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General Science: Database Tips: Home

This guide highlights the General Science Full Text database and its features.

Welcome to General Science!

General Science is a great database for all sciences from chemistry to biology to geoscience. This database contains indexes and full-text articles from popular science magazines as well as professional scientific journals for scholarly sources. Whether you have a paper in biology or a project on ecology, this is a great source to check out!

Tips and Tricks

  • You can search the General Science database by typing keywords into either the basic or advanced search, and using the AND, NOT, and OR buttons to narrow your search. For example, you can find results for hurricanes AND tornadoes, or for hurricanes but NOT tropical storms.
  • You can also narrow your search results to full text, scholarly journals, by date, and more.
  • Most results will have a pdf or html link for the full text of the article, but if not, click on the "find it" button From this page, click on the "Full Text" links, and you'll be taken to a journal with the full article. If there isn't a Full Text link, click the interlibrary loan button to get the article from another library.
  • Have you found the perfect article and want to find similar sources? Click on the "Find Similar Results" box on the left of the page and the database will search the abstract to find similar sources!

General Science offers tools to save articles and searches so you can return to them later. If there's a PDF of the article, you can download it straight to your computer or print out a copy. You can also use the tools on the right to save articles to Google Drive, send them to your email, export the citation to your computer, or save multiple articles to a folder to send to your email. 

Want to save your entire search without having to type it in again? Just click on the "share" button to the right of your results and copy and paste the link in the box under "Use Permalink." Save this link to your email or a Google Doc, and you'll be taken back to the same search results.

Want to keep up-to-date on your searches? You can get updates on any new search results by creating an RSS feed or an email alert for your search. First, click on the "Share" box to the right of your search results:  Next, click on either "email alert" or "RSS feed." If you want to create an email alert, select how detailed you want the results and how frequently you want them. If you want to make an RSS feed, click on the link and copy and paste the code. Finally, click the "save alert" button and you'll be updated whenever new search results come in!

Science Librarian

Profile Photo
Caroline Gilson
she/her/hers
Contact:
cgilson@depauw.edu
My office is in the Roy O. West Library (004B). We can meet in person at ROW Library or in Julian; we can talk via Google Chat or we can set up a Zoom meeting.

More Help

Need more help with your search? Check out the General Science help page or come ask a librarian!