BIOLO 1100: J. DiGiovanni

Your professor has suggested one of four possible topics: 

• Biotechnology
• Evolution (including behavior topics)
• Bud Presentation (i.e. plant structures)

This guide will focus on places you can discover more about  biotechnology, evolution and behavior, and plant structures (if needed for the bud project presentation.)

If your presentation is focused on a biotechnology technique, you will find the following sources helpful:

Once you've gotten some background info on your topic from Gale, take the keywords you learned and turn to other sources to get a bit more info.  Start with the following: 

For your evolution topic, you'll also want to take a look at the catalog.   Try searching by keyword (Cambrian Explosion) and then take a look at what you see: 

Click on a title that looks like a good fit to discover more about the book and scroll down.  Check for a description, summary, or table of contents that will tell you more about what you need to read: 

Two important things to note: 

• We have several online books.  You might want to use a chapter of one for more information. (Note that you can also limit to online books on the right of the screen.)
• The library will scan a chapter of a print book for you and send you an email with the content.  Learn more here. 

While you're doing Google searches to either narrow your topic or in order to dig up more information on certain subject, you want to be careful to decide if the information you find is trustworthy.

When it comes to science, nearly everyone has opinions: should we be labeling genetically modified food for consumer's awareness? What will fracking do for our economy or our groundwater supply? Your job is to evaluate the information you can find through Google and Bing to find the good websites--those written by authors you can trust, with good and up-to-date information.

Authorship: Who created this website? What is their background on the topic? Are they trustworthy?

Bias: Why was the website created? What point of view does the author have? Does that limit the facts they present or how the facts are presented?

Date: try to find information that is less than ten years old.

Questions? Check out the COD Library's guide to evaluating information.

Google Scholar can create citations for articles.  Click the quotation marks below the article information after doing a search. 

Need some help putting together citations?  Check out the helpful links below: 

• COD Library's guide to APA citations.  Make sure to use the menu to the right to find examples of what you need.
• Purdue OWL's guide to APA citations and paper format

Want software to create citations for you? Check out the database below: