The biological sciences cover a broad array of literature types, from younger fields like molecular biology with its reliance on recent journal articles, genomic databases, and protocol manuals to classic fields such as taxonomy with its scattered literature found in monographs and journals from the past three centuries. Using the Biological Literature: A Practical Guide, Fourth Edition is an annotated guide to selected resources in the biological sciences, presenting a wide-ranging list of important sources. This completely revised edition contains numerous new resources and descriptions of all entries including textbooks. The guide emphasizes current materials in the English language and includes retrospective references for historical perspective and to provide access to the taxonomic literature. It covers both print and electronic resources including monographs, journals, databases, indexes and abstracting tools, websites, and associations—providing users with listings of authoritative informational resources of both classical and recently published works. With chapters devoted to each of the main fields in the basic biological sciences, this book offers a guide to the best and most up-to-date resources in biology. It is appropriate for anyone interested in searching the biological literature, from undergraduate students to faculty, researchers, and librarians. The guide includes a supplementary website dedicated to keeping URLs of electronic and web-based resources up to date, a popular feature continued from the third edition.

With the encroachment of the Internet into nearly all aspects of work and life, it seems as though information is everywhere. However, there is information and then there is correct, appropriate, and timely information. While we might love being able to turn to Wikipedia for encyclopedia-like information or search Google for the thousands of links

Stay up-to-date with the growing amount of reference resources available online How important is the World Wide Web to information retrieval and communication? Important enough that information professionals have seen students exit from their libraries en masse when Internet service was lost. Internet providers dominate the indexing and abstracting of periodical articles as major publishers now offer nearly all of their reference titles in digital form. Libraries spend increasing amounts of funding on electronic reference materials, and librarians devote an increasing amount of time to assisting in their use. The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web is an essential guide to collection development for electronic materials in academic and public libraries. The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web tracks the continuing evolution of electronic reference resources-and how they’re accessed—in a variety of settings. Librarians representing university, elementary school, and public libraries in the United States and Australia examine how reference collections have evolved over time (and may soon be a thing of the past); how public and school libraries have dealt with the changes; why library research assignments have become more difficult for teachers to make and for students to complete; how to organize online reference sources; and why the nature of plagiarism has changed in the electronic era. The book also examines the use of electronic references from a publisher’s perspective and looks at the most important Web-accessible reference tools—both free and subscription—in the areas of humanities, medicine, the social sciences, business, and education. The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web also examines: issues of authority, accessibility, cost, comfort, and user education in evaluating electronic resources the formation of purchasing consortia to facilitate the transfer of reference materials from print to online formats current literature and research findings on the state of digital versus print reference collections what electronic publishing means to smaller reference books (dictionaries, almanacs, etc.) the need for increased information literacy among students the nature, extent, and causes of cyber plagiarism the use of federated search tools and includes a selected list of the top 100 free Internet reference sites The Reference Collection: From the Shelf to the Web is an essential resource for all reference and collection development librarians, and an invaluable aid for publishing professionals.

Search skills of today bear little resemblance to searches through print publications. Reference service has become much more complex than in the past, and is in a constant state of flux. Learning the skill sets of a worthy reference librarian can be challenging, unending, rewarding, and-- yes, fun.

This issue of Veterinary Clinics of North America: Exotic Animal Practice, Edited by Drs. Nicola Di Girolamo and Alexandra Winter, focuses on Evidence-Based Clinical Practice in Exotic Animal Medicine. Topics include: Why should we direct our efforts toward evidence-based practice and knowledge creation?; Practical application of evidence-based practice; Evidence-based advances in avian medicine; Evidence-based advances in reptile medicine; Evidence-based advances in rabbit medicine; Evidence-based advances in ferret medicine; Evidence-based advances in rodent medicine; Evidence-based advances in fish and aquatic animal medicine; Evidence-based analgesia in exotic animals; Evidence-based anesthesia in exotic animals; Evidence-based reptile housing and nutrition; Evidence-based rabbit housing and nutrition; Basic statistics for the exotic animal practitioner (numerical outcomes, P values, t-test, anova); Advanced statistics for the exotic animal practitioner (categorical data, logistic regression, confidence intervals); Basics of systematic review and meta-analysis for the exotic animal practitioner; Evidence-based information resources for the exotic animal practitioner; and How to report exotic animal research.