Biology

Making sense of the Library's available resources for finding journal articles can be confusing at first.  Here are a few quick tips to get you started:

• If you have a citation: Use our MGet It Citation Linker to get to your article quickly!  Just enter whatever citation information you have into the online form and click "Find It."  If we don't have access to an electronic version of the article, you can use MGet It to find a print copy of the article in our collection (using our Library Catalog Search), or to request a PDF scan from another library via Interlibrary Loan (it's free!).
• If you know which database you want to use: Go to the main Library page and enter the name into the search box.  Find the title under the Databases heading, click the "Go to database" link, and start searching!
• If you need articles on a specific topic: Your best choice of database will depend on the kind of question you want to answer; see the "Selected Biology Databases" box immediately below for some suggestions.   

...and as always, if you need more help finding articles, email me at samarti@umich.edu!

For general biology searches, I usually recommend Biosis Citation Index, which covers a wide swath of the biology literature. For more specialized questions, you may want to pick a database with a different or more specialized focus: zoology questions are best answered using Zoological Record, while PubMed is the first-choice resource for medical research. If you specifically need review articles, or are researching topics in paleontology, paleozoology, or paleobotany, try using the broader Web of Science or Scopus databases instead.

To see the full list of available databases by subject, check the links in the "Find Databases" box immediately below.

Browse available databases by subject:

• Biology
• Botany
• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
• Zoology

To search for a specific database by name, use the search box on the main Library homepage.

Remember: links to databases can be bookmarked!  If you're working from a wireless connection or off-campus, they'll automatically route you through the U-M login system to authenticate, then take you right to the database.