A Brief Guide
to Finding Information
Astronomy 61: Current Problems in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Professors Eric Jensen & David Cohen
1. Get some background information on your subject.
• Go into TRIPOD and do a WORD search to see if there are any books on the subject. Look at publication dates - unless this is an historical overview, you'll most likely want current books on your topic. QB is the Astronomy Section, but for this class, your topics may end up coming from all different areas of the Library of Congress classification scheme... (Want to know more about the Library of Congress classification? The explanation on the about.com site maps it out very nicely.)
Annual Review of Astronomy & Astrophysics - online access back to v.1 (1963). Good source of REVIEW titles! (also available in Print at QB1 .A28)• Use Encyclopedias & Handbooks in the Reference section to get overview articles:Ref QB14 .E53 2001 Encyclopedia of Astronomy & Astrophysics - an excellent new astronomy encyclopedia. Always a good place to start your research.
Ref QB64 .M623 2000 The Data Book of Astronomy
Ref QB461 .L35 1992 Astrophysical Data: Planets & Stars
• Also, for general articles & definitions, go to Access Science site which is the electronic version of McGraw Hill Dictionary of Science & Technology
2. Now you want to see what has been written specifically about your topic in JOURNALS. If you need an overview of a topic, you may be able to limit your search to review articles by including 'review' in the search list. For more information, check out the web page on "How to find review articles".
• ProQuest Research Library - offers citations and full-text articles from thousands of academic and popular journals on all subjects, from 1971 through today. Always a good place to start!
•
Web
of Science
-
this is a good, interdisciplinary index
with a unique feature which allows you to search for articles which
CITE a particular article. There is a brief guide
to using Web of
Science, with more in-depth online help.
• Google Scholar - Google provides a pretty good database for searching for scholarly literature. Use this IN ADDITION to library-provided databases, as there is a lot that is NOT included in Google Scholar. But - it also often digs up good stuff that the other databases don't! Use the "Check Tripod" and "Find it @ Swarthmore" links to see if we have access to full text.
• NASA ADS DATABASE - The Astrophysics Data System offers some access to FULL TEXT of most major Astronomy journals, usually before 1996 (back to the 1870's for some titles - !).
•SIMBAD DATABASE - SIMBAD stands for Set of Identifications, Measurements,and Bibliography for Astronomical Data. SIMBAD contains information for about 1 million objects, for which 3.3 million identifiers, more than 1.5 million observational measurements and 1.4 million bibliographical references are available and is more of a database of astronomical objects than a bibliographical database.
•INSPEC - The main Physics Index! Indexes scientific and technical journals and conference proceedings in physics, electrical engineering and electronics, computing and control, and information technology. January 1969 to the present. There is a brief guide to using INSPEC, plus online help.
• IOP E-Journal Database - FREE full text searching is available for IOP's Electronic Journals archive back to 1874. The archive includes over 172,000 articles and 1,000 volume-years of journals. Full text links to those IOP journals we have online access to.
• Scitation - provides the most current indexing and abstracting of major American and Russian physics and astronomy journals.
• We do not have electronic access to ALL journals! There are still journals that don't exist electronically. Check Tripod for PRINT holdings.
• Look for the Connect to [journal title] from SWARTHMORE message in the middle of the journal record. If there is no Swarthmore message, that means we don't have access to it. If the journal is available at Bryn Mawr or Haverford Science Libraries, you will need to request the article via InterLibrary Loan .
• Look for the MORE! button by citations when you run a search in most indexes. Click on the MORE! button next to the citation you want and a second window will open up.
From this window you can:
• Link to the electronic article if it is from an e-journal subscribed to by Swarthmore.
• Search TRIPOD to see if Swarthmore has the journal IN PRINT.
• SEARCH TRIPOD to see if the journal is available from Bryn Mawr or Haverford.
• Send an article request to InterLibrary Loan. The form will self-populate with the necessary information from the citation. All you need to do is add your name & barcode and press the 'send request' button!
• Find out more about MORE!
While Cornell Library has a really good collection, obviously there will be times when we don't actually own something you've located in your research. That is when you'll need to borrow from other libraries and to do this you will need Inter-Library Loan (ILL).
Tri-College ILL - BOOKS: If you want a book from Bryn Mawr or Haverford, simply press the REQUEST button at the top of the Tripod screen. Enter your name & barcode, and select WHERE you want to pick up the book. Delivery takes approximately one day library to library. Non-TriCollege ILL - BOOKS: For books NOT available in Tripod, try E-Z Borrow and request books directly from nearby Pennsylvania & NJ libraries.
JOURNAL ARTICLES: If you need an article from a journal not subscribed to by Swarthmore, fill out the journal article request form.
• Your Swat ID will get you into Penn's libraries, but you cannot borrow directly from them. You must use ILL to get anything from Penn.
• Google Astronomy
directory
• Google
Astrophysics directory.
• LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory preprint server (now located at Cornell). Select 'Astrophysics. E-prints are available back to 1992. You can search within the Astrophysics division.
• Digitized Sky Survey - "DSS comprises a set of all-sky photographic surveys in E, V, J, R, and N bands conducted with the Palomar and UK Schmidt telescopes."
• In Cornell, we do not have formal Reference Desk coverage, so if you have any questions or problems finding information there, please do not hesitate to go to the Science Librarian, Meg Spencer's office and ask her or e-mail her.
Send feedback to: mspence1@swarthmore.edu