BIO 1093G: Life of Animals, Honors – Term paper assignment

Background information

To find an overview of the topic you are researching, or to brainstorm potential topics, books and reference resources are a great place to start.

Reference resources are things like encyclopedias or sourcebooks, which provide general information on a given topic in a concise format. Encyclopedia entries are often a few pages long and provide a list of references for further learning.

Three reference resources for your BIO 1093G term paper assignment are below. Browse the table of contents and click into a few articles to help you ground your research, or use the "Search Within Publication" box to find articles related to your topic.

Find books and ebooks about your topic in the Booth Library collection. You may discover one or two chapters of interest, or the book's introduction may provide necessary background information. No need to read the entire book.

Magazine & news articles

Magazines like National Geographic and Scientific American and news outlets like The New York Times and the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) have science writers that read original research in technical journals and distill them into articles that are brief, useful, and accessible to a more general audience than scientific journals.

Find magazine and news articles in the database Academic Search Ultimate (linked below).

On your search results page, use the Source Types limiter in the left-hand column of the page to only view articles from magazines and newspapers.

Additional sources of information include the following science news sites:

• Science Daily -- https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/plants_animals/
• The Scientist -- https://www.the-scientist.com/page/categories (e.g., Evolution, Zoology)
• Live Science -- https://www.livescience.com/animals
• Discover -- https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth
• National Geographic -- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals

Scientific journal articles

Once you have gathered background information using reference resources and books, and have identified some magazine and news articles on your topic, try searching for a few peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals. Incorporate search words that you have learned from your initial readings. Let the reference, magazine, and news sources inform your search.

Find scientific journal articles in the databases linked below. On your results page (Biological & Agricultural Index Plus and Academic Search Ultimate only), limit Source Types to academic journals.