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Chem 7 - Spring 2006
Prof. Paul Veale
Prof. Siobhan Milde
Jane Quigley
Kresge Physical Sciences Library
Encyclopedias and information "gateways" on the web are useful starting points when you need some background on a topic, or to familiarize yourself with key terms, issues, events, or people. Articles in these references sources help you get oriented and often provide a bibliography of important references. Here are just a few examples.
AccessScience: The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Encyclopedia of Global Change : Environmental Change and Human Society
Search the Dartmouth library catalog to locate books, journals, and other items in the collections of all the Dartmouth libraries. Search by subject (using Library of Congress subject headings) or by keyword; you can also search for specific works by author, or by title.
For best results, try to come up with multiple ways of describing your topic ranging from very specific to more general.
Many bibliographic databases, including the library catalog and many article indexes, use assigned terms to describe the subject content of materials. These subject terms (Library of Congress Subject Headings) can help you focus your search with great precision.
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Science--Social Aspects Human Ecology Biotechnology Creationism Global Environmental Change Environmental Policy Energy Policy Population |
Tip: Note that the results of a subject search are listed alphabetically, by default. For reverse chronological order (most recent first), choose "Limit/Sort," then "Sort Results by Year." Another Good Tip: if you're not sure of the exact Library of Congress Subject Heading, use a Keyword search to locate a few items that are relevant to your topic. Then use the Subject Headings associated with those items to lead you to more relevant materials. Keyword searches can be made to search for your terms in specific fields (subject, author, title) by using field tags ( s: or a: or t: ) . With a little creativity, you can use this technique with great success, as shown here |
If your topic is too current or too specific to be found in books or reference sources, try finding journal articles on the topic. Scholarly articles provide in-depth information; they are edited and reviewed by experts before publication.
Articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers can be found using article indexes (searchable databases of article records). In many cases these indexes link through to full-text articles (look for the 
ArticleLinker icon); if not, use the Library's Catalog to locate the source of the article. Note that the Catalog does not contain records for individual articles.
Article not available at Dartmouth? Try DartDoc. (Also see the section, Getting Items Not Available at Dartmouth.)
Selected indexes relevant to geographical and interdisciplinary topics are listed here. See eResources for a complete listing of electronic indexes, databases, and other eResources licensed by Dartmouth. Ask a librarian if you need help choosing an article index with a particular focus (e.g., literary, environmental, political).
General and Multidisciplinary Article Indexes: These are great for exploring multiple aspects of a topic, or if you are unsure which subject-specific index to try. Academic Search Premier is another all-purpose, multidisciplinary database that you may be familiar with.
Wilson Web Databases: These can be searched separately or together.
Web of Science indexes about 8000 journals in all subject areas.This index is unique in that it tells you who has cited a particular paper, which is useful as a way to find related papers, and to track the influence of a particular paper. You can also search by topic, and the index is very up-to-date. Especially in the sciences and interdisciplinary fields. Coverage varies; journals in the social sciences are indexed back to 1956; science journals back to 1945.
Article Indexes in Specialized Areas: Use one of these indexes if you have a particular focus that you wish to explore. There are many more specialized indexes in the eResource folders.
Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management
This subject collection (available through Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) includes several relevant subfiles, which can be searched individually or together (to search across all subfiles, click on the link above). Among the subfiles are:
Interdisciplinary database covering physical and human geography, geology, ecology, and third world studies. A good choice for international topics. Tip: Geobase uses an exclamation point (!) as its truncation symbol
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe is a web-based news and business information service that contains more than 13,500 sources. Search Lexis-Nexis for news coverage (regional, national and international), broadcast transcripts, news wire service reports, industry and trade journals, and congressional news coverage. Also, search LexisNexis Environmental for news and journal coverage of environmental topics.
Besides the many Web resources provided by the library, there are useful Web sites provided by government and private organizations and individuals who have established information resources on the Internet.
Always cite your Web sources as you would cite printed resources!
The Dartmouth Writing Program provides an online resources page for students to help you with all aspects of composition.
The Student Center for Research, Writing & Information Technology (RWIT) trains student tutors to assist with paper topics, research assignments and multimedia projects.
Style guides provide accepted standards to follow when preparing research papers for publication. Sources is the Dartmouth College general guide to citing sources, and contains required reading about plagiarism and when, and how, to cite material you are using for a paper or presentation.
RefWorks is a web-based reference management program that allows users to create their own personal database of references by importing references from online article databases. RefWorks makes it easy to search, sort, and cite these references in writing papers and then to automatically format the paper and the bibliography. To get started with RefWorks, go to http://www.refworks.com and click on the "User Login" button on the menu bar. Then click on the "Sign up for an Individual Account" link and fill out the form. RefWorks in-context help, or the online tutorial, will guide you through the basics. See the overview for details on importing citations from various article databases into RefWorks.
BORROW DIRECT: Delivers books from the combined library catalogs of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale within 4 business days.
Please fill out the DartDoc Form for documents that are in Storage or that are not in the Dartmouth Library system (Interlibrary Loan requests). See the Document Delivery webpage for more details on these services.
You can also use the Request Selected Item feature of the Library Catalog to request books or articles from Storage.
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