Finding information in
articles
Katie Newman, Biotechnology Librarian
florador@illinois.edu
&
Melody Allison, Assistant Biology Librarian
mmalliso@illinois.edu
MCB 252: Cells, Tissues, & Development
Funk ACES Library, Room 509
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 … 11:00 am-1:00 pm & 1:00-3:00 pm
Neuroscience Program, Merit Students
Seth Ament, TA & Elizabeth Blinstrup, Course Coordinator
This presentation can be found at: www.library.illinois.edu/biotech/teaching/
Today we are going to ….
• Get acquainted with Library resources and how to find
them
• From a biomedical research news article (secondary
source)
• Find the scholarly research publication article (primary
source) upon which the news article was based
Navigating Key Resources from the Library
• Main Gateway:
www.library.illinois.edu/
• Library Catalog:
…to find books & journals (paper / electronic)
• Online Research Resources (ORR):
…to find e-journals and the tools (indexes) with which to
locate the articles IN journals
www.library.illinois.edu/orr/ See flyer for top bio-ag indexes!
• Easy Search:
…to find the tool that has the most information about a
topic
Let’s look at a science news article
• Go to the ORR
• Open the index, Academic Search Premier
• Search for:
– Science News …. In So Journal Name
and
– Nerve cells …
– Published: 2007 – 2009
• Browse the results list and find the article “Mouse, Heal
Thyself”
• Read / browse the article, and see if you can figure out
how to find the original (primary) article on which this
news item (secondary article) is based.
[5 minutes on your own]
“Journals” vs “Magazines”
• What is the difference between “Journals” (primary
sources such as Nature Medicine) and “Magazines”
(secondary sources such as Science News, Scientific
American)
See: http://tinyurl.com/dcn9jz, from the Biology Library
website http://www.library.illinois.edu/bix/, for a
comparison of the traits of journals & magazines
Let’s Explore PubMed
• Can you find the primary article in PubMed? [5 minutes]
• Now you can utilize various PubMed features to identify
other relevant articles
–
–
–
–
Click on Related Articles for other articles on the topic
Click on the author’s name for other articles by author
View in Citation mode to view subject headings
Search “Journals Database” to find out if PubMed indexes a
journal
– Find a review article on a topic
• Locate full text copies of articles using ‘Discover,’ the
ORR, or Interlibrary loan
• Print or email PubMed search results
• Login to set up Search Alerts and customize PubMed
Tips and Tricks for Searching PubMed
• Truncate (stem words) with an asterisk (*)
 neur*
Note: this turns off automatic term mapping (ATM) to MeSH
terms
• Use Limits tab to restrict search to an author, journal, range
of years, type of article (e.g., review articles)
• Use Details tab to see the behind the scenes search (ATM)
that was performed
 if search for nerve cells, PubMed searches for that, but
also NEURONS
• To search for a phrase, enclose words in quotation marks.
However, this will turn off ATM
 “nerve cells”
PubMed vs. Google Scholar
• Indexed by human experts
• Uses automated extraction of
information from text and
citations
• Searches default fields (e.g.,
title, author, etc.)
• Searches full text – may need
subscription to read articles
• Easily find what journals are
indexed (affects ‘cited by’,
what time frame covered
• Don’t know what journals are
being searched (affects ‘cited
by’), what time frame covered.
• Controlled vocabulary (subject
headings) which can be
utilized for searching
• No controlled vocabulary
(subject headings)
• Can select and work with
MANY citations at a time
• Can work with 1 citation at a
time
• Know which journals it indexes
• Don’t know which journals are
being indexed
Let’s Review … Finding tools
Online Library Catalog
Periodical Indexes (e.g., PubMed)
• Free to use
• Usually subscribed to by the
University
• Used to find books, journals,
newspapers, DVDs, CDs, and
other materials, print or
electronic, owned by the library
• Used to locate individual articles
• Cannot search for individual
articles. Rather, used to locate
journal and magazine titles that
contain individual articles.
• Indexes articles within a certain set
of journals. Databases may overlap
in content
• Provides information about
resources owned by a particular
• May or may not have links to full text
to any given article. If not, you may
have to use the ORR to find the
journal that has the full text
And remember if you need help ……
...ask a librarian!