It is not unusual for students to have problems getting access to the library databases. Please don't despair! Read the information on the Database Access page, and if you still have problems, call our Help Desk at 215-497-8754.
The purpose of this guide is to assist you in conducting biology literature searches. Take a look at the quick demos I've created under the Databases tab above.
For search strategies, check out the Keywords tab.
For evaluation, including a primer on what 'scholarly' or 'peer reviewed' articles are, check out the Evaluation tab.
If you need assistance, feel free to email me, or contact the library through our Ask A Librarian page.
You may want to begin looking for topics in your text book, news sites, or our encyclopedic database CREDO Reference. This will give you terms to begin searching in the databases.
For example, searching "antibiotic-resistance" yielded among other things, the term "ABC Transporters" which can then be searched in the databases.
The main resources you'll likely use include:
Science - we have a direct subscription to this online (that is, you don't have to go through one of the databases to access it).
The following databases will be very useful:
Covers all subjects and many types of resources, with both scholarly and non-scholarly articles. A good place to start.
PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM)
