by Liz Svoboda
Last Updated Feb 16, 2021
4455 views this year
Where to Start
The following websites and encyclopedia are great places to start searching for information about your endangered species.
Search Suggestions
Find the animal’s scientific name; many researchers may refer to it by that instead of its common name.
“Re-search” means to search again, so you will probably have to do multiple searches across multiple resources.
When searching for journal or magazine articles, combine your species' name with and aspect of your project like habitat or diet; you can also search for a reason it might be endangered: farming, industrialization, climate change, etc.
Specific to animals in the U.S. and North America. Can search by species, state, or county. Some background information on the species, but the real treasure is the linked documents from the Federal Register about projects related to the species.
Reference Source vs. Journal Articles
Reference sources are summaries of facts, definitions, histories, statistics, and other types of information on large subject areas, organized for quick look up.
They are sometimes called “background” sources.
You use these to gain a basic understanding of a concept or issue before moving on to more advanced sources of information.
Journal articles are the published findings of academic studies.
Many are peer-reviewed, which is an additional check of credibility before the article is published.
They are very specific and typically only report on one study, so you may need to find several to show what research is being done on you specific species.
The library page “Understanding Journals” gives more information about what journals are and are not.
Find information about what is leading groups of animals to extinction.
"Written specifically for students and general researchers, the set features approximately 80 articles outlining major extinctions and related scientific areas, as well as providing a species-by-species account of extinction. Entries are written by experts in the field and are peer-reviewed by an editorial board of academics specializing in zoology, paleontology and environmental science."
Revised and updated to reflect the most recent developments in modern zoology. It covers the behavior, diet, distribution, and evolution of every known living mammal in the world in clear, accessible language.
Coverage of the fish and aquatic invertebrates that inhabit our rivers, lakes, and oceans. It describes in detail the anatomy, behavior, habitat, breeding, and conservation status of species.
Entries prepared by a team of renowned biologists and conservationists give a systematic account of every family, covering their form and function, distribution, diet, social behavior, and breeding biology. Special attention is given to environmental and conservation issues.
An authoritative overview of all the world’s terrestrial arthropods written by the world’s leading experts in entomology, the accounts are accessible to both scientific and general readers.
Journal Articles
Search Suggestions
Find the animal’s scientific name; many researchers may refer to it by that instead of its common name.
“Re-search” means to search again, so you will probably have to do multiple searches across multiple resources.
When searching for journal or magazine articles, combine your species' name with and aspect of your project like habitat or diet; you can also search for a reason it might be endangered: farming, industrialization, climate change, etc.
Almost 200 journals providing robust coverage of environmental issues and policies, including diverse perspectives from the scientific community, governmental policy makers, as well as corporate interests.
Collection of three major environmental collections.
Includes these collections:
Environment Complete: Coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more.
GreenFILE: Articles, books and government documents on global warming, environmental protection and renewable energy.
Wildlife & Ecology Studies Worldwide: Covers 1935 & earlier to the present, and is the world's largest index to literature on wild mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Most of the records in this database are from Wildlife Review Abstracts, formerly Wildlife Review, which until 1996 was a print publication produced by the U.S. National Biological Service. Wildlife Review Abstracts offers a global perspective and is the most comprehensive resource on wildlife information. Major topic areas include studies of individual species, habitat types, hunting, economics, wildlife behavior, management techniques, diseases, ecotourism, zoology, taxonomy and much more.
If you aren't finding any academic articles about your species in the smaller, more specific databases, try Summon to search more online resources.
Summon is perhaps best described as "Google for the library's online content - without the ads!" From a simple single search box, Summon searches full-text content as well as metadata from a wide variety of sources and returns a list of relevancy-ranked results. Thousands of publishers are represented in Summon, totaling over a half-billion journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, books, e-books, chapters, audio recordings, videos, documents, images, and other resources. Also included are millions of entries from reference works, and works of all kinds from open access archives and institutional repositories. Items listed in U-M Flint's Library Catalog are indexed in Summon.
Note: Access to Summon is open to all users; but access to the full text of articles through Article Linker is restricted to current faculty, students, and staff of the University of Michigan.