The Cabrillo College Library currently has over 30 databases available for student use, covering many different subject areas, including both scholarly and general audience periodicals. Two databases of particular interest to students in the sciences are Academic Search Premier and AccessScience.

Academic Search Premier is our largest periodical database, covering over 10,000 journals in many different subject areas, primarily from scholarly sources, including both fulltext and abstracted titles.

• From the library homepage ( libwww.cabrillo.edu), click on Full Text Articles
• Click on Academic Search Premier (included in most subject categories)
• Try a topic search, using the terms physiology and flight
  • Now narrow your search by fulltext sources, by scholarly journals, by publication dates
• Now try a search for a specific periodical:
  • Click on Publications at top of screen
  • Enter Biologist in Publications search box
  • Click on Biologist link, select a year and an issue at right, and explore!

AccessScience is a specialized full text science & technology database, from McGraw-Hill.

• From the library homepage ( libwww.cabrillo.edu), click on Full Text Articles
• Click on AccessScience (in Science & Technology category)
• Browsing on broad topics tends to be the most effective way to get to information:
  • Click on Biological & Biomedical Science
  • Now, click on Biological & Biomedical Science - General
  • Finally, click on Biodiversity
• You can also search on specific topics in the search box, but results are somewhat hit or miss:
• Search the terms color perception
• Now search the terms physiology flight

Google Scholar provides access to thousands of scholarly articles, mostly including only indexing or summaries of the article, but sometimes including the full text of the article. You can either do a simple search on the home page, or click on Advanced Scholar Search to do a more targeted search.

• Let's try searching the terms birds flight in the home page search box.
• Now, click on Advanced Scholar Search, and, on the where my words occur line, select in the title of the article.

What do you do with an article citation or summary? Most libraries provide a service called InterLibrary Loan (ILL), through which students or patrons may request fulltext copies of articles (and borrow copies of books) from many other libraries. The service is typically free, and can take from a couple of days to nearly a month, depending on where the item is being borrowed from. You can find more information about Cabrillo's ILL service at libwww.cabrillo.edu/about/ILL.html

The library reviews and collects hundreds of Internet links on virtually every subject taught at Cabrillo College, plus links in numerous other useful areas. These links are good starting places for researching a particular subject area.

• From the Library home page (libwww.cabrillo.edu):
• Click on Internet Links
• Scroll down & click on Biology, & explore!

When you research a topic, you are likely to find and use many different sources, and different types of sources. The resources you actually use in your research paper are the ones that you should list at the end of your report. This list of resources is sometimes referred to as a bibliography, sometimes as a works cited list. The intent of this list is not just to show your instructor (or publisher) where you obtained your information, but also allows anyone reading your report to duplicate your research and find the sources you reference inyour report. So, what information is necessary to include?

Style guides are sets of "rules" that explain what specific information to include, how to list sources, any special punctuation standards, and so on. Different fields of study typically use different style guide. For instance, English and literature classes typically use the MLA (Modern Language Association) style guide, and social science classes typically use the APA (American Psychological Association) style guide. You can find links to information on these and other style guides on the Style Guides page of the Library's Internet Links.

Anyone can publish on the Web. Does that mean that  anyone can produce good, reliable information? It is very important to evaluate what you find. In searching the web, you want to use resources that are not only current (if necessary) and relevant to your topic, but also from reliable, believable sources. Ask yourself questions like:

• Who produces or runs the website?
  • Male Pregnancy at RYT Hospital
• Is there any obvious bias? Are they trying to persuade you, or sell you something?
  • Republican Party website
  • Democratic Party website
• Can you tell where their information comes from? Remember, anyone can claim anything!
  • Continental Drift Webcam
  • Wikipedia encyclopedia

• Hanna Nevins - www.cabrillo.edu/~hnevins/
• Biology Department - (www.cabrillo.edu/academics/biology/

Georg Romero, 2/09