Forensic Science Resources: How to get what you need

Linda GallowayBiology, Chemistry & Forensic Science LibrarianOctober 9, 2013

Agenda

• Who I am, what I do• Finding background information on a topic• Scientific literature

– Identifying relevant materials– Obtaining full text of documents

• Advanced search techniques• Questions?

researchguides.library.syr.edu/forensic

About me…

• Former forensic chemist (drug & arson) for the Syracuse Police Department

• Librarian for Biology, Chemistry, Neuroscience & Forensic Science

• Help people access the content they need, teach (guest lectures and classes), purchase electronic & print resources, create web content, etc.

• Undergraduate– Integrated Learning Major in Forensic Science– Minor in Forensic Science

• Graduate– M.S. in Forensic Science– Combined M.S. in Forensic Science and J.D. in Law– M.S. in Biomedical Forensic Sciences (lab analysts)– M.S. in Nuclear Forensic Science (with Brookhaven

National Lab)

FSC 632

Research and Career Resources is a course designed to help the graduate student meet forensic employers' expectations and bring together concepts that may only be touched on in other courses during their studies. Areas to be covered will include effective research techniques and literature interpretation, critical thinking skills, communication methods specific to forensic science and their potential discovery issues, trial practice/procedure and topics relevant to employment in the field of forensic science. It is expected that the skills learned in this course will assist students to perform to a higher standard and to give them an additional competitive edge when they enter the job market.

Background Information

Wikipedia• A great resource for background information

– Corroborate facts before you use them– Use the resources (links to other articles or to

other sources; found at end of Wikipedia article)• Wikipedia is written by volunteer contributors,

but most of the content is reviewed and edited by experts

Hyperlinked, substantial bibliography

Before you really start your research…

• Be familiar enough to talk about your topic for 5 minutes

• Decide what kind of information you need– Background information– Newspaper or magazine articles– Scientific or scholarly articles– Images, photos– Other?

Newspaper Articles

News Resources

• Most newspapers provide limited free access to stories via web portals

• Access to older articles, or print version of articles, is often behind a pay wall

• Print and electronic versions of articles are often different

• Most public & college libraries provide online access to newspaper databases

Scientific Literature

Do you know the difference between a magazine and a journal?

• Written by scientists• First reporting of research results• Peer review

suitability for publication credibility quality control

• Written by journalists• Sometimes a first person account• Often a synthesis of several

sources

Some terms to be aware of….

• Citation – reference to a source, so that someone can find this again

• Abstract – summary of a published work• Peer-reviewed article – before publication,

article is evaluate & edited by experts• DOI – Digital Object Identifier, unique number

for each digital publication

Finding Scientific Articles

• PubMed – huge database of biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed• Google Scholar – Google for scholarly articles

and publicationsscholar.google.com

PubMed – huge database of biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Review Article• Summarize current literature on a topic and

provide an analysis of the topic. • Great to gain a thorough understanding of a

topic

articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories,

universities and other web sites.

scholar.google.com

Finding Full Text

• Always check Google Scholar first; .pdf may be available or put article title “in quotation marks”

• College or University libraries offer walk-in access to licensed resources

• Public libraries may offer access• Purchase from publisher – around $39/article• Use an article service such as DeepDyve

Government websites offer access

“article title in quotation marks”

Purchasing Access to Articles

• Societies often offer journal subscriptions to their members

• From publishers, usually around $39 per article

• Use an article service such as DeepDyve

Deepdyve

• Free account with DeepDyve gets you free access to full-text articles for five minutes a day

• $20 for five 30-day rentals, or $40/month for 40 monthly rentals

• Cannot print or download articles unless you purchase them• Deepdyve offers individual & group plans for article rentals &

purchases

Searched for “bath salts” analysischose ‘Chemistry’ as subject area

www.deepdyve.com

Questions???

More about

Using Ggle Scholar Smarter…

• Creating a Google Scholar profile allows Google Scholar provide links of interest

• Set ‘Library Links’ if affiliated with a college library

• Sign up for ‘Alerts’ in your area of interest• Use ‘Advanced Search’ to be more specific• Read the abstracts of articles before

requesting

Keep up with literature in your field…..

RSS Alerts

• Set up RSS feeds in Google Scholar to be alerted when new articles in your field of interest are published. (I use Scopus to do this).

• Can set up alerts from many resources– by author or topic

• Be cognizant of the amount of information you might get….

Advanced

Search Techniques

Advanced Search

Appropriate Use of Electronic Resources Policy

Scroll down page

Advanced Search

To specify language that results should appear in

Appropriate Use of Electronic Resources Policy

To specify that result should only appear in one file type

e.g. in ppt, pdf

Appropriate Use of Electronic Resources Policy

To specify site or domain of resulte.g. .edu, .gov, .org

Appropriate Use of Electronic Resources Policy

Google Search OperatorsWhen you search using an operator, don't add any spaces between the operator and your query. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com will not.

Exclude a word; -querySearch within a site or domain site:querySearch for pages that link to a URL link:querySearch for either word query OR query

Questions???