. Results are incomplete and vary greatly by subject. Always use other library databases for a complete search of scholarly topics.

PsycARTICLES - 1988 to present - Full Text
Contains the full text of articles from APA journals and selected Educational Publishing Foundation journals.

Journal Finding Tools

Look for SC Links: , or use Smith's Journal Locator to access journals by title. Connect to the Five College Library Catalog to find call numbers for bound periodicals kept in the basement floor of the Young Science Library.

INTERNET SITES

Neurosciences on the Internet

WWW Virtual Library: Neuroscience (Biosciences)

WWW Virtual Library: Psychology

Yahoo: Psychology

Psych Web - includes APA Style Resources

Scirus - search engine for Science Direct and science resources on the web

BEWARE, it is up to you to evaluate all your sources of information, whether they are print or from the internet.

SEARCHING TIPS

Whether you are searching for books in the Five College Library Catalog, or searching for scholarly literature in a library database, it pays to be organized as you start your search. I like to break down searching into a three step process:

STEP 1
Write down as much information about your topic as possible. Answer the following questions:

• What is your topic?
• What questions do you have?
• What do you know? What don't you know?

Then, try to summarize what you are looking for in one or two sentences.

EXAMPLE: I would like to measure or analyze some behavioral tasks performed by mice, specifically C57 and 129 strains of mice, using the following kinds of tests: Barnes maze; open field test; elevated plus maze, rotarod.

STEP 2
Using the information in Step 1, list the main concepts of your topic.

EXAMPLE: mice, tests, types of behavior

STEP 3
Now create a list of synonyms of your key concepts. Think broadly, think narrowly! This step is helping you expand your search by expressing your query in a variety of ways. If you get too many results, then you can work on focusing your search.

You will use the word lists you developed in Step 3 to create search strategies. Use "OR" between synonyms and "AND" between concepts. For instance:

(mice OR c57 OR 129) AND barnes maze AND memory

DOWNLOAD this worksheet (with *bonus* search tips!) to help you organize your search strategy.

ORGANIZATIONS

Scholarly Societies Project

Society for Neuroscience

RELATED SMITH WEB SITES

Clark Science Center

Neuroscience Program

Psychology Department

Young Science Library

HELP WITH CITATION STYLE

You are expected to select a standard citation style and to document sources correctly and consistently. If needed, suggestions for formatting your bibliography are given below.

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THIS LIBRARY CLASS?

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HELP FROM A LIBRARIAN

See Need Help? Ask a Librarian! to send a question via e-mail at any time or live (chat) during reference desk hours. Or contact Reference librarian Rocco Piccinino directly.

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