The objective of the information herein is to help with the search for publications about field methods for studying animals in the wild so as to have minimal impact on those animals. The immediate goals are to show how to find good citations to articles and books which contain information related to that objective and to show some results of such searches.

We want to know what research has been published on these topics. Two questions need to be answered to identify the publications:  (1) What words (keywords) in titles or abstracts or subject headings alert us that a publication is of interest to us? and (2) What databases have listed the publications and described them with subject headings and abstracts, etc? Then, after the publications are identified, we need to locate them in libraries and other such repositories.

The PubMed Database is often  the database first searched, we find, however, that the Biosis Database and the CAB International Databases give us better results; the list of  "Subject headings and keywords to use in searches" offers suggested keywords for obtaining the best results from that database. The section on Search Templates  gives examples from PubMed and Agricola because those two databases may be searched at no cost and they are set up so that real-time searches can be done from this page to get up-to-date results. Use The basic search strategy on creating a search strategy to do searches in Biosis and CAB when you have access to them. 

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University of California, Davis  has a comprehensive list of electronic databases. We also provide a collection of databases in our Databases and Websites page.

The California Digital Library System from the University of California has two databases which are universally accessible and which provide useful location information.

• You may determine what periodicals and/or books are owned in the University of California Libraries and other libraries which include their holdings in that system.

Here is a good list of libraries throughout the world where you may locate books and journals near where you work. Most libraries will allow you to search their holdings, as libraries and librarians have a philosophically strong mission to freely share their resources.

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Finding useful information about the ethical study of wild animals is difficult. The keywords which are used have multiple meanings and there is not a set of good authoritative subject headings available. Searches which are fairly general and broad in fact seem to produce the best results. The searches do not identify alternative methods or techniques, but do provide a set of citations which should include that information. When a search about ethics and trapping produces a set of about one hundred citations, it is often better to scan those citations yourself than to limit the results by adding another keyword.

We have demonstrated searching in various free systems so that any researcher could have easy access, but the free systems have limitations on how well they search. Commercial venders such as SilverPlatter allow flexible and precise searches of Agricola and CAB simultaneously, which can be very efficient.

In the final analysis, a good bibliography or specialized database directed at concerns for wild animals is necessary. Such a bibliography would be the result of reviewing many citations from many searches and would eliminate the many false drops. It would list only those which were actually related to the topics of research on wild animals with minimal impact on those animals. Creating a good bibliography or specialized database would be an excellent and worthwhile project.
 
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UCDavis Center for Animal Alternatives Information
 

2/13/07