ARCHIVES     CONTACT US     COPYRIGHT     HOURS     LIBRARY NEWS     SEARCH

Montgomery College Libraries > Beth Thoms, Librarian > BI101 General Biology Prof. Lantz

A search expression that uses Boolean operators is one of the best ways to pinpoint information in a library catalog, database, or search engine. There are three components to Boolean search expressions:

• Keywords: tend to be the nouns that best describe a topic
• Boolean Operators: AND, OR, and NOT
• Punctuation: quotation marks for phrases, parentheses with OR, truncation symbol to search for words with shared root (* or ?)

Here are some sample searches using keywords and Boolean operators:

mendel* AND (genetics or genes)

ecosystems AND balance

cell AND respiration

DNA AND replication AND process

"global warming" AND (oceans OR "marine life" OR coast)

"population biology"

  return to top

Comprehensive Listing of Health & Biological Sciences Journals at the Montgomery College Libraries

List of sources from which you may find your article - and the database which has the full text:

Bioscience - Academic OneFile, Academic Source Premier

Nature - Nature Online

Popular Science - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier, Biology Journals

Science - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier (full text ends 2005)

Science News - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier

Scientific American - Academic Search Premier, Health Source

Discover - Academic OneFile, Biology Journals

National Geographic - Academic OneFile, Biology Journals

Natural History - Academic Search Premier, Biology Journals

New Scientist - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier

Newsweek - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier, Biology Journals

Time - Academic Onefile, Academic Search Premier, Biology Journals

US News and World Report - Academic OneFile, Academic Search Premier, Biology Journals

New York Times - ProQuest Newspapers

Washington Post - ProQuest Newspapers

  return to top

Searching: Go to the library's homepage, find the link for the "Databases," and locate one of the databases on the list below. Enter a search expression; remember, you can narrow your topic quite a bit when looking for an article:

"cell cycle" AND cancer

DNA AND (mutation or mutate or error)

RNA  AND transcription

nanotechology AND medical

Sorting: Results can be sorted by date (most recent first) or relevance (highest occurrence of keywords).

Printing: For trouble-free printing, use the Print button in the database.

Academic OneFile

A very large database covering all subjects. (Gale)

Academic Search Premier

A very large database covering all subjects. (EBSCO)

National Newspapers

Includes the last few decades of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journals, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Baltimore Sun. For opinion pieces, include the word "editorial" in your search expressions.

Biology Journals

A collection of journals that focus on topics in biology.

Nature

This is the online edition of the weekly international science journal and has archives going back to 1950.

Science Direct

ScienceDirect indexes more than 7 million journal articles in the sciences and applied sciences.  Through the MDL consortium, we have access to the full text of many of these articles through a shared title list.

Science Resource Center

This database includes "thousands of topic overviews, experiments, biographies, pictures and illustrations...and the latest scientific developments...covered in articles from over 200 magazines and academic journals and links to quality web sites."

 

 

  return to top

The library has six-page handouts on the APA: Works Cited Page

  return to top