Database Guides: Natural Science Collection (from Proquest)

Proquest Natural Science Collection

Index primarily for finding journal articles. Covers: agriculture, aquatic science, atmospheric science, biological science, geology, earth science, and environmental science.  Includes some full-text (2,700 titles) and Find@Stir links to our other holdings. Updated weekly/monthly (varies by database).

Proquest Natural Science Collection is created from a series of databases and subcollections:

• Aqualine (1960-current)
  Comprehensive focus on trade, technical and scientific literature concerning all aspects of water resources.
   
• Environmental Impact Statements (1985-current)
  U.S. federal agencies or anyone receiving federal funding prepare detailed analyses of any of their actions that significantly affect the quality of the environment
   
• Agricultural Science Collection (1970-current)
  Covers all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines, including aquaculture & fisheries and animal & veterinary sciences.

   
• Aquatic Science Collection (1960-current)
  Covers anything related to the aquatic environment, aquatic science, aquaculture, fisheries, oceanography.

  Includes Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts (primary database for the aquatic sciences).

   
• Atmospheric Science Collection (1974-current)
  Covers meteorology, climatology, atmospheric pollution.

  Includes Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts (MGA) database produced by American Meteorological Society (covers world literature on atmosphere and climatology, including environmental effects).

   
• Biological Science Collection (1946-current)
  Covers biological science including: animal behaviour, aquatic life & fisheries, biochemistry, ecology, toxicology, virology, microbiology, immunology, genetics, health & safety science.

  Includes the renowned database MEDLINE (covers life sciences with a focus on biomedicine – includes veterinary medicine and animal health topics).

   
• Earth Science Collection (1693-current)
  Covers geology, earth science, oceanography.

  Includes GeoRef database produced by American Geosciences Institute (covers geoscience literature from around the world).

   
• Environmental Science Collection (1960-current)
  Covers environmental science, ecology, sustainability, pollution, water management.
   

Use primarily to find journal articles in the natural science subject areas outlined above.

Also covers other types of publications: covers more than 4,500 publications: scholarly & trade journals plus conference papers and proceedings, government and official publications, environmental impact statements, magazines, newspapers, reports, tables, wire feeds, working papers, video and audio.

Login to the Portal and then choose Natural Science Collection (from Proquest) from the A-Z List of Online Resources.

See Successful Search Techniques.

There is an Easy Search Option but we recommend selecting the Advanced Search.

From the Advanced Search screen select the type of search you wish to conduct from the drop-down box
e.g. Choose Anywhere, to search all fields including Document titles, summaries, keywords added by the database and also full-text of articles (where available). If you are finding too many irrelevant articles - it may be better to select the Anywhere except full text option.

Truncation: use * at the end of a word, e.g., feed* will find feeds , feeding, feedstuff, etc.

Spelling variants: The search is automatically set up to recognise spelling variants of American and British versions of words, for example, a search for behaviour will automatically find behaviour or behavior 

Use Field searching to be precise:

e.g., type in aquaculture and select Document Title - TI from the drop-down box to find items where aquaculture appears in the title of the article;

Thesaurus Search: Because the Natural Science Collection is created from a number of databases and sub-collections there are a number of different thesauri to choose from.  Note if you use the Thesaurus option to search you will exclude any records from databases that don't use that thesaurus.  It is probably best only to use the Thesaurus option when you are searching at a more specific level on an individual database.

Narrow results by option: On each results' page there is an option to narrow your results by various filters.  However, using the filters can exclude relevant records. This is because the Natural Science Collection is created from a series of databases each with its own set of filter options. Therefore, you will exclude records from databases that don't use the same filter options. 

To narrow your results, it is better to create another search and combine this with your previous searches.

Combining searches: searches can be combined by selecting the Folder icon in the top right hand corner, then select the Recent searches. Then type the set numbers to combine searches, for example: 2 and 3

To narrow your search to a specific database/sub-collection:

• Select the All databases link from the top menu (left hand side).

• Then select the Databases link on the top menu (right hand side).

• Untick the Select all box at the top (otherwise you’ll be searching every database for all subjects).

• Scroll down to the database/ sub-collection you wish to search and tick the box next to your choice (you may need to first  select the plus sign on the left of sub-collections to expand the menu of choices)

• Click the Use Selected Databases button at the foot of the page.

Click on the Find@Stir button , which provides links to the full text of the journal if available, or to the library catalogue, to check if we have the item in paper format.

Records can be downloaded into RefWorks (a software product for managing references and formatting bibliographies).