Biology

This guide is designed to help students learn how to use K-State Libraries' many resources for studying and learning biology.

Library Research Guide

Keywords

Good keywords are essential to good research. Develop a list of keywords before you start searching.

To start the list, ask yourself two questions:

What do I know about my topic?
What do I want to know about my topic?

Answer using single words or simple phrases. These become your keywords.

Developing this list is an iterative process. Your list will change as you learn more through your research.

Databases for Biologists

For more databases, see our Databases A-Z list.

Scopus and Web of Science are good starting points for finding articles on almost any topic. They do not contain full text articles but you can get access to full text by using the Get It button. With both you can easily see how frequently and where an article is cited. If you find an article you like, look for its keywords, references, and see where it has been cited.

PubMed is a free service of the National Library of Medicine that includes over 21 million citations from Medline and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to full text articles.

PubMed

What is a database?

Library databases are collections of descriptions of research resources such as articles, books, dissertations, and reports. Some databases focus on a specific discipline; others are multi-disciplinary.

Tips for Searching in Databases

Databases usually have the following features. Look for icons and menu items with these names above and to the left of your search results.

search by fields (ex. author, title, publication, subject) - If you don't see these, look for an "advanced search" link
sort by (ex. date, relevance, times cited) - Sorting by times cited is a good way to find the most important research on a topic
filter by (ex. resource type, subject, date) - The subject filter is a great place to find keywords to narrow your search

You may need to create an account to use these features

cite/save/export - Use a citation manager if you are working with different databases
research alerts - Setting an alert for a specific search will help you keep up with the newest research

JoVE - Journal of Visualized Experiments

JoVE is a unique resource with several different collections of video content. K-State subscribes to the biology education collection.

JoVE Education - Biology
Concise and easy-to-understand animated video lessons that explain key concepts in biology, plus more than 150 scientist-in-action videos that show actual research experiments conducted in today’s laboratories.

We also subscribe to subjects in JoVE Video Core Collection (under Research on the navigation menu) where you'll find videos of scientists performing experiments in detail that will allow viewers to replicate the experiment.

The search box at the top of any of these links will get results from all subject areas.

Note: We do not have access to videos in other areas but they will appear in your search.