Biological Abstracts is a comprehensive reference database covering the life sciences journal literature. It covers, but is not limited to, the following fields: botany, microbiology, pharmacology, zoology, biochemistry, evolutionary ecology, neurology and toxicology. Most records includes a descriptive abstract of the journal content, and some have direct links to full-text articles.

With coverage from 1926 to the present of over 4200 journal titles and searchable using the powerful ISI Web of Knowledge platform, Biological Abstracts is a world class source of biological information. Biological Abstracts is updated every two months and contains over twelve million records.

Search Tips:

• The * symbol will allow you to get variant endings for your search terms. For example migrat* will find migrate, migrations, migrating and migrates.

• To filter or reduce results on the Results page, enter a Topic query in the Search within Results text box, and then click Search. This search will return only those records in the original set that contain the topic term(s) you enter. To search for an exact phrase within the results, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, the query "South America" will only retrieve records that contain this exact phrase.

• Use the Save to other Reference Software option to export selected records to Refworks. To do this:
  1. Select the record(s) to include in the output.
     
  2. Select the data to include in each record.
     
  3. Click Save to other Reference Software, and then click Save to go to the Processing Records page. A dialog box will open.
     
  4. Save the file to your hard drive or to your desktop. The product automatically saves the file as savedrecs.txt.
     
  5. Open your reference software.
     
  6. Select the Import option.
     
  7. Select ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) for the Import Filter / Data Source.
     
  8. Select a database.
     
  9. Select a folder (Optional).
     
  10. Select the savedrecs.txt file that you saved to your hard drive or to your desktop.
      
  11. Click the Import button

Where is it: Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page http://www.library.unlv.edu. Select the Articles and Databases tab, click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter B and select Biological Abstracts.

Quick Link: http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/login?url=http://portal.isiknowledge.com/portal.cgi?DestApp=BIOABS&Func=Frame

The Proquest Accounting and Tax database serves as the principle research tool for accounting and tax professionals. It includes indexing and abstracts for nearly 300 core accounting-related business journals, including official releases from the AICPA and FASB, as well as selective indexing from over 1000 additional sources. National and international in scope, it covers accounting policies and standards, state and national tax legislation, corporate and individual taxation, compensation and pension plans and corporate financial management. It also profiles accounting firms, CPAs and management consulting firms. To obtain AICPA and FASB releases, search by Author in the advanced search feature and type in AICPA or FASB in the search box.

Search Tips:

• You can focus your search by using truncation and wildcard characters to stand in for letters, adding flexibility and increasing the number of terms to include as matches in your results. For example, if you are searching for historic documents about Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, and you are aware that the spelling has changed over the years for many city names. To find documents, you use the truncation symbol. Lincoln AND gettysburg* This will find the alternate spellings of Gettysburg and Gettysburgh.

• The ProQuest Topic Guide lets you find documents by searching an index, or by exploring a hierarchical subject directory. Indexed topics may include subjects, companies, people, and locations. Enter a term and select whether you want ProQuest to Suggest Topics or Look up Topics A-Z, then click Find Term. Or, click browse subjects by topic to view the Subject Directory. Once you have found a topic, click View documents to run a search using the topic. Or click Narrow below the desired topic to narrow the search using related terms. From the narrowed list, find a term you want to use and click View.

• You'll find Cite this above the title of your document, along with other options for handling the document you're reading. When you click Cite this, it will open a window with a formatted citation you can include in a bibliography. Use the dropdown menu to select the desired citation format (APA, MLA, etc.). Or you can follow these steps to export citations from your list for a bibliography:
  
  
  1. First, make sure you're on the My Research page.
     
  2. Check the box next to each document you want to include in your bibliography.
     
  3. Click the Export citations into EndNote, ProCite, RefWorks or Reference Manager link.
     
  4. You see the Export Citations page. Select export directly to RefWorks. Make sure to wait to log into RefWorks until prompted to.

Quick Link: http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/login?COPT=REJTPUcxK2ZiNys1JklOVD0wJlZFUj0y&clientId=17675

RAND began in 1946 as a research project (Project Rand) backed by a single client, the Army Air Forces. The project was developed at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, California. Two years later, with Ford Foundation support, RAND became an independent, nonprofit research institution committed to exploring the most complex and consequential problems facing our society. The RAND name originated as a contraction of Research and Development.

Today RAND conducts research on more than 1,000 topics in a typical year. The RAND Organization think tank deals with such issues as national defense, education and training, health care, criminal and civil justice, labor and population, science and technology, community development, international relations, and regional studies. Many of the reports are available full text online for free.

Search Tips:

• Identify phrases with quotation marks, for example:
  Diabetes and "childhood obesity"
  Quotes label exact phrases; the above search would find only pages about childhood obesity, not children in general.

• The NEAR operator finds terms that are close together, but not necessarily in the same phrase.
  For example: Diabetes (childhood NEAR obesity)
  Use the parentheses to make the search engine process that portion of your search together.

• Like all Web search engines, the Rand search engine Vivisimo finds documents containing all of the words in your query and presents them in order of relevance. However, it also creates categorized clusters on-the-fly, customized for your search results and displayed in the left column. Browsing these clusters by clickin on them can help you quickly zoom in on groups of relevant documents.

Quick Link: http://ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/login?url=http://www.rand.org/Abstracts/