BME Graduate Seminar: Career Building Blocks 2012
Library and Information Resources

September 20, 2012

Ted Baldwin - Head, College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) Library, x64211

Important basics:

• CEAS Library: www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/ceas/
  • 850 Baldwin Hall
  • Jim Clasper, Reference Librarian, 556-1452
• Health Sciences Library (East Campus): www.libraries.uc.edu/hsl/
• 231 Albert Sabin Way (Entrance is E005 MSB / Medical Sciences Building)
• Reference Librarian, x85628
• CEAS Library Reference Guide on Biomedical Engineering: guides.libraries.uc.edu/biomedicalengineering
• Finding out about books: use UC Library Catalog and Books Online
• Finding out about journal articles, patents, and theses: use Databases and Full Text Journals
• For in-depth info on patents: see CEAS Library Reference Guide on Patents: www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/ceas/guide/patent.html

Defining a topic:

• Consult with your advisor or other group member.
• Check out faculty or researchers whose names you know and see what they are doing in databases and web sites.
• Look at theses at UC, in OhioLINK (keyword search and limit material type to thesis).  See OhioLINK's Electronic Theses & Dissertations: http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/ .
• Look at books, reviews, encyclopedias and handbooks to get background information.
• Use the funnel approach:
  • name a broad area name a subarea name a specific topic within the subarea
  • what aspect to look at: theory, application, design, material, construction process, function, use data
  • what are your independent variables? your dependent variables

Search tips:

• For subject searching, start with keyword
  • Combine synonyms (OR words together) to create a set of terms for a concept
  • Combine sets with AND to limit search to the intersection
  • In each database, learn how to use truncation, wild cards, and proximity operators to refine search
  • Use search history to combine search statements
  • Examine search result record to see what subjects have been assigned (if any) to the record. These subjects may be used to expand to all records on the same subject.
  • Expand to related articles, if opportunity exists (usually based on common references)
  • Use citation searching and browsing features, if any
• For author searching, beware varying forms of name.
  • In Web of Knowledge (Science Citation Index), only initials are used for most articles: e.g., Lee, JH. Try WOK's Author Finder to browse author names, e.g. Mast D, and refine results by institution to narrow down to the proper Mast D.  Check full name and research area.
  • In other databases, browse author name index if unsure, or to pull up variants of same author's name including possible misspellings.  Check topic of research and institutional affiliation to make sure you have the right author.
• To narrow your results
  • use advanced search option
  • use " " or possibly ( ) to identify a phrase , and
  • use refine or limit features such as date, material type (journals only, conferences only, patents only, theses only, online only), or treatment (theoretical, applied, historical, scholarly, review, etc)
  • search your topic in title only (this works very well for Internet searches)

Where to look:

(selected from CEAS Library Reference Guide on Biomedical Engineering: guides.libraries.uc.edu/biomedicalengineering)

• UC Library Catalog and Books Online and OhioLINK ETD Center (electronic theses and dissertations from Ohio)
• PubMed
• Compendex
• SCOPUS or SCOPUS Patents (or other patent database)
• OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center (EJC)
• Science Citation Index Expanded (ISI Web of Science)
• Academic Search Complete
• Specialized indexes
  • INSPEC for electrical, computer, physics
  • IEEE Xplore for full-text of all IEEE and IEE
  • Engineered Materials Abstracts for materials aspects
  • Biological Abstracts / Biosis Previews for biological approach
  • BioMed Central for open-access journals in biomedical engineering
  • SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts).  Must register with individual account to access.
  • SPIE Digital Library (optics, photonics, imaging)
  • Scientific.net (full-text of Trans Tech publications, includes biomaterials)

Web searching:

• Engines
  • SCOPUS has web component (a.k.a. Scirus)
  • Google Scholar
• Tips
  • Use advanced searching to control words, where it searches, domains
  • Use Google Scholar's Advanced Scholar Search (see Advanced Search Tips).  For example you can limit to domain using site:.gov or site:uc.edu
  • Limit to title to reduce results

What's cool:

• JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments
• Images.MD for an encyclopedia of 55,000 medical images
• CRCnetBASE for full-text books online such as The Biomedical Engineering Handbook
• Biomaterials Network
• BME Biomedical Engineering Network (BMEnet.org)
• BMEsource.org
• Encyclopedia of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (online has abstracts only, paper at Engr Ref R857.M3E53 2008)
• RSS feeds from databases or other alert mechanisms
  • Instructions to create alerts in PubMed, Scopus, and Compendex (Engineering Village) - PDF file

Finding articles once you have the references/citations:

• Follow the links from the databases ("UC Article Linker" or "Find Full Text")
  • For Article Linker results, check if article is available online or in the catalog
  • If not available online or through the Library Catalog, order through ILLIAD right on that page (must have account)
  • ILLIAD will automatically populate the request form with the journal article information
• Try Full Text Journals search on the journal title
• Search the journal title in the Library Catalog to find articles in paper
• Try searching the article title in quote marks in Google to see if the author has posted the article.
• Place Interlibrary Loan request through ILLIAD if not found anywhere.

Presenting your work:

• RefWorks for Citing References (Create an account at http://proxy.libraries.uc.edu/login?url=http://www.refworks.com/refworks)
• RefWorks:  Everything you wanted to know
• Top Ten Hints for Formatting Citations Properly
• AMA Style Guide
• Copyright Tutorial (University Libraries)
• More on copyright
• Plagiarism Tutorial (University Libraries)
• Plagiarism Intro (CoE)

twb
9/20/12