Environmental Conservation Library Resources : Literature Review
Search Strategies for STEM Resources
- Search Strategies for STEM ResourcesIf you are new to searching for scientific literature or want a refresher, follow this online tutorial to learn how to identify keywords, search a database, and use the citation network.
Finding and Requesting Materials
The Library Catalog and scholarly databases allow you to search and find many sources. The following links provide instructions for how to use these platforms.
- Finding Article DatabasesThis tutorial will explain how you can locate a relevant article database from the hundreds of databases available from the UW-Madison Libraries.
While many resources are available online, the following links provide more information about requesting physical copies of a resource once you have found it in the library catalog.
Getting Full Text Articles & Book Chapters
Follow 
(Find It button) or the "Find It at UW Madison" link in most databases to:
- access online full text (when available)
- see if the journal or book is available in print if it is not accessible online
- request a free pdf of the article or book chapter if full text is not available online (Request a Copy)
If you already have a citation, use this Citation Search to search for your article.
Citing Your Sources
- Citing SourcesAn introduction to citations including common citation styles, citation information, and citation tools.
Citation Managers such as EndNote, EndNote Basic, Mendeley, or Zotero are software tools for managing your citations. Citation Managers will help you:
- Create and organize a personal research database
- Download citations from online databases
- Format bibliographies and citations in papers
- Share your citations with others
Annotated Bibliography Guidance
- Annotated Bibliography - UW-Madison Writing CenterGuidance for writing an annotated bibliography from the UW-Madison Writing Center
Strategies for Documenting Your Search
You may want to keep notes on your literature search process. Think of these notes as similar to the lab or field notes. It is a record of your thought process as you develop a search strategy and perform exploratory literature searches.
You will want to record your early planning and brainstorming:
- Citations of known literature that you are using as keyword inspiration
- Keywords and filters that you think will be useful to use as search terms
- Databases and other tools you will use to discover literature
- Your research question and a brief narrative about the bigger picture to your question
As you construct and execute searches you will want to record:
- The exact search string used (keywords, filters & limits)
- Date the search was run
- The database the search was run through
- How many results you got
- Notes and observations about the results as you scan through titles
Example spreadsheet template
"Documenting Your Systematic Review Searches with Excel" (video), University of Alabama Libraries