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Wellesley College Research Guides

NEUR 300: Capstone Seminar in Neuroscience FA 2024: In Class Activities

1. Consultations

Click the button below to make an appointment with me to chat about finding sources or citing them.

2. Strategizing your topic before searching for articles

3. Bias in Scholarly Assignments

4.Tips on how to read scholarly articles

Resources

Image from Western Oregon University Hamersly Library showing examples and definitions of primary, secondary and teritiary sources

Infographics

5. Search in a database

Search Tips:

When searching in a database, spelling matters! Image illustrating Venn diagrams for the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT

  • Unlike search engines, a database will not correct your typos and spelling mistakes. 

  • If you get zero results, first check that you spelled your keywords correctly.

Use quotation marks for phrase searching

  • If you are searching for multiple words or a phrase, like human computing, put those words within a set of quotation marks in the search box. 

  • If you search human computing, instead of "human computing" most databases will search human and computing as separate keywords

Use truncation to search for various endings

  • aka “wildcards” - often a * at the end of a word (check the database)

  • Use in place of letters - comput* for computer, computing, computational

Other factors:

  • Use Boolean Operators to connect your search terms.

  • Plural and singular nouns usually do not matter. 

  • Capitalization usually does not matter. 

  • Spaces between letters or words might matter. 

  • Especially in acronyms or the names of medication or viruses or molecules or organisms

  • Bowerbird vs “Bower Bird” both are valid terms and return results in databases

Flipped Resources for after the Library session

Poster for Thesis Fest 2024 in Tishman Commons October 10