EES 100: Earth Systems Science

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EES 100 Earth Systems Science Spring 2007

If you have questions , contact Brian Simboli , x5003. Room 633 in Fairchild-Martindale Library. Please make appt. in advance. Reference librarians are also available 1-5 in the consulting room behind the help desk that is in the lobby of Fairchild-Martindale Library.

Goal:

To show how to use GeoRef, Science Citation Index on Web of Science, and other databases to find relevant literature.
Along the way, show how to do literature searches

In addition to the information below, see these information literacy tutorials.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MYLIBRARY
GEOREF
WEB OF SCIENCE
OTHER LIBRARY DATABASES AND RESOURCES
OBTAINING COPIES OF PAPERS AND BOOKS
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

MyLibrary

MyLibrary is your own, personalized set of library resources. To get there, login to the portal, and then look for the "MyLibrary" tab. Click on the tab, and enter your login and password. You should see a list of earth science resources; if you do not, click "MyProfile" on the left and change the default resources so that earth science ones show up. Note that a pre-selected set of resources appears on the webpage. You can add or delete resources that appear on this page. E.g., to change the journals that appear, click "edit" beside "Electronic Journals" and select or deselect journals. Available to you are lists of earth science journals and all the journals for the university. You can select and deselect whatever journals you want to appear on or disappear from your desktop.

GeoRef

Getting to GeoRef

This is an important database for your literature hunt (see others below).
Click here for link to database and help documents. GeoRef is also available on the library's webpage of database.
Select on-campus or off-campus depending on where you are. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted for your Lehigh login and ID.

Searching GeoRef: OVERVIEW

The goal of searching is to come up with really good documents, whether in print format or available electronically.
To locate relevant items, run searches in GeoRef that come up with records, like the following:

first search 1

first search 2

first search 3

This is not an article--it is a record with information about an article. (See information below on how to obtain copies of papers.)
Notice that GeoRef records are broken down into "fields" such as title, author, abstract.
GeoRef gives you additional fields, such as "descriptors", which enable you to obtain more focused results, as we shall see below
Descriptors are controlled subject headers assigned to records.

FOCUSED SEARCHING

Anyone can throw in a few keywords and bring up search results. But with a little extra effort, you can come up with really good results. Before reading further, if you are not familiar with the basics of online searching, see this tutorial and this Generic Searching Guide.

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THE MAGIC OF FOCUSED SEARCHING

How do I find documents related to the course?

Go to the library homepage, click on databases, and then select GeoRef.
First, try a simple keyword search, putting in terms (with "and" between each and keyword specified in the drag-down for each search box): precambrian, north and americ*, plate. A keyword search ranges over these "fields": Abstract, Source Phrase, Subject, and Title indexes. * is a truncator.
Scan through records that come up. Look at the "descriptors" for records that look interesting to you. Descriptors are subject headers assigned to records.
You will e.g. that the following are descriptors: Appalachians, North America, Precambrian.
Now go back to the search engine interface. Do a descriptors phrase search over the descriptors you find relevant, putting in an "and" in each and with the appropriate item selected in the drag-down search box menu(s).
You know that these papers are "on topic" (and thus 'focused'), since they would not have been assigned the descriptors if they were not.
SUGGESTION: The GeoRef helpdesk suggested using "review" and "critical review" as keywords. Try this to see if you come up with items specifically focused on giving a review of a topic (that is, a broad level view of research trends that also reviews the literature).

How do I further narrow the search results?

You can narrow these search results by including further descriptors in the search (using "and" between them).
You can throw keywords into the mix, if a suitable descriptor is not available. When putting in search terms, you may want to use truncation and other special features, like proximity--see the help docs for FirstSearch. (You can "truncate" keywords using a "*" )
You can also limit results by year and document type.
You can email or print the search results.
Then see information below for information on how to obtain documents.

Note: Try out the feature at to find other relevant terms for searching.

How do I find the full text of articles?

How do you get to the full text of the article from out of a GeoRef record?

Click on "Lehigh Links/Illiad Loan ". This will bring up the SFX interface, which will let you access the full text of an article if it is available.

If you find, using SFX, that the item is not available electronically, then off the SFX screen you can access ASA, Lehigh's online catalog, to see if it is available in print at Lehigh. Also, see the ILLiad link. Through ILLiad, you can request articles that Lehigh does not have, or that it has but just in print. You can click on the ILLIAD (that is, interlibrary loan) option. The data is automatically put in; all you have to do is submit the request. ILLIAD requires a one-time registration before using. (You may want to specify that you want email delivery of articles when they are avail. in this way.) (For further information about obtaining articles, see below).

Further Notes

1. For more information about GeoRef:

See GeoRef Information Services
See also GeoRef Subjects Covered

2. Following two statements are true of any FirstSearch database that Lehigh has:

Do not use the limit to full text feature. You may not get much of anything that is actually available in full text at Lehigh.

Items with the "library and book" icon are in our library. However, don't assume that if an item does not have that icon, that we do not have it. Check ASA.

3. GeoRef Preview Database
"The database consists of references to recent geoscience publications. Caution: This data is in process for inclusion in GeoRef. It may not yet have been indexed, been given a translated title, or been checked by a GeoRef editor when you see it."

WEB OF SCIENCE

WHAT IT IS

A library database that lets you:

1. search for literature about a given subject, 1993-forward (journal articles, some monographic series coverage)
2. start with a known paper (can be pre-1993) and find papers 1993 and later that cite it.

ACCESS

Web of Science (hereafter, WOS) is available off the library listing of databases; see information and link here. Select on-campus or off-campus depending on where you are. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted for your Lehigh login and ID.

To search WOS, click on general search. Enter your search term string. Set search limits near the bottom of the page if you want. (Again, when you are new to a field, it helps to begin by finding "review" papers that give you an overview of a field. By virtue of being "reviews", these papers can lead you to other papers.)

Now click on "search". A list of titles comes up containing articles. Scroll through these to find one that of interest to you. Click on ones that interest you to see their full WOS record.

What you see is *not* the full text of an article; it provides information *about* an article, including an abstract. How do you get to the full text of the article?

Click on "Lehigh SFX Links". They look like this in WOS:

This will bring up the SFX interface, which will let you access the full text of an article if it is available.

If you find, using SFX, that the item is not available electronically, then off the SFX screen you can access ASA, Lehigh's online catalog, to see if it is available in print at Lehigh. Also, see the ILLiad link. Through ILLiad, you can request articles that Lehigh does not have, or that it has but just in print. You can click on the ILLIAD (that is, interlibrary loan) option. The data is automatically put in; all you have to do is submit the request. ILLIAD requires a one-time registration before using. (You may want to specify that you want email delivery of articles when they are avail. in this way.) (For further information about obtaining articles, see below).

Finally, supposing you already know that an author is an important one for the field you are searching, you can type in the author's name in the author search area of the general search screen. OR, if you have located a good paper or other type of document (including ones that you found using another database), you can use the cited reference search capabilities of WOS. Click on the Cited Ref Search button near the top of the page. This will allow your to locate items that cite the one you located.

OTHER LIBRARY DATABASES AND RESOURCES

(i.) ASA (LEHIGH'S ONLINE CATALOG)

ASA. Use this to look up books and journals and other library materials. If you are looking up a journal, look up the name of the journal, not the name of a specific article in a journal.

Example: look up Scientific American. Type in Scientific American and select browse and journal titles. This is a good place to go for scientific articles relating to your projects.

(ii.) BROWSING

An additional way to find paper or books. For journals, browse the tables of contents of recent issues or archived (bound) copies in the library, or look for relevant electronic journals browseable here by title or linked on ASA. For books, check the Dewey number for a book you like, then go to the stacks and browse in the book's vicinity to see if there are any other relevant materials.

(iii.) ANNUAL REVIEWS

The review articles in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences and in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics are worth checking for ideas and for bibliography they contain.

Look for links for the following:

"Search for citing articles in: ISI Web of Science" "Alert me when: new articles cite this article"

This is a way to generate citations to new articles.

(iv). ACCESS SCIENCE

Access Science (McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology) provides a way to generate background information (including definitions of concepts) about your topic before you do further research. Example Find article about "arctic ocean". Find a definition of "arctic haze".

A few other examples of reference databases: Oxford Reference Online and Xreferplus

(v.) OTHER RESOURCES

If any topics have interdisciplinary dimensions, you may want to check out other library databases. Try these, using whatever subject header searching capability they provide. (Contact the science librarian for help).

SciFinder Scholar (for coverage of items that may have a chemistry dimension)

Applied Science and Technology Abstracts

Ecology Abstracts

INSPEC and Engineering Index (searchable through a common interface--make sure you explicitly select the database(s) you want from the drag down menu.)

Academic Index Try the subject search feature.

Research Library Try the Browse Topics feature.

Government docs The g overnment documents section of the library is on the second floor south of Fairchild-Martindale Library. A good contact there is Steve Firtko.

(vi.) OTHER DATABASES

Many other databases are available in a long list here, depending on your slant on the subject. In the upper left, you can select specific types of databases (for example, social sciences or sciences or humanities).

OBTAINING COPIES OF PAPERS AND OTHER MATERIALS

Go here for information about how to obtain papers and other materials.

AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

If you engage in plagiarism, there is a good chance you will be found out, with serious consequences. Even without intending to engage in plagiarism, you may unwittingly do so. To avoid it, familiarize yourself with what it is. If you learn how to do footnoting in the proper style, this can help you avoid problems.

Here are some Lehigh University Library webpages that can help you get started:

Tutorials See tutorial about "avoid plagiarism".
Ante/Anti Plagiarism
Footnote and Citation Style Guides

NOTE: These webpages are not a substitute for whatever instructions your instructor gives about correct footnoting style and what constitutes plagiarism.

Brian Simboli 3/26/07