Career Catalyst - Utilizing Library Resources to Enhance your Academic Potential
On the first Friday of the Fall quarter, CRS welcomed Molly Beestrum, the Education and Curriculum Librarian for the Galter Health Sciences Library, for the kick off the Career Catalyst series for the 2020-21 academic year.
Molly’s presentation was focused on elucidating one of the fundamentals of research, the utilization of library resources, which is beneficial to both new scientists beginning their investigations and the seasoned researcher looking for access to and guidance for new investigative tools. Being part of a large basic science and clinical research institution at Northwestern, our community of scientists has access to a wide array of data bases and online research tools. Additionally, the Galter Library provides classes on the utilization of these tools from using PubMed, Scopus, EndNote, and even the proper process of conducting a systematic review.
Searching for materials relevant to your research question can be daunting with the vast array of published scientific materials. Molly provided our audience with key steps in PubMed searches that can refine databases searches bringing forth articles filtered via date or key terms, and the capability to do refined and targeted queries. In addition to searching and accessing scientific materials, Molly provided a tutorial on how to use the EndNote citation manager software. Those new to this software were guided through entering new citations to creating and importing EndNote libraries for use in the composition of research articles, literature reviews, and theses. Meanwhile, seasoned users were treated to the import capabilities for batch uploading collated searches where upwards of thousands of article citations can be integrated into an EndNote library.
Overall, this Informative and thorough review of some of the tools available to our researchers only begins to show the tip of the iceberg of capabilities that our libraries have for our science community. The take-home message is that our librarians and the tools they know and support are a valuable resource in our scientific quests. We encourage you to contact Molly or another helpful librarian the next time you begin a new research project!