BIOLOGY
Best Databases
Science (Gale Onefile)
Access information on the latest developments across a range of scientific disciplines.
Science Direct
A database of over nine hundred high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles covering Health and Life Sciences.
View the tutorial on Advanced Searching.
JSTOR Biological Sciences
This includes 138 titles offering depth in fields such as biodiversity, botany, conservation, ecology, paleontology, plant science, and zoology.
Environment Complete
Covers the areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more. The database also contains full text for 400 journals, full text for 80 monographs, such as Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (3 volumes) and Advances in Water Treatment & Environmental Management, and the conference papers of the North American Association of Environmental Education.
Environmental Studies and Policy Collection
Environmental Studies and Policy Collection provides access to scholarly journals, magazines, and other reference sources covering environmental issues and policies. The database includes diverse perspectives from the scientific community, governmental policymakers, and corporate interests.
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of the biomedical sciences.
MEDLINE
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 4,800 current biomedical journals.
PubMed
Provides journal citations and abstracts collected from the life sciences literature from 1947 to the present. Over 4,800 journals are indexed in the areas of clinical medicine, biomedicine, and health care. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher websites. Publisher: National Library of Medicine
Biomedical Reference Collection: Basic
Designed for doctors, research scientists, students, and clinical specialists, this database provides full text for over 100 journals in a variety of areas pertaining to medical study. All titles included in the Biomedical Reference Collection: Basic Edition are indexed in MEDLINE.
Additional Resources
Academic OneFile
Academic OneFile is a source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from the world's English language journals and reference sources. It has extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature, and other subjects, and millions of full-text articles available in both PDF and HTML.
View an online tutorial.
Academic Search Complete
Provides full-text access to thousands of journals, including peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
View an online tutorial.
Films on Demand
Films on Demand is a comprehensive collection of high-quality educational videos licensed from a long established educational media distributor (Films for the Humanities and Sciences). Other content providers for Films on Demand include BBC Shakespeare, HBO, Davidson Films, California Newsreel, PBS and many more. Over 50,000 videos cover a wide range of topics organized into broad subjects. Individual segments subdivide each video into discrete shorter units.
Kanopy Streaming
Kanopy is a leading distributor of educational videos. Major subjects covered include the arts, business and training, health sciences, media and communication, natural sciences, social sciences, and teacher education. Users can search, browse and stream videos. Login Instructions
Ebook Central
This is a collection of over 80,000 books online.
HCC Online Catalog
Most of HCC's online books are linked from the online catalog. The catalog also includes physical items in the library: reference books, circulating books, music, dvds, audio books, and other media. You may also use the online catalog to search for items in your public library.
eBook Academic Collection
This growing subscription package contains a large selection of multidisciplinary eBook titles representing a broad range of academic subject matter, and is a strong complement for any academic collection. The breadth of information available through this package ensures that users will have access to information relevant to their research needs.
We also have access to this Collection of EBSCO e-books.
A collection of thousands of e-books that can be read online or with the EBSCO eBooks App.
See the full journal list to find other journals.
- Avian Research
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Onefile 11/13/2015 to 12/10/2021
- ScienceDirect 1/1/2022 to the present
- Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 1/1/2003 to the present (12 month delay)
- BioScience
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 1/1/1964 to the present (12 month delay)
- Environment Complete 1/1/1964 to the present (12 month delay)
- JSTOR 1/1/1964 to the present (4 year delay)
- BMC Biology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Onefile 12/10/2006 to the present
- Academic Search Complete 1/1/2003 to the present
- Pubmed Central 1/1/2025 to the present
- Cell Research
- Pubmed Central 1/1/2025 to the present (12 month delay)
- Integrative Zoology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 3/1/2006 to the present (12 month delay)
- Journal of Avian Biology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 3/1/1998 to the present
- Environment Complete 3/1/1998 to the present
- JSTOR 1/3/1994 to the present (8 year delay)
- Journal of Field Ornithology
Peer-reviewed
- Environment Complete 1/1/2006 to the present
- JSTOR 1/1/1980 to the present (4 year delay)
- Journal of Mammalogy
Peer-reviewed
- JSTOR 1/2/1930 to the present (4 year delay)
- Journal of Ornithology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 1/1/2010 to the present (12 month delay)
- Mammal Review
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 3/1/1998 to the present (12 month delay)
- Environment Complete 1/1/1998 to the present (12 month delay)
- Marine Mammal Science
Peer-reviewed
- Environment Complete 1/1/2006 to the present (12 month delay)
- Microorganisms
Peer-reviewed
- Health and Medicine 1/08/2019 to the present
- Proquest Publically Available 1/1/2013 to the present
- Pubmed Central 1/1/2025 to the present
- Mycorrhiza
Peer-reviewed
- Environment Complete 1/1/2011 to the present (12 month delay)
- PLoS Biology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Onefile 1/05/2006 to the present
- Academic Search Complete 10/1/2003 to the present
- Pubmed Central 1/1/2025 to the present
- Systematic Entomology
Peer-reviewed
- Academic Search Complete 1/1/1998 to the present (12 month delay)
Resources for Evolutionary Biology Research
Global Biodiversity Information Facility is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.
OneZoom: an interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science
NCBI Taxonomy Browser: Curated classification and nomenclature for all of the organisms in the public sequence databases; currently represents about 10% of described species; the database can be searched by common or scientific names, or browsed by broad (phylogenetic) categories of organisms.
Integrated Taxonomic Information System: partners with specialists from around the world to assemble scientific names and their taxonomic relationships, and distributes that data openly through publicly available software. The ITIS mission is to communicate a comprehensive taxonomy of global species that enables biodiversity information to be discovered, indexed, and connected across all human endeavors.
Animal Diversity Web is an online database and encyclopedia of animal natural history, built through contributions from students, photographers, and many others.
Birds of North America Online: Comprehensive resource from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Ornithologists' Union.
Catalog of Life: a collaboration bringing together the effort and contributions of taxonomists and informaticians from around the world to provide a consistent and up-to-date listing of all the world’s known species.
International Plant Names Index: Nomenclatural database for the scientific names of vascular plants, linking directly to the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
ICZN --International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature: is responsible for producing the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature - a set of rules for the naming of animals and the resolution of nomenclatural problems.
Digitized collections
AnimalBase: Early Zoological Literature Online: Hosted by the Zoological Institute of the University of Gottingen, this database provides open access to zoological works from 1550-1770.
Biodiversity Heritage Library: A digital library containing primarily historical texts in the natural sciences from the Smithsonian Libraries and a consortium of other natural history and botanical libraries.
Field Book Project (Smithsonian Archives): With the purpose of illuminating unpublished works integral to scientific research, the FBP database contains 4,000 digitized field books and 9,500 catalogued field books, in total.
MyBib Citation Generator
MyBib is a free online citation bibliography creation tool. It can create citations and bibliographies in many styles including MLA and APA. MyBib allows you to paste in a website URL or even search for a book, article, or other source by title, and will pull most of the information you need to create a citation (though you may need to double check that the information is correct and complete).
Once you've created your citations, MyBib allows you to copy paste your citations, download them as a Word document, save them to your Google Drive, print them, or email them to yourself.
You can also contact us at the library. We are here to help!
HCC has a Writing Center that can help with citations and examples can be seen in the MLA Guide and APA Guide from Purdue.


