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BIOL 5445 Herpetology: Getting Started

created to help students in Herpetology

Ensatina eschscholtzii salamander

 

 

 

*Ensatina eschscholtzii salamander taken April  16, 2011 by Brian Gratwicke is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 license. 

Welcome to the LibGuide for Herpetology!

This resource has been created to help guide you through the literature research process. Before our scheduled session together, please complete the Pre-Assessment. You will need to read through this Getting Started Page as well as the Finding Articles Page to complete this assessment. 

Thank you, and I look forward to working with you this semester.

Nikki Rech, COSM Library Liaison

 

The Topic

thermal physiology in amphibians and reptiles

Specifically focusing on family Plethodontididae

Keyword Searching

For effective searching, DO NOT use sentence structure, such as your thesis statement or research question. 

Instead, use a keyword or keyword phrase to search library resources (Catalog, Databases) and web search engines (Google and Google Scholar) and locate results matching that word/s in a specified part (title, abstract, full-text) of the item. Once you have identified your key search concepts, start brainstorming some related terms (synonyms) to your key concepts.

Use a general thesaurus, subject dictionaries and encyclopedias, your syllabus, professor's notes, and subject headings to help you formulate keywords. 

 

Diagram of Research Process for identifying search terms 

Use the worksheet provided to help guide you through developing keyword search concepts from your research question. 

Developing Effective Search Strategies Involves...

  • Identifyng the key search concepts

  • Identifying related terms to the key search concepts

  • Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results

While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified here will improve your results!

Using Quotation Marks to contain Phrases...

Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.

By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.

"climate change"

Instead of 

climate AND change

"expansive soil" 

Instead of 

expansive AND soil

 

Using Truncation to search Various forms of a Word...

Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings. The characher (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Ethic* retrieves

Ethics

Ethical

Ethically

Search Techniques: Boolean Operators

Using AND, OR, NOT to Narrow or Broaden your Search...

Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search. It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.                                  

                                                                                                                                                                            

AND/OR The Difference

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like we did above!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source!