Can you identify this exotic animal?
Can you identify this exotic animal?
Lions and tigers and bears
oh my is a line from the Wizard of Oz. For the future veterinary
technician who wants to work at a zoo, this line describes some of the animals
which will need the skilled care only veterinary personnel can give. The veterinary
technician who works in an office devoted to a small animal practice will
see smaller exotic animals too-ferrets and snakes are just two examples of
the kinds of animals, in addition to cats and dogs, which people now keep
as pets. Sooner or later, you will be dealing with exotic animals. The
purpose of this page is to help you locate information which will help you
complete your assignment for Animal Hospital Practices and Procedures
and get you familiar with information resources which you will need after
you leave here.
If you choose the keyword option, enter the word or phrase which best describes your topic. If you click on the gray arrow next to the words All Fields, you can have the computer search only the part of the database record which you choose. If you leave it as it is, it will search all parts of all records for the terms you have entered. For example, if you are looking for a book on ferrets, type that word in the keyword search box and you will get the following results:
This screen only gives you
the briefest information about the books on your topic. To get all the
information you need about each book, you must click on the number before
the author's name. If you do that, you will get screens which look like
the following:
All of the information on this screen is labelled for you. Two special items which you need to know about are the links in the record . The 035 links are for library personnel. They will not help you in your research. Clicking on one of the other links will take you to other places in the OPAC, the same way links work when you surf the Internet. The other important item is the call number. It is the information you see after the words Library Info. The entire sequence of letters and numbers will help you locate the book on ferrets. So, copy it down or print off the page before you head upstairs to locate the book. Check under Availability to make sure that the book is currently available. An example of the Availability screen is this one:
Like most other college libraries, this one uses the Library of Congress
system to organize our book collection. The Library of Congress assigned
letters of the alphabet to various subject areas. Veterinary medicine
received the SF letters. Because there are books in libraries
on so many subject areas, numbers are also used to help subdivide the larger
categories designated by the letters of the alphabet. This is the number
you see after the letters. The letters and numbers which come after that
can vary. Sometimes you will see the year of publication at the end, other
times you will not. The letter/number combinations which you see before the
year of publication in this case tie in with the title of the book and the
name of the main author. When you go upstairs to get this book, you will
find that each shelving unit has a card on the outside with letters of the
alphabet and numbers on it. You need to check each shelving unit until you
come to the one which would include the letters SF and the number 459. That
is where you will find one of our books on ferrets. If you want to check
out the book, just bring it downstairs to the Circulation Desk, present your
SUNY Canton card and the book will be signed out to you for three weeks
.
Browse a List of Headings
If you choose the second option on the basic search screen, enter the term ferrets and do a LC Subject Headings search, the results you get look quite different from the Keyword option. You do not get a list of titles; you get a list of subjects. To find out what books the Library owns on a particular subject, you have to click on the Subject Heading. An example of this kind of search is illustrated by the next two images.
If you look at the Library's
web page, you will see links to the Associated Colleges libraries. This includes
two non-SUNY schools which might have useful material. They are St. Lawrence
University and Clarkson University. The link labelled ICEPAC is not
a reference to the weather . It is the link to the holdings of various public,
school, and college libraries in a large chunk of New York State. ICEPAC covers
libraries from seven counties --Oswego, Jefferson, St. Lawrence, Lewis, Clinton,
Essex and Franklin. Material can be borrowed from these libraries too.
Residents of various communities can also use their public libraries to locate
information.
FirstSearch is actually a collection of more than twenty databases. There are three databases in the FirstSearch group which you will find useful for this assignment. They are Biological and Agricultural Index, Agricola and WorldCat .
Biological and Agricultural Index
Here are some of the results
from a search for articles on ferrets.
To check on any of these citations, click on the title of the article and you will get a screen which looks like the one below:
This is all the information which
you will get about this article from the database. To read the complete article,
you will have to locate a paper or microfilm copy of the article. To find
this article, click on the link to the catalog at Southworth Library. This
will take you back to the search screen for SLEUTH. Type in
the title of the journal, not the title of the article and then click on
the title link under the key word search options.. The results you get
will tell you what years we have for that particular publication. Issues received
during the current year are housed in two shelving units on the second floor.
Years other than the current year are housed in the basement. These
publications do not leave the Library. You need to be able to pay for the
copies you need-cash will work with all our copiers, both film and print.
If you have money on your Northstar account, you can use that to make copies
using the photocopiers. If you need help with the microfilm machines or paper
copiers, please ask for help at the Information Desk.
***When working with this database, please be aware of the fact that
sometimes it will indicate that we have a certain year of a publication when
we in fact do not. This Library, like most libraries, has had to start
and stop publications because of financial concerns. This database
does not allow us to specify just those years which we own. When you
check Sleuth, you need to make sure the year you need is here.
Agricola
This is a database which is maintained by the National Library of Agriculture.
It will provide you with citations to books, articles and government publications.
A search for material on lovebirds yielded the following results:
Like Biological and Agricultural Index, clicking on any of the titles will give you detailed information about the source.
Online Journals
Some publishers give users the
option of looking at some of their material online, rather than just in print
format. Usually, you will not be able to view everything in every issue. In
most cases, you will need to subscribe to the journal or be willing to pay
to purchase certain articles. The following is a list of some veterinary science
journals which will give you online access to the articles in one or more
issues of the journal or access to other material in the journal:
American Journal of Veterinary Research http://www.avma.org/publications/default.asp
Animal,the Holistic Magazine for Animals Lovers http://www.animalanimal.com/magv3i1/welcome.htm
FDA Veterinarian Newsletter http://www.fda.gov/cvm/index/fdavet/fdavettoc.html
International Journal of Veterinary Medicine http://www.priory.co.uk/vet.htm
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association http://www.avma.org/publications/default.asp
Journal of Veterinary Medical Education http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JVME/
Lab Animal http://www.labanimal.com/
Veterinary Research Communications http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0165-7380
There are also many journals which give non-subscribers access to their article abstracts only. Some give online access just to the table of contents pages. A link which will give you a chance to view some of those publications is:
MedBioWorld
http://www.medbioworld.com/bio/journals/vet.html
WorldCat
This is the largest database available in the FirstSearch group. It includes more than 40,000,000 records from thousands of libraries all over the world. Most of the records are for books. This database is covered in this section of the page because it is part of the FirstSearch group. If you were to check this database for material on pot-bellied pigs, some of the citations which you would find look like the following:
When using WorldCat or any of the other FirstSearch databases,
there is an interlibrary loan form built right into all the FirstSearch
databases. Just click on the icon labelled ILL and follow the instructions.
Don't forget the time it takes to get materials from other libraries.
This Library also subscribes
to some databases which include a great deal of full-text material. In other
words, the text of the article is on the computer. You can print a copy of
the article from the computer you use to do your research. Examples
of these databases are Info Trac One File and WilsonOmnifile.
Info Trac One File
If you needed material
on lions and did a search in this database, you would find entries which look
like the following:
Clicking on the blue line will bring up a copy of the article on your computer
screen. Not every article found in this database is full-text. Only
those which say view text and retrieval choices are. For the others, you will
have to use SLEUTH to check on our holdings to see if we have
the publication in question.
Wilson Omnifile
This database includes articles from general interest magazines and journals. It is completely full-text. A search for material on exotic pets yielded the following article.
Clicking on the View Complete Record line will allow you to print, save to a disk or E-mail the information to yourself.
Internet Sites
One of the most comprehensive
web sites in the veterinary science area is Net Vet. The URL
for that site is: http://netvet.wustl.edu/wildlife.htm
.
There, you will find links for hundreds of other pages of interest to people
like you.
Regardless of the search engine you use to locate information, there are some things which you should keep in mind. Those sites which have .com in their Internet addresses are the least reliable sources of information. .com sites are usually maintained by those who have something to sell. Instead, you should look for sites which have the .edu or .gov in their Internet addresses. If you get information from a web site with .org in the address, remember that organizations have a certain bias or prejudice. That is why they exist. The information which you get from their web site will reflect that. Examples of web sites which you might find useful are:
College and University Sites
Cornell University http://www.vet.cornell.edu
University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine http://www.vet.utk.edu/
Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine http://www.vet.ohio-state.edu
University of California-Davis http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/
Professional Organizations
American Veterinary Medical Association http://www.avma.org/
New York State Association of Veterinary Technicians http://www.nysavt.org/
Academy of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Technicians http://www.veccs.org/technicians/index.cfm
Government Agencies (Federal level)
National Library of Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
Centers for Disease Control http://www.cdc.gov
FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine On-Line Library http://www.fda.gov/cvm/
American Welfare Information
Center http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic
Mary Bucher
Reference Librarian
Revised April 2003
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