Finding Information
Created by Brian Gibbens, Ph.D.
You Cannot Learn EVERYTHING
Pages published in PNAS
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Image from Scott Freeman, University of Washington
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The Goal
A. Find a few highly relevant high-quality references
that you will read carefully.
B. Find references that support all of your key facts
C. Don’t collect references just for the sake of
collecting them.
What’s your problem?
Finding Worthy Social Issues
A. http://www.globalissues.org/
B. Don’t know what your problem is?
C. The world is full of problems, have a look.
Where can I find Background
Information?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Your Textbook
Review Articles
NCBI Bookshelf
Google & Wikipedia
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books
Best Places for Primary Literature
PubMed (Citation Database)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
PubMed Central (Full text journal articles)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
Science Direct
http://www.sciencedirect.com/
Choosing a Search Term
A. Searching tips
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

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Use several different search terms
Start specific and then go broad if necessary
Do not use complete sentences
Use quotation marks to search for specific phrases
Use + & - to indicate what should and should not be included in the
search.
B. When you find an article
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Search again using key words form the title
Search the reference list for more promising papers
ISI Science Citation Index
A. Use after you have found a good
paper.
B. Finds recent papers which cite
your paper.
C. Access through the UMN library:
http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/3050
Impact Factors Indicate a Journal’s
Relative Importance in a Field
• Impact Factors = average
number of citations to
recent articles published in
the journal.
• ISI’s Journal Citation Reports
•
•
http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/7151
Select subjects
Sort by impact factor
Additional Resources
Human Genetic Diseases:
Geneclinics-Genereviews
A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/GeneTests/review?db=genetests
B. Provides comprehensive summaries of human genetic diseases
including causes, symptoms, and current treatments
Seminars can provide valuable up-todate information
BLINK-a quick link to UMN biology seminars.
CBS
CFANS
CLA
CSE
Environment
Medical School
Veterinary Medicine
http://www.cbs.umn.edu/about/seminars
Vertebrate Gene Information:
Ensemble Genome Browser
A. Provides lots of information about specific genes including
differential tissue expression and sequences of alternatively
spliced transcripts.
B. Vertebrates and eukaryotes only!
http://useast.ensembl.org/index.html
Helpful Bioinformatics Tools
PubMed Nucleotide and Protein Databases
Find gene and protein sequences
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein
BLAST
Search for similar genes within and between species
http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
ExPASy Bioinformatics Tools
Many tools
Translate mRNA
Find protein molecular weights
http://www.expasy.org/genomics
NCBI: Your Tax Dollars at Work
How To’s
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Is anyone else already doing it?
A. National Institute of Health (NIH) Award Reporter
http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm
B. National Science Foundation (NSF) Award Search
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/
C. United States Patent and Trademark Office
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/search/index.jsp
UMN Library
https://www.lib.umn.edu/
Faculty Lists (People you could contact)
Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and Genetics Faculty
Biomedical Engineering Faculty
Food Science & Nutrition Faculty
Microbial Engineering Faculty
Bio-energy Faculty
Agronomy and Plant genetics
Neuroscience
College of Food Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences
RSS FEEDS
Created by Brian Gibbens, Ph.D.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/RSS_icons
RSS Feeds
A. RSS = Really Simple Syndication
B. A type of web feed format used
to publish frequently updated
works.
C. Includes full or summarized text
+ metadata.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/RSS_icons
RSS Feeds
A. Available on most websites!
B. Read using feed readers or
aggregators.
C. Key advantage: Users no longer
have to manually track multiple
websites for updates.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/RSS_icons
NCBI
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
Amazon.com
A. All “Best Sellers” links have an RSS feed.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/rss/bestsellers/books/13469/ref=zg_bs_13469_rsslink
The New York Times
New York Times Science: http://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Science.xml
New York Times Environment: http://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Environment.xml
http://www1.umn.edu/news/subscribe/
Examples of Online Feed Aggregators
1. Feedly
2. Digg Reader
3. Bloglines
4. NewsBlur
Creating a Custom Google News RSS feed
A. Go to Google News
B. Search for a “a particular phrase”
C. Scroll to bottom of the page
https://news.google.com/
Create a Custom General RSS Feed
A. Go to Google Alerts
B. Enter in your
“search phrase”
C. Select email
updates or rss feed
D. Create Alert
http://www.google.com/alerts
Resources
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Getting Started with Google Reader
Build a custom RSS feed with Google News
How to find an RSS feed on a website
Syndic8: Find RSS and Atom new feeds
RSS URL Converter-Use UMN libraries to get
access restricted content
F. More RSS feed Readers