In-class Exercise #1 (Lab 1):

Searching Fish and Wildlife Literature

We will be using databases created at the University of Idaho to search the fish and wildlife literature for published papers on a topic of personal interest. We can search these databases in either of 2 basic ways: over the internet through ABSEARCH's web site or on a computer loaded with a database from CD-ROM or over the UI network. Searching over the internet is quick and takes minimal knowledge of literature searching programs. Searching from CD or the UI network using a citation-management program such as ProCite or EndNotes gives you more control and flexibility but takes some effort to learn how to use the search program ProCite. The availability of full-text databases from ABSEARCH and some of the professional societies have allowed the internet searches to leap-frog the capability of individual desktop computers and their software. We will compare the results of these searches to what we find using search engines that index pages on the World Wide Web.

I. Searching the fish and wildlife literature over the internet:

Start Netscape or Internet Explorer.
Type the www address of ABSEARCH into the location window by using your mouse to highlight the address displayed and modify it to the following: http://www.absearch.com
Hit enter to direct your browser to ABSEARCH's home page and opening menu where you can select Online Searching Instructions from the left-hand column by clicking on it.
You will move to a page of instructions for searching the online databases. You may print these instructions out in your browser by choosing print from the menu bar or simply read them.
To conduct a search click the back button to return to the Search Screen..
At the login screen enter the user name and password . Click submit.
Select a database to search by clicking the pull-down menu button and clicking on either the American Fisheries or Wildlife database.
Enter 2 words describing the animal species and topic in which you're interested in the Article Title box (e.g. chinook population or elk survival) .
Click the Search button at the bottom of the page to initiate the search.
. Once the search is completed you will be shown the first 10 records found with the citation for each paper and its abstract. Look through the abstracts and see if it has found the type of information that you wanted. If so you can continue viewing more papers by clicking Next 10 Matches at the bottom of the screen to show successively more matches until you've seen 100 total. Note you can move forward and backward through the sets of 10 papers using your forward and backward keys on your menu bar.
. If the information did not include what you wanted or there were too many hits click Search Again and modify your search commands by changing words, adding more specific terms, selecting only recent years, etc. If it gave you too few hits try searching for words in the abstract and entering synonyms for your search terms. If you enter synonyms then you should click the pull down menu at the start of the line and select [contains atleast one of the words]. Note that you can also control construction of your search statement with the radio-buttons setting and or or between fields.
. If you want to use some of the citations that you found in your project you can click the cut and paste button at the bottom of the search screen so that it is easy to copy the citations (highlight them and hit Ctrl-C) and paste them into a Word or WordPerfect file (with Ctrl-V).
. Once you've found a page of papers that you're interested in print that page and hand it in for part IA of your problem set no. 1.
Try out the full-text database of The Wildlife Society by opening the Wildlife database and entering your search terms into the full-text field at the bottom.
Once your search has run each citation and abstract will have a small icon at the bottom to load the pdf file (a electronic reprint that you read and print with Adobe Acrobat).
See how many hits you get on a search in full-text, download a single paper and print its first page to hand is as part IB of this problem set.

II. Searching the literature using ProCite

Place ProCite and one of the ABSEARCH databases into your computer by loading a CD-ROM disk (purchased with class textbooks at the UI Bookstore or borrowed from the reserve desk at the library) into your Compact Disk drive or by copying it from the k: (Classes) drive to your c: or d: drive. If you are using a CD and the ProCite page does not automatically open then direct Windows Explorer (available on your desktop or under Start - Programs - Accessories) to your CD drive (often j: but it will say Absearch) and start PROCITE3.EXE under the Absearch subdirectory by double clicking on it. To load it over the network direct Windows Explorer to the k: drive on the network containing the class directory for Wlf/448 and drag and drop the ABSEARCH directory from k: onto your c: or d: drive. After \Absearch is copied to your hard drive direct Windows Explorer into it and double-click on PROCITE3.EXE to start it.
Open a dataset by clicking on File then Open then maneuver to appropriate drive (c: or d: or CD etc.) then \database subdirectory to select the database (e.g. afs.dat or tws.dat).
Select the appropriate output format with the pulldown menu in the window at the top right (e.g. c:\absearch\styles\am_fish.out).
Switch to the Search form by selecting Search under the View menu at top.
Perform a search by selecting a field (e.g. Title), an operator (e.g. =), and entering a search phrase in double quotes (e.g. "egg survival"). Click the Search button to initiate the search. The program will start searching and will list one line for each record found which meets your search criterion.
To view a record double-click on it. You can move among the records found in the search by using the right- and left-pointing arrows on the toolbar.
Explore what happens when you choose a different field to search such as the abstract. If you run the same search in the abstract field as the title field do you find the same number of papers?
If you select a different .out file the bibliography will be printed in the correct format for different professional societies publications. Try a different one such as Ecological Society of America (Ecology) or Conservation Biology (Cons_bio) and see how they differ.
One of the neatest capabilities of ProCite is that it will read a manuscript file such as your project report, find all the author-date citations, look them up in the database, select them, and print out your literature cited section in the correct format. Unfortunately it will not find references which are in a different database or not contained in any of the databases available, but it will create a file called problem.ref which identifies them for you. My students and I always use this to check our manuscripts before we submit them for publication.
. You can select any records for later printing by clicking in their checkbox to the left of each author.
. Print one page of your bibliography with citations and abstracts by selecting the Bibliography menu, then Print, and selecting marked records in the general menu tab as well as clicking beside the abstract field on the fields tab. Hand this printout in as part II of your lab report.

III. Searching the World Wide Web for information on wildlife and fish

Start Netscape or Internet Explorer.
Select the Search on the Internet button on the toolbar and choose one of the search engines such as Google, Yahoo or InfoSeek etc.
Enter the same search terms that you used in your successful searches on ABSEARCH above.
Follow the links to the web sites found in your search until you find one or two pages of useful information. If necessary you may need to use different search terms or modify your search in other ways until you find some useful information on the same general topics.
Does this sort of search provide the same quality of information as the searches above for the professional literature? How would you verify the quality and veracity of the information found by these latter search engines such as Yahoo?
Print out 1-2 pages of the most useful information to hand in as part III of your lab report.

IV. Compare and contrast the results of the 3 types of searches

Compare and contrast the results of your searches above. Briefly highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each sort of search. What type of information would be found best by each approach? Some people say www stands for "wild, wild web" because of the abuses that have been perpetrated on the public using it. Are you familiar with the common standards for testing sources of information based on currency, accuracy, attribution, and bias as measures of value?