Things on campus are looking different this year due to COVID-19, and the library is no exception. Here are some links to instructions and videos that tell you how you can still get library books, print documents at the library, and (to a limited extent) study at the library.
Using the Library: Things to Know
Getting Library Books (2020/2021): video How to requests books, book chapters and Interlibrary Loan titles during the 2020/2021 academic year. Updated September 2020.
Remote Library Access (2020/2021): video How to access journal articles, ebooks and databases if you are off campus.
Off-Campus Google Scholar (2020/2021): video How to get to the full text of articles if you are using Google Scholar off campus.
PubMed is the main database for health and medical research in the United States. It is a good place to find articles about the impact of drugs and other substances on human beings and animals.
Web of Science is a database that covers articles in all areas of science, not just biomedical. It will be useful for finding articles in ecology and environmental studies/remediation/environmental engineering and other fields that are not only health focused.
Embase is similar to PubMed, but it contains more articles from European researchers and publications.
Remember to check the date of publication on the articles you're looking at! All of these databases will allow you to sort your results by date, and also to filter them so that you only see review articles (secondary literature).
To get full text:
Almost all of the electronic resources linked from this guide are brought to you from the MSU Libraries. If you live off campus and try to access them, a box should pop up asking for your MSU net ID and password. If you have any trouble with access, please contact our support line.
Be sure to access PubMed and other resources using the links in this guide or from the MSU Libraries Web site, not by going directly to them through Google. This will ensure that you are authenticated as a MSU student and that you will link to our subscriptions.
Research tip: Read secondary literature to get background before you get into the primary literature.
Secondary Literature summarizes the findings or conclusions of many different primary literature papers. Examples include news articles, books, and review articles in scientific journals.
Primary Literature is the first published reports of findings from experiments or studies by the scientists who did the work. These are scientific articles published in scientific journals and they include the following sections: introduction, materials & methods, results (with tables of data or graphs or images), and discussion.