envs_157 spring 2007

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Environmental Studies 157- Writing for the Natural Sciences

Getting Started || Background Information || Databases || Cruzcat || Additional Help

Getting Started

Off Campus Access - To access the library research databases referenced on this guide from off campus, you will need to login to OCA. Click here for information regarding the service.

Make use of the library's How To Guides - particularly useful for this assignment are:

Organize your research results

Keep track of your successful keyword searches and subject headings and make note of the names of authors/scholars that come up related to your topic. The latter strategy will help decrease the number of duplicative searches you run.

The library has a sample research organization sheet available on-line.

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Background Information

Use the resources listed below to get an overview of your topic. Encyclopedias, bibliographies, and scholarly web pages are a good starting point for any research project. See How to Evaluate Information on the Web for help with assessing web pages.
Write down key dates, facts, statistics provided, look for a bibliography and make use of it.
Look up (in cruzcat) the titles of journals and books referenced in the encyclopedias, bibliographies or web pages and see if we own them at UCSC.

Science & Engineering On-line & Print Sources

The list below represents a sample of options, use Cruzcat to find more.

Gale Virtual Reference	on-line
Encyclopedia of Life Sciences	on-line
Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry	online
ENVIROnetBASE	on-line
Life on Earth an encyclopedia of biodiversity, ecology, and evolution	on-line
Encyclopedia of Environmental Science	S&E Reference GE10 .M66 2000
Encyclopedia of Space and Astronomy	S&E Reference QB136 .A55 2006
Encyclopedia of Physics	S&E Reference QC5 .E545 2005 v.1&2
Encyclopedia of Chemistry	S&E Reference QD4 .R57 2005
Earth Science	S&E Reference QE28 .E12 2001

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Selected Search Engines & Web Sites

Search Engines

SCIRUS: created by Elsevier, this is a search engine for the sciences. Use the advanced search feature to specify the kinds of results you want to receive. For example, select conference proceedings, abstracts, or, articles. You may also select which subject area you prefer to see results from - agricultural and biological, astronomy, etc.
Science.gov : information gateway to scientific information available from U.S. Government Agencies and web sites. The advanced search allows searching by topic, for example, agriculture, biology and nature, etc.

Web Sites

National Academies : private non-government, organization that serves as, "...an adviser [to the government] on scientific and technological matters." Useful resource for finding topics and learning about projects the Academies are undertaking. Select "publications" from the quicklinks list for access to selected full-text reports from the Academies.

National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) : U.S. government site. Access to biological data, images, maps, etc. This site pulls together research and data from multiple sources - government & non-government - and makes the information available through its portal. Very useful for finding data, reports, and for idea/topic generation.
U.S. Global Change Research Program : U.S. government site. Click on the library link for access to full-text reports. On the left side of the library page, select the "large collection of background papers" link for access to full-text reports from 1995 forward.
Environmental Health - NIEHS : U.S. government site. Link to the library for a list of NIEH publications (many are indexed in web of science) or, link to the on-line journal, Environmental Health Perspectives and read full-text articles from the journal on-line.
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Natural Sciences Portal : United Nations site that breaks issues down by theme - for example, ocean, fresh water, or renewable resources. Site provides links to reports, other recommended web sites - all are useful for finding information, keyword generation, or topic generation.
World Resources Institute : an environmental think tank. Select publications, or earth trends, for overviews of topics and/or access to full reports.
Worldwatch Institute : environmental research group. Click on publications link for a list of books and papers produced by the institute. Click on the publication images and look for relevant titles with free pdfs - many of the reports are available for download in pdf format for free. *Tech note: pdfs do not open in a readable format in the Firefox browser. Use Internet Explorer to open the pdfs on this page.
National Science Foundation : click on publications or discoveries for reports or topic overviews.
National Association of Science Writers - click on the resources quicklink and link to the online resources option.
Science Reporter - Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) publication. The ABSW site also has a link to its briefings - worth a look for keywords, names in the field, etc.

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Recommended UCSC Databases

Web of Science - Click on {Cited Ref Search} for a cited reference search.
This Web of Knowledge database provides access to all three parts of the Citation Index: Arts and Humanities, Social Science and Science. Search by subject, author, journal title. Cited Reference Search finds articles that cite an author or article that you specify.
Subject area(s): ['Art and Art History', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1975 - present

INSPEC - Index of citations for articles and conference papers on physics, electrical engineering, computers, and information technology. Contains abstracts.
Subject area(s): Science and Engineering. Covers: 1969 - present

Biosis -Citations and abstracts to journal articles in the life sciences. Very interdisciplinary within biology, including biochemistry, ecology, genetics, microbiology, ocean sciences, plant biology, and zoology. Database provider: ISI.
Subject area(s): Science and Engineering. Covers: 1969 - present

Expanded Academic - Infotrac - EA ASAP from Infotrac, formerly known as the Magazine and Journal Articles database or MAGS, contains citations for articles in popular magazines and scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and general sciences. Legal, business, and health journals are also included. Many records have abstracts and full text.
Subject area(s): ['Art and Art History', 'General Subjects', 'Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1980-present.

PubMed - This searchable database of citations to biomedical literature is the National Library of Medicine's version of MEDLINE.
Subject area(s): Science and Engineering. Covers articles written in mid-1960's - present.
Help is available for searching PubMed.

Lexis-Nexis - Formerly known as Lexis Nexis Academic Universe, this searchable full-text database is divided into five major content areas: News, Business, Legal Research, Medical Research, and Reference. The news section contains the text of many regional, national, and international newspapers and other news sources. The business section contains information on companies, business news, industries, and accounting. The legal section contains extensive information on state and federal case law as well as law reviews and legal news. The reference materials include country profiles, polls and surveys, and biographies. The medical section indexes medical journals and health news sources.
Subject area(s): ['General Subjects', 'Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Coverage varies depending on journal or news source.

America's Newspapers from Newsbank - This database contains searchable full text of newspapers from around the United States. Includes the Salinas Californian (2002-Current), Sacramento Bee (1984-Current), San Jose Mercury News (1985-Current), Washington Post (1977-Current), Miami Herald (1983-Current), and many more.
Subject area(s): General Subjects. Coverage varies depending on newspaper title.
Search only California newspapers.

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Cruzcat

Start with a keyword search in cruzcat.
Use the keywords you gathered through searching in the encyclopedias and web pages in cruzcat.
Make note of the subjects cruzcat uses to describe your topic; link from the subject headings to find more potentially relevant titles
If your topic is a person, try searching for your person as a subject in cruzcat, ex. last name, first name.
Use the modify or limit/sort button to focus your search
Send successful searches to your email account - put the keywords or subject terms you used in the message line to remind yourself of how you found the item

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- UC-wide catalog. Use this catalog to search for items not owned by UCSC.

Order items not owned at UCSC through Melvyl .

The latter is a service that allows UCSC faculty, staff and students to request items owned throughout the University of California system libraries and beyond.

NOTE: start your research early. Ordering books from outside of UCSC takes time. Allow a week for book delivery and 48 hours for article delivery.

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Additional Help

The pages listed below were compiled by UCSC librarians. These are excellent and extensive sites.

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Contact Kerry Scott (scottk@ucsc.edu). Updated 30 March 2007.

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