Perhaps you’ve heard in the news lately about the 2008 Nobel Prize winners. These people were all honored for their important contributions to literature, science and world peace.

The 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature went to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, and if you are interested in reading any of his works, you can find them in BearCat, Baylor Library’s online catalog. If you choose “Search the Catalog by Author” and put in “Le Clezio” you will find a list of the books written by him, which the library has in its collection. The books that the library owns by Le Clézio include works in French and in English translation.

If you’re interested in finding the works of the Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, you should start with the database called Web of Science (log in with your Bear ID and password). This database contains a large amount of high-quality peer-reviewed articles from the leading science journals.

I was specifically interested in finding out about the Nobel Prizewinners in Medicine, since two of the recipients were the scientists who discovered the HIV virus (Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier). So, after I logged into Web of Science I searched for “Montagnier, L.” and selected “Author” from the drop-down box. It looks like Mr. Montagnier has published quite a lot – that search produced 374 results! Scanning down the list, it looks like a number of the articles were published with Barré-Sinoussi.

However, Web of Science has a great feature – being able to see the number of articles which have cited any particular article. Let’s take that list of results we got by searching for Mr. Montagnier and changing “Sort by” from “Relevance” to “Times Cited” (that’s on the far right at the top of the search results). When we do that, we find that the first article is called “ISOLATION OF A T-LYMPHOTROPIC RETROVIRUS FROM A PATIENT AT RISK FOR ACQUIRED IMMUNE-DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS)” and it has been cited 4393 times!. This is also the article which first presented the Nobel laureate’s ground-breaking work discovering the HIV virus.

This is one of the great features of Web of Science: the ability to see what each article has cited and who has cited it. The higher the number of “times cited” the more important or influential the work has been. No wonder these scientists won a Nobel Prize!

So let’s say your reading your gmail and you happen to take a look at what’s happening in the news.  You read that we are about to face the biggest financial crisis our nation has yet to experience.  Newsmakers and lawmakers are calling for a bailout.  The article mentions “H.R. 1424.”  What is this?

This is shorthand for House of Representatives bill number 1424, and did you know you have access to this legislation?

One way is searching for the bill number in GPO Access after the bill has been released.  Another way is by logging into LexisNexis Congressional.  At the main menu, on the left hand side, select Legislative Histories, Bills & Laws.  Then select the “Get a Document” tab,choose “Bill Tracking” and then type in 1424 in the search box.  Congressional bill H.R. 1424 was the bill passed on October 3, 2008.

What about H.R. 3997 which did not pass on September 29, 2008?  Again, repeat the above search, but this time search for 3997.

These bills are considered primary source documents.  To gain insight into what the bill means, use secondary source information such as newspapers, articles, blogs, etc., which will give you analysis of the bill’s text.  One way to find secondary sources is to search the CQ Electronic Library (click on “connect to this title”).  Searching this database will allow you to simultaneously search many well known sources of information about congress. Use the advanced search to target what you are searching for: you can limit your results by topic, type of document and date.

Have ever wondered how to start researching for a class assignment? Do you frequently get overwhelmed by the number of books and electronic resources the library has? Have you ever wanted to be a research ninja, searching and finding exactly what you need? Do you want to find authoritative information about current events? Do you just want to know how to navigate the library and the research process more quickly and efficiently?

Library411 is the place to come to in order to find out about the great resources, tools, services the library provides, and to get tips and tricks to make the library less of a mystery and to save you time. The website is written and edited by Ellen Hampton Filgo, E-Learning Librarian, with regular posts by Eileen Bentsen, Reference Librarian, Carol Schuetz, Business Librarian, Sinai Wood, Government Documents Librarian, and Sha Towers, Music and Fine Arts Librarian.

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