BIO 123    Dr. Louch        

Becoming familiar with library resources & Library Lab Assignment 3

Library Research Laboratory 3

Books - Excellent sources for background information. These should be used to formulate the foundation of your topics. You should have clear definitions of your topic, variables, and landmark research that has been done in the past by scientists.

The library catalog is your tool for finding all physical items in the library.

Articles - More current than books, articles represent the "cutting edge" focusing on specific variables. Researchers/scientists use books to develop a strong foundation on a topic, they will then move on to current research to learn what progress has been made under that topic. Scientists will then go even further by creating their own experiments that do something that no other scientists have yet tried.

Now that you have used books to learn a bit about the history of your topic, search for articles using Article Research Databases to see what is current.

Recognizing and reading research articles

Topics! Sometimes finding a topic is the hardest part of a research assignment. Here's an example of how one might emerge for you.

News/media - Watching TV, i saw on the news a study where some scientists exposed fruit flies to alcohol and observed changes in their sexual behavior.

World Wide Web - I did a Google search and found an article in Newsweek magazine on the web about the study. "The Sex Lives of Bar Flies"

Academic Library (This is where it becomes a serious research project) -

• Found a book about alcohol and sexual behavior. Also a book about why fruit flies are often selected for biological experimentation.

• Had to sort through thousands of ARTICLES that focus on fruit flies. Fruit Flies have been used for experiments ranging from genetics to the psychology of insects. This leads me to empirical research studies that focus on the effects of alcohol on fruit fly metabolism.

• Back to books - I had to look up the Latin name for fruit flies to find more articles: "Drosophila". I also have to find much more basic information about the fruit fly anatomy and its bodily functions when influenced by certain variables.

• Experiment!

• Citing Sources - this is where you give a shout out to your influences.

• Publication!

• Fame & Fortune!

Other tools to help you:

Biology Subject Guide

What's an Annotated Bibliography?

APA Citation Style Quicksheet

NCSU Citation Builder

Recognizing Scholarly Articles