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Sciences for Continuing Education: Biological Sciences

A guide to Library resources for the Sciences

Journals

The Rewley House Continuing Education Library subscribes to a limited number of printed journals in this subject including:

  • BBC Wildlife
  • British Wildlife
  • Conservation Land Management
  • ECOS
  • English Nature
  • New Scientist

A much wider selection of electronic journals is available through PCs in the Library and in the Resource Room at Ewert House. Titles include:

Botanical review

Journal of ornithology

Journal of Zoology

Nature

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B

Science

Finding articles

Try the following bibliographic databases for a structured literature search:

ProQuest Biological Sciences, searches a number of different databases which can also be searched separately

Also try:

SCOPUS

Web of Science

Freely available articles

The following are open access sources:

 E-Print Network - over 5.5 million e-prints in basic and applied sciences

Hindawi Publishing - Hindawi publishes 437 peer-reviewed, open access journals in Science, Technology and Medicine as well as the Social Sciences

Public Library resources

Reference material

Most public library authorities give members access to a range of online reference material. You can access much of this at home using your public library card.

Oxfordshire's Reference Online resources include:

  • Credo Reference
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (find out about biologists)
  • Oxford Reference Online (a collection of OUP reference works)

Other public library services will provide similar resources. Find your local library service on the UK.Gov website https://www.gov.uk/local-library-services

Journal articles

Access to Research logoAccess to Research is an initiative which provides free access to academic e-journals in public libraries. Note that you cannot access them at home, only in libraries. You can find a full list of participating libraries as well as information about the journals included on the Access to Research website http://www.accesstoresearch.org.uk/

Continuing Education collections

Books for Biological Sciences are on the lower floor of the Library. Reference books such as dictionaries and encyclopedias can be found in the Jessup Reading Room. Key numbers are:

572 Anthropology 575.1 Genetics
573.2 Human evolution and genetics 580 Botany
573.3 Prehistoric humans 590 Zoology
574 Biology 591.15 Animal behaviour
574.5 Ecology 592 Invertebrates
575 Evolution 598 Ornithology
575.0162 Charles Darwin 599 Mammals

The Library also has DVDs in this area, for example, many of the David Attenborough TV series. See listing on the Library website (scroll down to Science)

E-books

Many e-books purchased by Bodleian Libraries are available and can be found on SOLO. You can access the content of these on PCs in the Library or in the Resource room at Ewert House. For more information about e-books, see Finding books

Here is a selection of titles:

Free online resources

You can find many good quality, free resources on the internet. Here are a few suggestions to get you started: