Tips for Searching for Information on Plants

1. Web-based library search engines: Many of these search engines require a subscription (except the two general search engines, Google and All the Web), but should be available at your local university library; ask your librarian. 

• Science Citation Index (Web of Science) -- superb for comprehensive journal coverage and providing abstracts and links to related articles 
• Agricola/Ovid database -- indexes many journals, with abstracts 
• Annual Reviews Index (articles from "Annual Reviews" series of journals): http://www.annualreviews.org 
• Basic Biosis 
• BioOne Database (www.bioone.org/bioone) -- Searches many environmental science and natural history journals. 
• Biological and Agricultural Index Dissertation Abstracts -- find obscure dissertations dealing with your plant 
• Environmental Science and Pollution Management Index -- good for management topics 
• J-STOR database (http://www.jstor.org) -- contains articles from past editions of numerous journals, including ecology and botany subjects, in down-loadable PDF format 
• Ingenta database (http://www.ingenta.com) -- for journal articles that can be ordered on-line for a fee 
• Google.com (http://www.google.com)-- An excellent search engine for scientific topics, accessible for free on the web from anywhere. Returns very good results on species name searches. 
• All the Web (http://alltheweb.com) -- Another good general search engine; contains the scientific search engine, scirus.com as well.

2. List of Database web sites

• http://www.natureserve.org
Association for Biodiversity Information maps and status of all listed species****
• http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html 
Missouri Botanical Garden search engine for taxonomic information on plants -- synonymies, citations, etc. 
• http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/vegmaps.html 
Vegetation Map checklist and excellent links to maps of paleo and current plant distributions 
• http://biology.usgs.gov/npsveg/
USGS-NPS Vegetation Mapping Program 
• http://plants.usda.gov/ 
PLANTS National Database 
• http://www.botany.org/bsa/www-bot.html 
Botany Related WWW sites from the Botanical Society of America 
• http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/bryolab/greenplantpage.html 
The Deep Green green plant phylogeny web site from U. C. Berkeley 
• http://tncweeds.ucdavis.edu/esadocs.html 
Information on invasive species and their impacts from The Nature Conservancy 
• http://conbio.net/scb/ 
Society for Conservation Biology web page, references and resources on conservation science 
• http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/conservation/recplan.html 
Kew Botanical Garden list of references on the science of reintroduction, restoration, and recovery plans. 
• http://rathbun.si.edu/bcn 
Searchable database of over 15,000 references to literature on conservation biology, compiled from Current Contents, museum libraries, etc. 

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