Home: FS 290
Database Search Tips

Finding Books

Food Science Web Sites
Evaluating Web Sites

Career Information

FS 290: Careers in Food and Bioprocessing Sciences

Course Instructor: Dr. Christopher Daubert
Librarian: Carol Vreeland

Identifying Articles on Your Topic:

Use one of the following indexes (databases) to search for references to journal articles. These indexes may include a summary of the article or abstract and, often, they include a link to the full text of the article. If the full text of the article is not available online, use the NCSU Libraries catalog to find out if the NCSU Libraries has the journal.
Additional indexes are available through the NCSU Libraries Web site's Databases list.

Indexes to articles in the popular press.

Tip: the new Find Articles page is a good way to get to most of the following databases.

General Databases:
Academic Search Premier (NCSU only)

A "scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database containing full text for nearly 4,650 serials, including more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 8,200 journals in the collection." Includes articles from scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, and more. Updated daily.

Newspaper Databases:
LexisNexis Academic (NCSU only)

LexisNexis Academic allows NCSU faculty, students and staff to locate the full-text and abstracts of comprehensive news, business, and legal information. Search foreign news sources, regional U.S. news services, radio and television transcripts, federal and state case law, medical, legislative and industry news, annual reports from the Securities and Exchange Commission and more.
Newspapers are updated several times daily, and wire services hourly.

Newspaper Source Plus (NCSU only)

Newspaper Source Plus provides cover-to-cover full text for more than 100 national and international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Times (London), and others. The database also contains selective full text for more than 300 U.S newspapers. In addition, some full-text television & radio news transcripts are provided.

Tip: you can also search the News & Observer directly. From the Journal Titles page, search for News and Observer as a "Journal Title." Then, click on the link to search that says, "News and observer (Raleigh, N.C.)"

Subject Databases

(Select Business & Management as your subject area.):
Business Source Premier (NCSU only)

Provides full text for nearly 8,200 serials, including full text for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed business publications in marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics.

(Select Medicine, Human as your subject area.):
Health Source--Consumer Edition (NCSU only)

Indexing and abstracts for consumer health, nutrition and professional periodicals. Includes full text for many consumer health periodicals, health-related pamphlets, and health reference books. Also includes Clinical Pharmacology, a database of drug monographs.

Indexes to Primary Research articles.

Food Science and Technology Abstracts (via EBSCOHost) (NCSU only)

Primary index of the food science literature including food microbiology, food hygiene and toxicology, food additives and food standards, laws and regulations and human nutrition. Coverage: 1969 - present. Updated quarterly.

MEDLINE

The primary index of the biomedical literature, including human nutrition.

  • MEDLINE. (NCSU only) Coverage: 2000 - present. Updated: weekly.

    Note: with Cambridge Scientific's new CSA Illumina interface, you can select Natural Sciences or Technology as your Subject Area.
    Or, click on Select Specific Databases; then select MEDLINE and any other databases of interest--for example, Biological Sciences.

  • MEDLINE via PubMed. Coverage: 1947 - present. Updated daily, Tuesday through Saturday.

    "PubMed also provides access and links to the integrated molecular biology databases included in NCBI's Entrez retrieval system. These databases contain DNA and protein sequences, 3-D protein structure data, population study data sets, and assemblies of complete genomes in an integrated system."

    Use the Entrez Journals database to look up journal names, MEDLINE abbreviations, or ISSN numbers for journals that are included in the PubMed system.

CAB Abstracts (via EBSCOhost) (NCSU only)

Worldwide index to agriculture, forestry, and allied disciplines including animal and human nutrition. From the Centre for Agriculture & Biosciences International. Coverage: 1972 - present.

CAB Abstracts Archive (via EBSCOhost) (NCSU only)
Combines 17 printed abstract journals produced between 1910 and 1972 into a single database.

Science Citation Index Expanded (via Web of Science) (NCSU only)

A multidisciplinary database that covers 5,900 major journals across 150 scientific disciplines. Indexes cited references of the articles in the database so you can search by cited author, cited patent or cited paper. This allows you to trace a particular research topic in the scientific literature. Coverage: 1900 - present. Updated weekly.

Indexes and sources of review articles

  1. Limiting a search to review articles.
    Many of the indexes listed above will allow you to limit your search to review articles. Often, this option is available in their "Advanced" search feature. Look for an option to limit a search by publication type; select review articles as the type.
  2. If an index or electronic resource does not allow this type of limiting, you can still locate some review articles by including the word review in your keyword search.
    For example: bioengineered foods and review
  3. Some indexes specialize in reviews.

    • BIOSIS Previews (NCSU only)

      Issued as a part of the ISI Web of Knowledge, the database covers original research reports and reviews in biological and biomedical areas. Coverage includes traditional areas of biology such as botany, zoology, and microbiology, as well as related fields such as biomedical, agriculture, pharmacology, and ecology. Also included are interdisciplinary fields such as medicine, biochemistry, biophysics, bioengineering, and biotechnology. The database covers content summaries, books, meeting abstracts, papers, and posters. BIOSIS also combines the content from Biological Abstracts and Biological Abstracts/RRM. Coverage: 1969-present. Updated weekly.

Search Tips

To search by keyword Type the words or phrases you wish to begin your search and press [Enter]
lung cancer [Enter]		 Retrieves records with the phrase lung cancer
To truncate terms
(wildcard searching)		 Type the word you wish to search followed by an asterisk (*)
vaccin* [Enter]
Note: The truncation symbol varies depending
on the search software.		 Retrieves records with terms beginning with virus such as vaccine vaccines vaccination vaccinating vaccinated
AND narrows your search lung cancer and prevention
[Enter]		 Retrieves any record that contains both the phrase lung cancer and the term prevention.
OR broadens your search aids or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome [Enter] Retrieves any record that contains either the term aids or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
Set searching #1 and #2 [Enter]
Note: May not work in all databases. Does not work in WWW search engines.		 Retrieves records that contain both a term from set #1 and a term from set #2.
Nesting (Aids or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) and prevention [Enter]
Note: Used when set searching
isn't available.		 Retrieves records that contain
either the term aids or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and the term prevention.

Librarian Contact Information