WHERE TO START?
1. Find a subject.
- browse the journals (look at American Mathematical Monthly, College Mathematics Journal, Mathematical Intelligencer, UMAP Journal or more general science journals like Scientific American, or Science)
- look at books on the new book shelf or browse the books upstairs in the stacks.
- select something that you may have been introduced to in a previous class which piqued your interest
2. Get some background information.
• Go into TRIPOD, the Tri-College catalog and do a WORD SEARCH to see if there are any books on the subject. The QA401 section is one call number that covers Mathematical Modeling, but you will find MM books throughout the collection.
• Using Encyclopedias and Handbooks in the Reference section, look for definitions and manageable overview articles. These are just a few of the Reference books in Cornell:
Ref Q121 .M3 1997 McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. 8th edition. - for general articles on a wide range of topics. Check out the online version on the Access Science site.
Ref QA5 .W45 1999 CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics
Ref QA36 .H36 Encyclopedia of Mathematics - 6 volume set offering lengthy articles on algebra, probability & statistics, numerical methods, analysis, and combinatorics
3. 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".
This is the electronic version of Math Reviews, which is called MathSciNet, and goes all the way back to 1940! There is a very brief guide to using this database, plus lots of online help. Endnote & MathSciNet
The web version of Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. Coverage goes back to 1989. 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. Endnote and Web of Science
Full text access to the COMPLETE runs of journals, except the most recent 4-5 years. There are many Mathematics (including AMS & SIAM journals) journals included in this database.
An interdisciplinary database with much full-text available. For fewer 'popular magazine' articles, and more 'academic journal' articles, check the box that says LIMIT TO REFEREED PUBLICATIONS! A good place to start your research.
EEVL's Ejournal Search Engines - Mathematics
Search the content of freely available full-text mathematics ejournals , selected for relevance and quality. Academic journals, professional and trade publications, and society journals are covered. All sites are also listed in the EEVL catalogue of Internet Resources.
Electronic Journals & MORE!
• 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 TriCo 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!
Some E-journal Packages
• ACM's DIGITAL LIBRARY - online access to all of ACM's journals, SIG newletters and conference proceedings online!
• IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY DIGITAL LIBRARY - online access to 19 periodicals and over 750 conference proceedings.
• IEEE Xplore - Online access to ALL of the IEEE journals, plus many conference proceedings. Coverage is back to 1998.
• EEVL: the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics & Computing - access to free online journals and quality web sites.
InterLibrary Loan
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). There are two divisions of ILL: Tri-College and Everywhere Else...
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.
TriCollege ILL - JOURNAL ARTICLES: Journals may not be checked out from TriCo SCIENCE libraries, so if you need a SCIENCE journal article (print OR electronic) from BMC or HAV, place an ILL request using the TriCo ILL request form. Journals DO circulate from main libraries, so if you need an article from a non-science library journal, place a hold on the actual journal volume in Tripod and it will be sent via TriCo van.
Non-TriCollege ILL - BOOKS: For books NOT available in Tripod, try E-Z Borrow and request books directly from nearby Pennsylvania & NJ libraries. Books usually arrive within a few days. If books are not available from EZ Borrow, try regular ILL, which can sometimes take up to two weeks to fill.
Non-TriCollege ILL - JOURNAL ARTICLES: For articles in journals not available from TriCo, use the online ILL form. You must put the COMPLETE JOURNAL TITLE in your request - do not use abbreviations, or your request will most likely be sent back to you. For complete journal titles, check the book behind the Circulation Desk, or go to Journal Abbreviation Sources.
• 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.
• REF QA42 .H54 1998 Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences
• REF QA42 .K73 1997 A Primer of Mathematical Writing
• REF T11 .C33 1994 The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors & Publishers
• There is online information on citing electronic and traditional resources in The Council of Biology Editors Style of Documentation in Science or Mathematics.
GOOGLE still seems to be the best search engine out there, but Scirus is also a good Science search engine. Also check out Vivisimo, a new metasearch engine, which is useful for browsing or looking for an overview.
• LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory pre-print server for math.
• CITESEER - a scientific literature digital library. Topics covered include Artificial Intelligence, databases, machine learning, programming and much more.
• 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 come to my office and ask me. If I am unavailable, send me an e-mail OR use our Virtual Reference Service.
Meg Spencer, Science Librarian
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/cornell/Sciences/math61.htm
Created 8.25.04 Last updated 11.22.04 mes