Biology 117

Library information for Biology Majors.

The UMASS Lowell Libraries provide many important databases that you need to know about to do proper research for your biology term papers.  These databases are available only to the UML campus and cost the Library over one million dollars per year.  Databases allow you to quickly and easily do searches on your topics, find full text journal articles and print them off for your own use, all in a matter of minutes.  The Library computer labs offer free printing, and access to all Library databases.  There are no applications, such as Word or Excel, on Library computers.

Library databases are also accessible to you from home, labs,  or dorm.  In the dorms or labs, connect to www.uml.edu/libraries and all databases are accessible.  From home, if you have DSL or cable modem,  connect to the Library home page and click on "Off-Campus Users Start Here".  Use your UML email username and password to connect. You are instantly verified and may use all databases. Your UML email username is your email address and your default password is your UML ISIS number.  If you have a regular modem connection to the Internet, you may use the University as your Internet provider by registering for a PPP account with Telecommunications.

To make things even easier for you, here is a linked list of those databases which will be most important to you when you do your research.  These databases should prove to be very helpful to you in finding refereed journal articles.

The following databases offer full content or full text:

The following offer citations and abstracts. 

Medline is also available (from any computer anywhere, anytime) at PubMed for a real quick and easy search.

Compendex: a huge engineering database, which includes biotechnology, biomedical and computer engineering information.  

PLoS: Public Library of Science offers searching and linking to a growing number of scientific articles in biology and medicine.  PLoS Biology takes you right to the Biology section.

LinkSource This is a simple way to check our electronic holdings from any database.  If the article you have found in a database is not available in full text in that database, click on the LinkSource button , and LinkSource will check ALL our full-text databases for you.  If it is available in Full Text to UML, LinkSource will provide the link to the item.  It will also allow you to check the UML Library Catalog (PAC).

To find out if  we have a journal in electronic form, check the UML E-Journals list, which lists over 41,000 electronic titles accessible to all UML faculty and students. This list includes available years for each title, as well as links into our computer catalog if we own the journal in paper or microformat.  We also have a printed list of all journals we own, which you will find it at the Reference or Access Services desks.

If you locate a journal article which is not available at UML, (and is not available via LinkSource),  check the catalogs of  BLC member schools.  All BLC member colleges and universities allow UML students to use their libraries to obtain journal articles, but you may not check out books. All state colleges, community colleges and the UMASS system allow UML students to use their libraries to find journal articles or check out books. Just present your UML ID at their circulation desk. Interlibrary Loan privileges are not available to undergraduates.

For books on your subject, consult the Public Access Catalog.  If we do not own what you need, check the Virtual Catalog to see if you can borrow it from another institution.  The Virtual Catalog allows you to quickly and easily borrow books from other academic and public libraries in Massachusetts and New England.  Service is rapid, and material may be borrowed for one month.

        The Library provides a campus-wide subscription to RefWorks, a bibliographic management software, accessible via the Web. All students are entitled to set up their own accounts on RefWorks.  Refworks allows you to store all your citations from all your research.  Install Write 'n Cite (a free piece of software from RefWorks) in your word processor, and use to format all your citations and create your bibliography. RefWorks can format your paper using whatever format your professor has required.  Many of our databases allow direct transfer of your chosen citations from the database into RefWorks, for all others it is a simple one step save and import process.

For a list of resources in Biology and Environmental Sciences, go to the Library web page and click on Resources by Subject.

Page maintained by Marion S. Muskiewicz, Science Librarian

Last updated 9/19/06