General information:
Library (Research Port)
Research Port is the University of Maryland libraries online interface. It serves two purposes.
First, it provides seemless access to journals and databases for which the University pays. That is why you must log in.
Second, Research Port allows personalization and saving of searches and other features.
The CBMG librarian, Tom Harrod, has produced a guide to resources, a dynamic page with audio made using Captivate.
Google
You are all familiar with Google. However, there are some features that are worth mentioning.
First, there is Google scholar (scholar.google.com), which is a complement to PubMed. One interesting difference is that PubMed lists articles in order of those most recently published while Google scholar lists articles in order of their importance (measured by some secret formula that clearly includes the number and quality of citations). Therefore, Google scholar is a good way to find seminal articles of importance while PubMed is probably better at finding recent articles.
Google blog search (blogsearch.google.com)
is the opposite. It focuses on web pages that appeared most recently. In fact, it is possible to restrict your search to pages updated in the last hour, 12 hours, day or week.
Google books (books.google.com), as you might guess, searches books.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an amazing resource. Because it can be edited by anyone who wishes to do so, you must be cautious about errors. However, it is very up to date, and several studies indicate fewer errors in science articles in wikipedia than in comparable articles in traditional encyclopedias. In the absence of political debate, the fact that every reader is a potential editor has a positive effect. Experts who feel that the wikipedia article in their field is inaccurate have a moral obligation to fix it, and many do. Furthermore, there is a "WikiProject" in Molecular and Cellular Biology that seeks to "collect and organize ... information in articles related to molecular and cell biology ... and make it accessible to researchers and laypeople alike by providing an entry point to the wealth of biological data that is currently hidden in obscure databases and journal articles." Be aware that Wikipedia is a secondary (or tertiary) source and you often want to cite primary sources (see note at bottom of this page).
Faculty of 1000
The Faculty of 1000 provides annotated citations to articles that their affiliated "faculty" find important. Citations are accompanied by a rating and a short evaluation by one or more members of the faculty. Many have tags such as "new finding," "hypothesis" or "hidden gem". Access to the Faculty of 1000 is by subscription. You will be using the University of Maryland subscription, so it may be necessary to access it through Research Port (described below).
Genetics Society of America
The GSA seeks to foster a unified science of genetics and to maximize its intellectual and practical impact. Their web site has links to a variety of educational resources, including Scitable, a product of the Nature Publishing Group that provides a free science library and personal learning tools in genetics.
Bookmarks
Shared bookmarking allows a faculty of much more than 1,000 to comment on the literature.
CiteULike is one such bookmarking service. There are others, including
delicious.
A comment on citations
Wherever possible, specific sources should be cited. "The internet" is not a citation. Google is not a source; it is a search tool that allows you to find other sources. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. There is a longstanding rule (pre-dating the internet) that secondary sources such as encyclopedias should not be cited. They should be used to find primary sources that are the basis of the fact being cited, or to obtain general information that does not require citation.
page by Steve Mount, last modified Jan. 27, 2012