ENG 100: College Reading and Learning Strategies

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.

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.

Search for information in the following encyclopedias if you did not find enough back ground information on the IUCN Red List or the Fish and Wildlife Service website.

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.
• Journal articles often report original research and will focus on one experiment or field study.
• 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.