BIOS 315 Neuropharmacology (Spring 2013)

Contact me (the Science Librarian) for help with your assignments. Call or send an email to set up an appointment. Contact information is to right.

**Plan on spending a few hours identifying quality literature.** If you locate good articles, including "review articles" (see below), it will make your writing much easier. In general: the quality of your paper will be determined in part by the quality of the literature you cite in it.

If we don't have an article you need, you will need to bring it in using interlibrary loan ("ILLiad"), so leave time to bring in articles this way. Use of ILLiad and SFX will be covered in the class session about library resources.

Here are some tips for doing your research.

Finding background information:

Before searching for articles, try doing some general background reading about your topic. Medline Plus is a great place for this. The Merck Manuals website is also a good site to check. See the link for Neurologic Disorders, as well as the "Index", upper left and the link to Clinical Pharmacology on the left.

In general: if you use openly accessible web resources, make sure the information is from a reliable source.

Finding articles about your topic

Databases that are especially relevant for your projects are: Web of Science, PubMed, SciFinder (for chemistry dimensions), and PsycINFO. (The links here go to resource pages on which you can find information about the databases).  For more information about these databases, see the biology, chemistry, and psychology library guides.

Web of Science, Scifinder and PsycINFO enable you to find papers, published later in time, that cite a paper that you really like. This is a great way to discover papers. Contact the science librarian for assistance with this or consult the help documentation provided by these databases.

Re. PubMed, try out the MeSH subject header searching. See the PubMed link above for information. After doing a search in PubMed, in addition to looking over the results, check on the right for a link to review articles. These give you a bird's eye view of where a field or niche in a field has evolved. They can contain valuable bibliography and overview of your field.

Take a look at Annual Reviews for another source of review articles. 

A few other databases: Research Library; Science Full Text Select.

Books

ASA (see the library catalog link on the library homepage) can help you identify books that we own. WorldCat (see the Database Finder off the library homepage) is useful for identifying books available at other libraries.

Use PALCI to bring in books that Lehigh does not own.

Proper Use of Information

For information about avoiding plagiarism, why to quote, how to cite, and paraphrasing, see Proper Use of Information.  

Creating Powerpoint presentations

Here are some webpages about creating powerpoint presentations that you might find useful; they were suggested by one of Lehigh's instructional technologists:

http://www.auburn.edu/img/best_practices/powerpoint.html
https://it.usu.edu/fact/files/uploads/PP_BestPractices.pdf
http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/pdf/Handouts_for_Powerpoint_BPs.pdf

Again if you need any help, contact me (the Science Librarian).

Good luck and have fun with your papers and presentations.