Educ 400: Selected Topics in the History of Science Education

Call or email for an individual appointment
Ruth Lewis   email (remove spaces): rlewis @ wustl.edu   phone 935-4819
Assistance from other Subject Librarians may also be valuable

Recommended Databases: Science -- Education -- History -- Book Reviews
Locating articles -- Fulltext options -- Finding books -- Ideas

Search tips:

• Ask for assistance; use HELP and FAQ pages
• Common keyword strategy
• Use FIND-in-page feature of your browser if your search words aren't obvious
• Start with specific terms whenever possible; revise your strategy as you learn more
• Information about access from outside Washington University

Science:

• Biology Literature Search Help
• Other lists of Science Databases

• ERIC (1966 - ) Includes journal articles, books, theses, curriculi, conference papers, and standards and guidelines. More info.
• Education Full Text (1983 - ) Indexes more than 400 English-language periodicals and books, and includes full-text articles from 204 of those titles. More info.

• American History and Life (1964 - ) Indexes English-language journal articles, book and media reviews, and dissertations. More info.
• History of Science, Technology and Medicine (1975 - ) (5 concurrent users allowed) Describes journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations in the history of science, technology, and medicine and allied historical fields. More info.

• Book Review Databases and a few interdisciplinary databases that do index book reviews. One database on this page is LexisNexis Academic. How to find book reviews in LexisNexis Academic:

1. Click on News
2. Click on General News
3. In the first search field type the title of the book.
4. In Source Material try "Major Newspapers"
5. Change Date field from "Previous six months" to "All available dates."
6. Click on Search.
7. After reviewing the hits, click on the "Edit Search."
8. Change the Source Materials category to "Magazines & Journals"
9. Click Search
   Note: If you get too many hits, go back to the Search screen and type: book review a second "search terms" box.

• Web of Science (1970 - ). To access citations to book reviews, select the Full Search option. From the next screen, you can select to search all or any combination of databases. Then click on cited reference search. From the cited reference search page, enter the name of the cited author (the book author), in the format Lastname First-initial* and the cited work (book title is limited to an abbreviated 20 characters; try the first significant word followed by *). An author's entire name is not indexed. The asterisk "*" (truncation) after the First-initial allows for a broader search, picking up any middle initial used. Click on LOOKUP.
  Once you get results from your search, the next step is to limit the search set to book reviews only. Scroll to Set Search Limits and click on Book Review. Because of the way this database works, you may retrieve Book Reviews for other books that cite your book in the references.
• ERIC does include book reviews. It also features "Textbook Evaluation" as a "Subject Phrase," so articles which review texts (on a particular subject) may be indexed. To find book reviews in http://eric.ed.gov/ [the freely available version of ERIC], use the Advanced search and limit to the Publication Type "Book/Product Reviews.
• The history databases, above, cover book reviews.
• H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences - Since many areas of science have societal implications, you may find some interesting reviews at this web site.
• Some of many journals which publish book reviews:
  Quarterly Review of Biology: 1926-2001 ; 2002+
  Science: 1880-2002 ; 1995+
  Trends in ... titles, e.g., Trends in Genetics, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, etc. Search title and/or author of the book you are trying to find reviewed in the ScienceDirect Search engine
  Microbiology book reviews published in SGM Quarterly/Microbiology Today, 1996-2007.
  American Scientist book reviews (freely available)
  
• AcqWeb's Directory of Book Reviews on the Web
• Reviews & Recommendations - another list of web sources

Locating the articles: Once you have selected the articles you want to read, here are my suggestions for locating them.

• Most science libraries arrange journals alphabetically by title, so you may walk around and find many. This is less useful than it used to be, because many titles are online-only now.
• Search the JOURNAL title (not the article title) in the Library Catalog of the Danforth Campus Libraries and the Becker Medical Catalog.
• For journals that are not at WU, if you have time (1-2 weeks), consider Interlibrary Loan.
• Consider Fulltext options: Retrieving the article on your computer screen can be a real timesaver. I suggest 4 strategies to determine if we have access to fulltext citations. Search by the title of the magazine or journal, NOT the author or title of the article in the journal.

• Search in the Becker Medical Library Catalog Journal Search
• Search in the Biology list of electronic journals
• Search in the Library Catalog of Danforth Campus Libraries
• Search Ejournals; Browse is often out of date so use Search.

• Please refer to this finding books section of the Guide to Library Research, produced by the Reference Dept. at Olin Library. Don't forget to check and request in Mobius if the book you need is checked out or unowned at WU.
• Since there are several medical libraries included in Mobius, you might find requesting through Mobius is most convenient. However, Becker Medical Library is a short metro ride away. This extensive library collection can be searched in the Medical Library Catalog.

A few places to browse for term paper ideas: Science Education Journals and Portals - We don't have fulltext online access to all of these but you can usually search and browse through tables of contents.