1. Welcome to Your Library
BCHS 4311
COMD 6361

2. Class Objectives
1. Able to understand and navigate Library’s web site and locate research
databases.
2. Understand what Peer Reviewed articles are and know how to locate
them.
3. Able to distinguish between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
4. Establish a RefWorks user account and be able to import 3 sources from
two different databases.
5. Understand how to formulate a computer database search.
6. Understand the value “Citation Searching” and be able to conduct one.

3. Quick Tour of Services

4. Your Library
• 2 million volumes
• 15,000 serials
• 250 databases
• 36 individual group study rooms
• 3 Branch Libraries
•Arch/Art
•Music
•Optometry

5. Services
• Remote access– CougarNet account
• Full text Journal articles
• Cougar One Card
• Cougar-net account
• VPN account
• Inter Library Loan [online]
• Library Provides 500 free pages of prints
• IT Central Site also 500 free prints (Library Basement –
own entrance)
• Free Photocopying or you can email or save on a flash
drive

6. Locating Books/Journals
• OneSearch & Catalog
• Books, E-books
• All types of media
• Theses, Dissertations
• Databases
• Articles in scholarly journals
• Patents, Technical Reports,

8. Peer Review

9. Peer Reviewed Articles
Other experts in the field reads and reviews
the article to assess professional merit
• Stated in preface pages of the Journal
• Contains list of cited references
• Many databases provide a “peer review” or “scholarly
Journal” filtering option
• Can check in Ulrich’s database–uses “refereed “
• Popular works, such as magazine and newspaper
articles, are written for the general public– and are not
Peer Reviewed. Not Wikipedia

10. Types of Research Literature

11. How to Distinguish Between
Primary
• Secondary
• Tertiary
•

12. Primary Sources
• Source material that is closest to the original research. Grants & external
funding are a big help
• A source with direct personal knowledge of the events being
described. It serves as an original source of information about the
topic. A person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document
created by such a person.
• E.G. Case Reports, Clinical Trials, Original reporting articles…1st
person

13. Secondary Sources
• Cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources.
• Involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or
evaluation of the original information. If an article discusses old
documents to derive a new conclusion, it is considered to be a
primary source for the new conclusion
• E.G. Review Articles, meta-analysis [most peer review articles
report new findings and thus are considered primary resources]

14. Tertiary Sources
• More peripheral
• Bibliographies, library
catalogs, directories, reading lists and survey
articles.
• Compilation of data…E.G. Red Book, PDR, Martindale
Extra Pharmacopeia
• Longer lead time in publishing..years rather than months

15. Boolean Searching

16. When Formulating Your Database Search on a Topic
Think Boolean
Drug Resistant Organisms—especially Malaria and Tuberculosis and in India, Asia or Africa
India
Malaria Drug Resistan*
or or
Tuberculosis Asia
or
1700 or
Mycobacterium Africa
2600 3000

17. Think Boolean
Drug Resistant Organisms—especially Malaria and Tuberculosis and in India,
Asia or Africa
Drug Resistan*
Malaria
or
Tuberculosis
Or 12 India or Asia
Mycobacterium Or Africa

18. Citation Searching

19. Citation Searching
Assumed subject relevancy between the original
paper and the references that paper cites
e.g. Drug-resistant malaria by Hyde JE in TRENDS IN
PARASITOLOGY Volume: 21 Issue: 11 Pages: 494-
498 Published: NOV 2005
– If we look up the list of references at the end of Hyde’s article
they may be useful --but the problem is that they will all be older
than 2005….. And I want current articles on the topic?
– So I can look for articles since 1985 who “cited” Hyde’s article
by doing a “citation search”
– And we find the latest article was published in Nov 2011

20. Citation Searching
Traditional Search Citation Search
2011
2010 2010
1984 1998
2008
1984
1980
1975
1970
1963

21. Navigating UH Library
Web Pages

23. BCHS Biochemistry Library Class Guide

24. Questions?