Southern Illinois University Carbondale
OMIM (https://www.omim.org) is "an online catalog of human genes and genetic disorders" maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
It is geared to health professionals and scientists. In spite of being more difficult to read, it is a rich trove of information and includes many cited references that you may want to look up and use for your report. You may use it to look up specific conditions, or look up changes to genes due to drug exposure, etc.
Type your terms into the search box. You may use phrases (e.g., "Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy"), connect your terms with and to get all of your terms (e.g., families and Down syndrome), or use or to get one or both terms. See the Search Help page for more information or contact me.
On the results page, click on the title of the resource that you want to read (your search terms are highlighted in yellow):
The OMIM pages for different disorders contain a Table of contents on the left that will help you jump to different sections on the page, including clinical features, inheritance, and diagnosis. Note that you can jump directly to the references. On the right are links to additional resources, including the Genetics Home Reference, which gives much of the same information but is written for consumers.
If free full text is available for a reference, a Full Text link will be provided. If there isn't a Full Text link, do one of the following:
Example: EBSCOhost Citation:
Find Full Text menu for this citation:
EBSCOhost Database Search. See what's included.
MedlinePlus is a consumer health resource created by the US National Library of Medicine. Its Genetics / Birth Defects list links to many useful topic pages about common birth defects and genetic disorders. Because the resource is written for consumers, the information may be a little easier to use.
Here is a clip from the Sickle Cell Anemia Topic page. Note that in addition to information about genetics, symptoms, diagnoses and tests, there is information about statistics and journal articles:
If you want to locate the full text of one of the articles listed by this resource, you may want to use our EBSCOhost databases. Just paste the title of an article into the search box to see if the article citation is in the database. If it is, there will be a Find Full Text link that will lead to a menu of options.
You may want to use the EBSCOhost databases to find additional articles. This includes the scholarly medical database, MEDLINE. (The public version of MEDLINE is PubMed). Search using your keywords.
Use the Morris Library Catalog to find books and other resources. Search by broad topic and then limit by format type including electronic books (see the right hand-hand column of the search results screen). You may limit to SIUC only if you choose (this works for electronic books). However, you will find more materials if you use the "All I-Share Libraries" search, although you won't be able to request ebooks. You may also change the search type from relevance to newest. If you are unable to request an item from I-Share, ask me or Ask-A-Librarian about requesting it using a different interlibrary loan system.
You may want to use the common name of the syndrome for searching (e.g., use Down Syndrome, not Trisomy 21).
Example book:
Tourette Syndrome by Request items from around the world through Interlibrary Loan. Check and request books from I-Share first before requesting books through this service.
The Council of Science Editors (CSE) style (formerly known as CBE style) is used by many scientists.
Morris Library keeps a print copy of the newest edition behind the Information Desk for in-library use.
Scientific Style and Format, 8th ed. by