BIOL 202: Genetics (Fall 2008)

Browsing Journals

Browsing journals is different from doing a directed detailed search for articles for a term paper. Keeping an eye on what's current in the scientific literature can broaden your horizons now, help you a few years down the road when you're choosing a research area for graduate school, want to know what issues/advances are being talked about in the medical community, or serve as an intellectual study break while you're studying in the library.

If you were going to research a topic thoroughly for a term paper or research project, there's a lot more you'll want to know about using the journal collection; the Schow Library staff will be happy to help you. Let this guide and the mini-tour during your first week in lab serve as an introduction to the journal collection here. Hopefully this tour will make you feel more at home in Schow and solve the mystery of what all those other things are on the shelves that are not books.

LC Call Numbers

The majority of GENETICS materials are shelved in the "QH" section of the Schow Science Library. Materials on this topic will be found with the books, the reference collection, and the journal collection. Browse the stacks to see what is available or search FRANCIS, the online library catalog, to find a specific book.

Tips for Searching FRANCIS

Title search: omit initial articles "The," "A," and "An" at the beginning of a title

Journal search: the LIB HAS field tell what years the libraries own

Author search: put the last name first

Keyword search: use AND to combine two or more words

Is This Journal Available at Williams?

Maybe you just saw a science news story in The New York Times that refers to an article published in a journal. You want to find that article. The first task is to see if Williams College subscribes to that journal. Search FRANCIS, the online catalog for the Williams College Libraries, for the journal title. If the title is found, you can get on-screen information to help you determine in what format Williams owns the journal, which library houses it, the call number, and if a specific volume is available on campus. Many journals listed in FRANCIS are available electronically. Print journals (both current and bound volumes) are arranged at Schow according to year of publication and call number.

Library of Congress call number assignments are: Q= general science journals, QH= biology journals, and R= medical journals.

• Current print journals are located on the display racks to your left as you enter Schow. These are the most recently received issues. The most current issue is displayed and previous weeks'/months' issues are stored on the shelf found behind the current issue.


• Bound journals are older journal issues consolidated into a single volume. These are shelved in the West Atrium at the bottom of the ramp (for volumes back to 1996) and in the compact journal storage room (for journals pre-1996). Bound journals are not easy to browse, but you might want to consult them for articles referenced in your text. When you look up an article in a bound journal, it is interesting to glance at other articles in the same volume. This gives you an idea of what other experiments were being conducted and what other theories were being tested at that time. It provides a context for the article.


• Electronic journals are available via computer. These could be journals that are also available in print or journals that are only available electronically. An added bonus of ejournals is that you can save or print a copy of the journal article. A complete list of ejournals is available on the Library webpage under "Finding Articles."

Journals of Interest

Genetics News

Trends in Genetics QH426.T74

Current Opinion in Genetics and Development QH426.C88

Review Articles

Annual Review of Genetics QH431.A1A54

Science News

Nature QH1.N3

Science Q1.S15

Medical News

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) R15.A48

New England Journal of Medicine R11.B7

Original Research

American Journal of Human Genetics Electronic Resource

Cell QH573.C381

EMBO Journal QH503.E46

Genes and Development Qh426.G466

Genetics QH431.G431

Molecular and Cellular Biology QH506.M64

Molecular Biology and Evolution Electronic Resource

Nature Genetics QH431.N363

Plant Cell QK725.P5518

PLoS Biology Electronic Resource

PLoS Genetics Electornic Resource

PUBMED

If you don't want to limit your browsing to just the journals we have or you want to do a directed search for a topic, you can explore PubMed, a service provided by the National Library of Medicine. The search will retrieve authors and titles of articles. If you click on an article entry, the abstract (summary) for that article will appear and give you a better idea of what the article is about. You may find links to the fulltext of journal articles.

Tips for Searching PUBMED

Journals Database: to locate the full journal title for an abbreviation
Details Button: to see how PubMed searches on your term
Books: to view the complete text of textbooks available through PubMed
History: to view your previous search strategies

Recommended Websites

Broad Institute - research applying genome research to medicine
http://www.broad.mit.edu/

Cartoons about the human genome
http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/gene/

Cracking the Code of Life - PBS website exploring genome research
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/

deCode Genetics - Icelandic company looking at genetic variation and disease
http://www.decode.com/

Ensembl - European database on sequenced genomes
http://ensembl.ebi.ac.uk/

ESP - fulltext of classic papers/books in field of Genetics
http://www.esp.org/books/sturt/history/

Flybase - info on Drosophila genome
http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu/

Flynome - origin of gene names in Drosophila
http://www.flynome.com/

GeneCards - database on human genes
http://bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il/cards/

Genetics Society of America
http://www.genetics-gsa.org/

Genome@home - project that will let your computer help to design new genes/proteins
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/genome/

Omics Gateway - genomics resource from the journal Nature
http://www.nature.com/omics/index.html

Genomic News Network - news about genome research
http://www.GenomeNewsNetwork.org/

Human Genome Epidemiology Network (HuGENet) - CDC site coordinating info on genetic variation and disease
http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/hugenet/default.htm

Human Genome Project Information - access to database cataloging human genetic variations
http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/faq/snps.html

J. Craig Venter Institute - private organization sequencing genomes of microbes
http://www.tigr.org

MendelWeb -information on Gregor Mendel
http://www.mendelweb.org

National Human Genome Research Institute - homepage for US government-funded genome research
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/

National Society of Genetic Counselors
http://www.nsgc.org/

Nobel e-museum - information about the Nobel Prize
http://www.nobel.se/index.html

OMIM - Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=OMIM

Profiles in Science - profile of Barbara McClintock from the National Library of Medicine
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/LL/

GenEdNet - Resources from the American Society of Human Genetics
http://www.genednet.org/

Saccharomyces genome database
http://www.yeastgenome.org/

Science Magazine Special Issue - articles from Science magazine on genomics
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/plus/sfg/special/index.shtml

UCSC Genome Bioinformatics - contains the reference sequence and working draft assemblies for a large collection of genomes
http://genome.ucsc.edu/

WWW Virtual Library: Model Organisms - links to information on several species used extensively in research
http://ceolas.org/VL/mo/