
Neuroscience Research Guide
- Find Background Info
- Find Books
- Find Articles
- Find Resources and Data Online
- Citing Sources
Find Background Info
Background sources, such as specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries, are an essential piece of the research process. They can help you:
- Gather information about your topic and understand the scope of the research.
- Locate reliable sources and clarify keywords.
- Pinpoint important authors, texts, ideas, and key words about the research area; knowing what the primary phrases and concepts are will help you a lot as you are searching library databases and online sources
Credo Reference
Credo Reference is multi-publisher collection of high-quality reference titles covering everything from the arts to astronomy, law to literature, and science to Shakespeare. The collection currently contains over 162 titles taken from 36 different reference publishers and more titles are being added. Available titles also include a range of multimedia options including thousands of high-quality diagrams, photographs, maps, and audio files.
Credo Reference offers the following titles that may be especially useful:
- Encyclopedia of the Human Brain
- The Brain Book: An Illustrated Guide to its Structure, Function, and Disorders
Science Reference Center
This database provides easy access to a wealth of full-text, science-oriented content including science encyclopedias, reference books, periodicals, and other reliable sources. In addition, the database includes a vast collection of images from sources such as UPI, Getty, NASA, National Geographic, and the Nature Picture Library.
Find Books
Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research—They will help you to gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors, while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.
Find Books Using GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other materials available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:
WorldCat
WorldCat lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through Interlibrary Loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Interlibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials, and access journal articles that are owned by another library.
Explore Interlibrary Loan Materials
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster College students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require a current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the library you are interested in for details.
Popular Titles and Featured Texts

The Brain: Big Bangs, Behaviors, and Beliefs

Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience

Neurobehavioral Anatomy

Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation
Find Articles
The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are those that are most useful for finding research published in the field of neuroscience.
GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect is a leading full-text scientific database offering journal articles and book chapters. Journals are guided by eminent editorial boards and articles are rigorously peer-reviewed. Books on ScienceDirect cover 24 subject collections across disciplines such as biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, chemistry, clinical medicine, engineering, and environmental science.
Springer eJournal Collection
Springer eJournals Collection provides full-text access to over 1900 peer-reviewed journals covering numerous disciplines from the sciences such as biomedical sciences, chemistry, environmental sciences, life sciences, physics, public health and more. When searching all of SpringerLink, refine your results under Content Type by Journal Articles to limit your results to full text articles.
Search Springer eJournal Collection
PsycINFO
PsycINFO contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and technical reports, all in the field of psychology and the psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law. With over 60,000 references added annually through weekly updates, this is the best database to use as you search for peer-reviewed literature in psychology.
Psychology and Behavioral Collection
The Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection provides nearly 550 full text publications, including more than 500 peer-reviewed journals. The database covers topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry and psychology, mental processes, anthropology, and observational and experimental methods.
Search Psychology and Behavioral Collection
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) indexing with tree numbers, tree hierarchy, and explosion capabilities to search abstracts from over 4,000 current biomedical journals.
PubMed
PubMed is the freely accessible version of MEDLINE and is the NLM's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 4,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries. The file contains over 11 million citations dating back to the mid-1960's. Coverage is worldwide, but most records are from English-language sources or have English abstracts.
Find Resources and Data Online
There are a number of internet resources for neuroscience which you can use to find scholarly research, popular articles, diagrams of the brain, and even scientific data. The following websites are good starting places, but keep in mind that this list represents only a small subset of the information available online. As always, if you can’t find what you are looking for, contact the Library.
Neuroscience Information Framework Project (NIF)
Sponsored by organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the Neuroscience Information Framework Project (NIF) maintains searchable catalogs that can help connect you with scholarship, online resources, and data in the field of neuroscience.
View the Neuroscience Information Framework Project
Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is a professional organization for scientists and physicians whose work focuses on the study of the brain and nervous system. The organization’s website provides access to their free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, eNeruo, and to Neuronline, a website for learning and professional development. The Society for Neuroscience website is an especially useful resource for undergraduates exploring career possibilities in neuroscience.
View the Society for Neuroscience
BrainFacts.org
If you are new to neuroscience, this website can be a helpful starting place to explore general topics. Edited by leading scientists and physicians, this resource is intended for a broad audience and is easy to navigate by topic. It includes a 3D model of the brain as well as a glossary of important terms.
Citing Sources
Citation Resources
Properly citing your sources shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic and helps you avoid plagiarism. Explore citation resources to learn how to correctly cite sources based on style.
Need help with your research?
Get in touch with:

Zayden Tethong
Liaison Librarian for Neuroscience
801.832.2266
ztethong@westminsteru.edu
Librarians are happy to answer questions via email, phone, or in-person.
Contact Zayden with a question or to schedule a research help appointment.
Faculty: Contact Zayden to suggest edits to this research guide.
Chat with a Librarian
Use the chat box below to ask the library staff a question. If chat is unavailable or we don’t respond quickly, please use the email form on our Get Research Help page and a library staff member will contact you as soon as we are available.