Unit Seven Assignment

“BIOSIS”

Disciplines: Index to articles from biological and biomedical journals

Content: Contains mostly abstracts, however, a copy of the full text can be obtained from the “Find it @ WSU” tab

Interface: 3 search bars and more if needed by pressing on the “Add another field” button. Just like what we did with our Boolean assignment, after each search bar, we had the option of choosing AND, OR, or NOT. These are to help us narrow down our research.

v  No specific intended audience. This information appears to everyone or anyone researching for scientific information on a specific topic. However, some of the articles from the search results may be more science heavy than others.

v  This database mostly consists of articles.

v  The source of material in this database comes from journals and magazines.

v  This database covers information from 1969 to present day research

v  There are a lot of point of views that are covered, however, there is no bias.

v  You can mark any specific article that you believe could be useful or just attracts your attention and can place it in the ”Marked List” and can come back to it later.

v  A HELP button is available and it provides information about the results and what kind of data may be included. It provides ways to refine your research, help analyzing the data and more.

Reflection: I am a biology major and have had to write many scientific papers whether they were research papers of lab write up. I have used this database many times to help me with my papers because it is simple to use and have found it to contain a lot of valuable information. This was an interesting assignment because I have never gone in detail with this database. I just normally look for what I need and call it good. But this process has helped me find out more information about this database and what it is all about. All these assignments that we are doing with databases have helped me a lot. Too bad I did not take this class my first year here at this University because I know I would have benefited a lot from it.