BIOL U599 - Biology Senior Seminar - Labanick: Home

uscupstate.libguides.com/BIO599Labanick

• Your review or research paper must be based on the RECENT primary literature, preferably within the past five years.
• You must receive permission for any article older than 10 years. For review papers, your discussion section must have a minimum of 8 articles from the primary literature evaluated (journal articles of original research), and secondary sources must not be used in the discussion.
• No more than one case study can be used. If you are writing a research paper you must have 8 primary sources used between the introduction and discussion sections.
• Review articles, books, newspapers, and magazines are secondary sources, can only be used in addition to the minimum number of primary sources, and can only play a small role in your paper​ (secondary sources are ONLY to be used in the introduction).
• Copies of all sources must be turned in with the final copy of your paper.

Primary Source Material: "Either created at the time of an event or period, or was later created by an actual participant or witness from that time." Samantha Sanders, uploaded to YouTube on Sep 22, 2010

Remember to search for the scientific name of plants and animals!

These search strategies work well in the library catalog and most databases. 

Boolean connectors- use AND, OR, NOT (sometimes AND NOT) to connect two or more search terms:

• AND finds all records with all of your search terms and narrows your search
• OR finds all records with one or more of your search terms and broadens your search
• NOT or AND NOT is used to exclude the following term and can help to focus a search where one term has different meanings or uses (e.g., Mexico NOT "New Mexico")

Phrases in Quotes - most databases and web search engines allow you to search for exact phrases by placing them in quotes:

• "carbon footprint"

Truncation - the library catalog and most databases use special characters to make searching easier in certain situations. Check the help screens in the catalog or database you are using to see what the special characters are for that resource.

• the asterisk * is often used to stand for mutliple endings on a word (singular, plural, etc.): vot* finds vote, voter, voters
• wildcards are similar, but replace another character in a word: wom?n in the library catalog finds both woman and women

Nesting - use parentheses to sort out the elements of a more complex Boolean search phrase, especially when you may want to search for more than one related term for one element of your phrase:

• (carbon OR ecological) AND footprint
• ("hip hop" OR rap) AND culture