If you are not familiar with your topic, you may wish to gather background information so you understand the issues surrounding your particular species. This may include the scientific name of the organism, it's native environment, and the challenges specific to that species. The following resources will help you find background information.

Endangered Species Program
This is the site of the United States Government's Endangered Species Program. It includes information on organisms listed as endangered or threatened, including links to federal documents.

NatureServe Explorer
NatureServe Explorer provides conservation information on more than 50,000 species in Canada and the United States.

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
IUCN, the World Conservation Union, produces this list of species (mostly birds and mammals) from around the world that are in danger of extinction.

Beacham's Guide to the Endangered Species of North America. Zoology Section Library Ref QH77.N56 B43 2000
Beacham's Guide to International Endangered Species. Zoology Section Library Ref QL82 .B435 1998; Davis Library Ref QL82 .B435 1998

To find articles on endangered species, you will need to use an article database to find citations. Which database you choose depends on the type of article you are looking for and the subject area you doing research in. Tools like BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Records primarily index the scholarly literature.

Other indexes include articles that report on the scholarly literature for more general readers. Some indexes, such as BasicBIOSIS and Expanded Academic ASAP include both scholarly and more general articles.

Here are some selected indexes:

BIOSIS (BasicBIOSIS)
BasicBIOSIS is an index to all areas of biology. It's especially useful for undergraduate research because it focuses on about 350 core scholarly journals and includes some popular science titles as well. It uses a variety of special subject term categories.

BIOSIS Previews
BIOSIS is the full version of the BIOSIS database. It's more comprehensive than BasicBIOSIS and focuses on scholarly research material.

Zoological Record
Zoological Record is a comprehensive index to the scholarly literature on wild animals. It includes some obscure material, but use it if you have problems finding articles in the other indexes. Use the thesaurus to search for subject words.

Academic Search Premier
You may have used this for other research projects. It indexes scholarly and non-scholarly literature across a wide variety of disciplines, but is not as comprehensive as the subject-specific indexes above.

Academic OneFile
This database is very similar to Academic Search Elite. You can limit your search to scholarly materials only in both databases.

Although some article databases provide direct links to online journals, many will just provide you with a citation to the article. If you see the Old Well icon (find at UNC), click on the image and follow the links to the full-text article if available.

If there is no "find at UNC" icon, conduct a search on the E Journal Finder, which will tell you if the title is available electronically.

To search for journals using the E Journal Finder:

1. Go to the E Journal Finder page.
2. Enter the name of the journal in the search box (not the title of the article).
3. Press the Search button.

If you cannot find the full text of an article through the E Journal Finder, you can search for a print copy in the online catalog.

1. Go to the Print Journals (Catalog Search) page.
2. Enter the name of the journal in the search box (not the title of the article).
3. Press the Search button.

CBE Citation Style

Contact:
Suchi Mohanty
(smohanty@email.unc.edu)
(919) 962-1355