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BIO 500: Avian Mating Systems

This guide was created to help Biology students in their senior seminar courses. You will find resources for help with your research.

Library Sources

The following pre-populated links lead to a list of books ordered by certain topics or subjects available in the library catolog. The search string and words are noted below the links. 

kw= keyword

Biology Databases

ScienceDirect

Provides full-text and abstracts to over 2,500 journals published by Elsevier and its affiliates. ScienceDirect includes extensive coverage in science, engineering and medicine, plus many core journals in business, social sciences and humanities.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides access to the world's leading citation databases in the Sciences, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities, covering approximately 12,000 of the highest impact journals, as well as 160,000 conference proceedings. Centre has access to coverage from 1999 to present.

Springer Journals

Provides access to more than 2,000 STEM journals.

PubMed

An online database of citations to biomedical and other life science literature, created by the US National Library of Medicine. Its largest component is the MEDLINE bibliographical database. PubMed Central is a digital archive of literature drawn from biomedical and life science journals and linked to the PubMed database.

Web of Science

Search Tips

  • Search in the basic search box on the homepage.
  • Use truncation marks to expand your search terms.  An * substitutes for zero or more character (e.g., *carbon* returns results for carbon, hydrocarbon, carbonate, polycarbonate, etc.).  A $ substitutes for zero or one character (e.g., favo$rite returns favorite and favourite).  A ? substitutes for exactly one character only (e.g., en?oblast returns endoblast and entoblast).
  • Default search results are by order of publication.  However, you can quickly see the most influential articles on a topic with the "sort by" dropdown box.  Simply select "times cited -- highest to lowest" in the dropdown menu.

Bells & Whistles

  • Follow the research trail. Once you select an article, you can find other articles which have cited it by clicking on the "Times Cited" link in the righthand column. 
  • Save your favorite articles. Requires account creation and login.
  • Re-run recent searches. Use the "Select recent search" dropdown box to select a search from your current session.

Biology Journals

ScienceDirect

Search Tips

  • Browse: Click the "Browse" tab in the green bar at the top of the page; browse titles alphabetically, by subject, or limit browsing to only those titles in your "Favorites" list (requires account creation and login). To see only those titles for which Centre College has full-text availability, be sure the "Full-text available" box is checked and the "Abstract only" box is unchecked.
  • Search: Click the "Search" tab in the green bar at the top of the page. To limit results to full-text articles only, Use the "Source" dropdown box to select "Subscribed journals" (or, if you have an account, you can use the "My favorite journals" selection to limit results to titles from your "Favorites" list).
  • Use the "Related Articles" box on the citation detail page to find similar articles.

Bells & Whistles

  • Home screen (after logon): Displays up to 100 most recent searches, journals viewed, etc. (this feature can also be disabled); list of "Quick Links" to favorite journals and books as well as saved articles; news about latest ScienceDirect features and links to tutorials and help guides.
  • Save articles to your "Quick Links" list. Simply copy the URL of the html article format, go back to the "Home + Recent Actions" page, click the "Add to My Quick Links" under the "Quick Links on the Web" heading. Give the link a name and paste the article link in the URL box.
  • Alerts: Create your own search alert, or use one of the pre-set "Topic Alerts."
  • Top 25 feature: View the top 25 most frequently-downloaded articles by subject, or sign up to have the "Top 25" for your chosen subjects emailed to you.

JSTOR

Search Tips

  • Click the Search tab at the top of the page.
    • "Basic Search" allows results to be limited by discipline.
    • "Advanced Search" allows further limiting by material type, publication date range, language, and journal title.

Bells & Whistles

  • Save your favorite articles. Requires account creation and login.
  • Re-run recent searches. Use the "Select recent search" dropdown box to select a search from your current session.

                                                                

Multidisciplinary Databases

Academic Search Complete

Designed for college students, this scholarly resource contains indexing and abstracts for more than 13,780 journals, with full-text for more than 9,000 of those titles.

JSTOR

Provides image and full text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in several social sciences and humanities disciplines including African-American Studies, Anthropology, Economics, Education, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology. The most current issues (typically from the past three to five years) are not included.

Academic Search Complete

Search Tips

  • Check the "Full Text" and "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" boxes. This will filter your results to only those articles that are available in full text (not just as abstracts) and that have been peer-reviewed (that is, vetted by experts in a particular field).

Bells & Whistles

  • "Narrow Results By..." feature: The left-hand column on the search results page allows you to limit your results by a variety of criteria, including subject heading and publication title.
  • "Limit Your Results" feature: Allows you to further limit the results list to only those articles which list references, or by publication date using the date slider.
  • "Visual Search" option: Allows you to see a cascading list of results by subject. Article titles specifically related to a subject will display at the bottom of the column.
  • "Search History/Alerts" feature: See a list of searches from the current session; re-run, combine, or delete searches; save searches for subsequent sessions (permanant or temporary 24-hour save, or set up an email alert with customizable parameters); retrieve saved searches; edit alerts and alert settings. (Note: Saving and retrieving searches and setting up search alerts requires creating and logging into a free account.)