You can use LibrarySearch to search for the books you need. Just type in a few words from the title plus the surname of the author(s) into the search box. If you get stuck – please ask!

You will find the majority of the life sciences book collection on the second floor at Augustine House:

• 530 Physics
• 540 Chemistry
• 570 Biology, Life Sciences
• 574.5, 577 Ecology
• 580 Botany, Plants
• 590 Zoology, Animals

Remember to check the different areas housing the 7-day loan (open shelves) and 4-week loans (moving shelves).

You can browse printed copies of journals on the second floor of Augustine House in the Silent Zone (west wing) – they are shelved in alphabetical order of the title of the journal. These are for use in the library only. However, most journals are also available online. Online journals relevant to life sciences include:

• Animal Law
• Annals of Applied Biology
• BMC Genetics
• Environmental Pollution
• Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
• Evolution
• Frontiers in Zoology
• Journal of Animal Ecology
• Journal of Phytopathology
• New Scientist
• Phytochemistry
• Plant Breeding
• PLoS One
• Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry

You can see which journals are available online by using LibrarySearch. Make sure you log in first! (You will need your university username and password).Try entering the title of a journal into the search box or using the “Find e-journals by title” link. You can also browse e-journals by subject, using Browzine. This software allows you to read a journal like an e-book, so you can look through the whole journal rather than just individual articles. There is an app so you can use it easily on your phone or other mobile device.

You can find individual journal articles to read online by doing a quick search in LibrarySearch. Try searching for a key word or phrase connected with your research topic, e.g. “plant pathology” or “fisheries management”. See our quick guide for more information.

Open access journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals includes journals such as Acquatic Biology. Open access journals are usually scholarly, but the difference is, the publishers of these journals believe in making their research freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This means that you (or your institution) don’t have to have a subscription to the journal to be able to read the articles they publish.

There are lots of databases that contain articles about the life sciences, and they are all available via LibrarySearch – just click on the “Find databases” link in the left-hand menu and you will see an alphabetical list. Browse the list until you find the one you want.

The most useful databases for your subject include:

BIOSIS Citation Index: life sciences and biomedical research covering pre-clinical and experimental research, methods and instrumentation, animal studies, and more.
Access content from journals, meetings, patents, and books from 1969 onwards.

Europe PMC is a repository, providing access to worldwide life sciences articles, books, patents and clinical guidelines. Europe PMC provides links to relevant records in databases such as Uniprot, European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), Protein Data Bank Europe (PDBE) and BioStudies.

GreenFILE offers covers all aspects of human impact to the environment. Includes scholarly, government and general-interest titles on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. Indexing and abstracts for about 295,000 titles, with more than 4,600 available in full text.

JISC Journal Archives enables conceptual searching across more than 450 journals from publishers such as Brill, Institute of Physics, Oxford University Press and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

MAH Complete includes UK Vet titles: Companion Animal, Equine Health, Livestock, The Veterinary Nurse and Equine.

New Scientist provides access to the articles from this weekly international science magazine. Articles are grouped by broad field or topic, and you can browse by date or search for a specific subject. It also includes lists of jobs and careers advice information. [Access via LibrarySearch and then choose OpenAthens link on the New Scientist page].

PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

ScienceDirect searches across 2,500 peer-reviewed titles – or over 9.5 million articles. This is a good source for journal articles in engineering, covering chemical engineering, chemistry, energy, and materials science.

Springer Journals contains more than 2,000 journals in various fields of science, technology and medicine.

SpringerProtocols 1980-2012 a large database of reproducible laboratory protocols (over 40,000) in biomedicine and life sciences, enabling users to find the right protocol for a lab set-up.

Web of Science (WoS) a multi-disciplinary service, where you can search for articles from over 18,000 journals in a wide range of science fields. You can access full-text journal articles, if the Library has an active subscription.

Wiley Online Library searches across a multi-disciplinary collection of journals covering industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, mathematics and materials science.

Zoological Record is a large database covering all aspects of animal biology, paleobiology, and zoology, from biodiversity and the environment to taxonomy and veterinary sciences, and includes records back to 1864.

You will find guides next to the database title (for most databases) on the “Find databases” pages, and you can also access these guides on the Library and Learning Resources web pages.

Kanopy is a great video-streaming service which includes a number of documentaries. Plus, we have access to Box of Broadcasts (BoB) which archives British TV and radio broadcasts. A great feature is that you can take clips of programmes and put them in your presentations or analyse the transcripts.

The following websites are a good starting point:

BioImages offers a virtual field-guide to UK biodiversity, with a large collection of photographs of wild species and natural history objects. It covers most groups of organisms with the exception of birds and other vertebrates.

CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) an international not-for-profit organization working to improve people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solving problems in agriculture and the environment. Hosts separate sites for Invasive species, Microbial services and Plantwise, and offers case studies and videos.

DRYAD a curated resource to make the data underlying scientific publications in evolutionary biology and ecology discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. Dryad provides a general-purpose home for a wide diversity of datatypes. http://datadryad.org/

European Environment Agency provides information on the environment both for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and for the general public. In collaboration with others, the EEA gathers data and produces assessments on a wide range of topics, including agriculture, environment and health, biodiversity, ecosystems and soil.

Gateway to Research (GtR) developed by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) to enable users to search and analyse information about publicly funded research. It includes information about publications, people, organisations and outcomes relating to research projects.

SciCentral a useful site for finding out the latest research news in Science, including physical and medical Science

Scientific Research Publishing an academic publisher of open access journals, books and conference papers on a range of scientific and technological subjects from soil science and ecology to natural and polymer sciences.

Wellcome Collection a freely available resource exploring health, life and the connections between science, medicine, life and art. Provides a wide range of online articles and a searchable bank of Creative Commons licensed images from their extensive collections.