Objective
As you begin to work on your science fair projects, class discussions, and write laboratory
reports for class, you will need to know how to find sources of information relevant to
your project. The objective of this exercise is to acquaint you with how to search the
University of Mississippi’s library system to find references in the library catalog as well
as in several of the on-line science databases (e.g. Lexis-Nexis, Basic BIOSIS, Carl
Uncover).
The following examples listed below are just to get you started and are by no means
inclusive of all the databases available to you so keep your options open.
References Sources
Library Catalog
The library catalog is an index to all the references (e.g. books, journals, government
documents, etc.) that the UM library owns. You can do a keyword search to find any
books related to your topic however, the catalog does not reference the journal articles
that are available. You will need to search the reference databases.
Reference Databases
To look for more current sources of information, it is best to try the reference databases
available on CD-DOM through the UM web site. These scientific and non-scientific
databases include, but are not limited to, the following examples.
1. Basic BIOSIS provides science information that is fairly easy to understand.
2. EBSCOhost allows you to search magazine and journal articles of interest.
3. Lexis-Nexis searches general news sources such as newspapers, magazines, and
journals. However, they do not reference all the news sources in circulation but
merely the ones from the Lexis-Nexis service.
Both EBSCOhost and Lexis-Nexis provide some full text articles that can be printed or
emailed. The problem with the references from these sources is that they may be highly
biased in their reporting of the topic. You will have to thoroughly review many of the
articles to create a full picture of the issues of your topic.
4. Biological Abstracts provides a citation as well as an abstract to the reference. The
abstract allows you to decide if the content of the article will be useful. Just
remember that you still need to read the entire article before you use it.
5. Carl Uncover allows you to search the table of content entries of journals. Unlike
Biological Abstracts, it does not give you any abstracts to the articles. To search this
database, simply hit the icon that reads “Search Now”.
Chain-searching
Once you have found several reference articles on your topic, you can look over the
bibliography of those articles to find other references. Similarly as you get more articles,
you can look in those articles to find even more references. At some point there will be
fewer new references in the bibliographies. This is an indication that you are close to
finding many of the articles on your topic.
Getting started
1. Access the UM web page (www.olemiss.edu)
2. Click on the text “Libraries and Museums”
3. Click on the link “University Libraries”
4. Click on the text “On-line Resources”
The first four steps of “Getting started” should take you to the library’s web page. From
here, you can select or link to the library catalog or search the alphabetical list of
electronic databases.
How to search
The articles can be indexed by some of the following headings: 1) author(s), 2) title, 3)
subject, and 4) key word. In each of the search pages, you have the option of searching
one of the above headings. Generally, you would start with the subject or key word
heading to find any articles related to your topic. You must decide which key words or
set of words are best at retrieving references. For example, you may want to find
references on the topic of early emergence (i.e. metamorphosis) in insects. If you use
“metamorphosis” as a key word, you may find a number of references about
metamorphosis in frogs in addition to insects. Some indexes allow you to limit your
search with “Boolean operators”. These terms include “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT”. So
you might search again with “metamorphosis” AND “insects”. If you have difficulty
finding references it may be that your search is too narrow or too broad. Also, the
searches are very sensitive to the correct spelling of your search words, and the singular
and plural form of the search word.
How to get your article once you have a reference
Some of the databases may provide you with the full text article. More often than not,
you have to go to the library catalog to see if the library has the book or journal you are
interested in retrieving. You can look this up in the library catalog under “Journal Title”
and obtain the call number (e.g. QL750.A2) for the journal. Also, the library may have
the journal but not that particular issue or year. You have to check the holdings!
Most of the journals and books are on the first and second floor and are arranged by their
call number (see attached map). If you have any difficulty finding your journal or book,
ask a librarian for help.
One last thing
Some of the reference databases (e.g. Biological Abstracts) give you the abstract of the
article. It is very tempting to just read this instead of the entire paper. You should not
cite an article or book you have not read completely.