Research Guide for History 247 / MCDB 247: Social and Bioethical Issues of Stem Cell Research, Spring 2008
Assignment: To find scholarly and legal articles on the ethics of stem cell research, bioethics and ethics in general.
Finding books
Use Keyword search to find materials on your topic. Furthermore, you will need to think about the different ways to combine your search terms. Think of related terms that best express your topic(s). For example other terms that refer to movie are cinema and film, .
- Use OR to combine terms when either one will do: movie OR film; social OR bioethical
- Use AND to force the results to have both terms: ethics AND "stem cell" AND research
- Most databases let you truncate by using a symbol to get other letters: ethic* gets you ethics , ethical...
- The truncation symbol can be a *, ?, ! or other symbols depending on the database
- Be careful that you don't truncate too soon: ta* would also get you Tagalog, tabernacle and all other words starting with "ta"
Search UCSB online catalog, Pegasus to determine if the UCSB library has the item you want. Check the catalog record the call number, location,and availability of these materials.
Use the MELVYL® catalog to search for materials in the UC libraries. Other catalogs you may want to use are:
- RLG (union catalog of various libraries and museums)
- World Cat (union catalog of over 12,000 libraries)
Finding Academic Journal Articles
Select the appropriate database for your topic. Use the Keyword search function and enter the terms relevant to your topic. You will need to write down the citation in order to find the article itself by using the UCSB catalog. In some cases the entire article is available online that you can print, email or save on a disk. To access these databases from off campus, you must go through the proxy server.
From the Library's homepage click RESEARCH then choose ARTICLE INDEXES & DATABASES to find the appropriate databases for your topic. A citation has the following basic information: journal title, author, article title, publication date, volume and page numbers. You will need the JOURNAL TITLE to locate the article in the online catalog.
Humanities
- America: History and Life
- Historical Abstracts
- MLA International Bibliography
- Philosopher's Index
- Religion Database (ATLA)
Social Sciences
- Anthropology Literature
- PsycINFO
- Social Sciences Database (via CSA)
- Web of Science
Multi-discipline (Gender, Ethnic, Area Studies and popular magazines)
- Alternative Press Index
- Expanded Academic
- Gender Watch
- JSTOR
- Left Index
- Project Muse
Finding Court Cases, Law Reviews, and Government Documents
The major resources that contain legal articles are Lexis Nexis and JSTOR. Lexis Nexis also contains full-text federal and state court cases.
Guide to Finding to Court Cases
The Congressional Universe database contains documents on government legislative and regulatory information (i.e. committee hearings, bills, laws, Federal codes, etc.)
Research in Government Information contains useful information on federal and state government documents.
How a Bill Becomes a Law
Primary and Archival Sources
What is a Primary Source?
Relevant Web Sources
Ask for Help!
Don't forget to ASK FOR HELP when you need it. You can find a reference librarian at the Main Reference Desk during the week, weekends and even on holidays. For reference help please call (805) 893.3133.
Gerardo (Gary) Colmenar: colmenar@library.ucsb.edu.