I just found out about this wonderful (and FREE!) online textbook resource from my bio professor. It’s not a replacement for buying textbooks (if only, right?!), but it’s a good tool if you need to look up a particular topic.
For those of you familiar with PubMed, it can be accessed through the same Web site (I’m pretty sure – it’s sponsored by NCBI/NIH, same as PubMed). Although here is a direct link: NCBI Bookshelf
Here is how it works: You can either select the book you want to search in, or search through all of the available books. You then enter your search criteria, and BOOM! Lots of results. You just click on the one you want and get the textbook entry. Pretty nifty. The downside is that you can’t just browse (i.e., flip through) the books. But the search tool works super well. I used it to brush up on how PCR works, in preparation for a lab I’m doing next week. I came up with an entry that had some great pictorial figures, and even an animated movie that explained the PCR process! It was fantastic.
There are dozens of textbooks available to search through, including cell biology texts, immunobiology, biochem, etc. Much better than just Googling something you need to research!
Just thought I’d share the resource. 