FRIPS: Freshmen Research in Plant Sciences

Choose the right tool for the job

• What kind of information do you need? Background information or primary research?
  

Know Thy Resource

• What's included? What's not? How does it search?

Think before you search

• Break topics into concepts
• Think about your keywords, synonyms, alternate spellings

Searching is an iterative process

• There is no one perfect database (or one way to get to the information)
  
• That's why they call it re-search...

Keep Track of What You're Doing

• Take notes! Email yourself search results!
• Have a MyNCBI account to save your PubMed searches
• Consider using a citation manager like EndNote or Mendeley (coordinate with your mentor if you're writing manuscripts together!)
  • NOTE: DoIT has discontinued the EndNote license for students. Effective February 25, 2020, students can either register for the free web-based version of EndNote or purchase a personal copy from EndNote directly. Register for EndNote Basic or Purchase EndNote
  • More on citation managers

ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

• Authority is constructed and contextual
• Information creation as a process
• Information has value
• Scholarship as conversation
• Searching as strategic exploration