title: Clinical and research searching on the wild side: exploring the veterinary literature.
abstract: Zoological medicine furthers the health and well-being of captive and free-ranging wild animals. Effective information retrieval of the zoological medicine literature demands searching multiple databases, conference proceedings, and organization websites using a wide variety of keywords and controlled vocabulary. Veterinarians, residents, students, and the librarians who serve them must have patience for multiple search iterations to capture the majority of the available knowledge. The complexities of thorough literature searches are more difficult for nondomestic animal clinical cases and research reviews as demonstrated by three search requests involving poisonous snakes, a gorilla, and spiders. Expanding and better disseminating the knowledgebase of zoological medicine will make veterinary searching easier.
authors.affiliation: Library of Veterinary Medicine, NCSU Libraries, North Carolina State University, 4700 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA. kristine_alpi@ncsu.edu
authors.forename: Kristine M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Alpi
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Stringer
authors.forename: Ryan S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Devoe
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stoskopf
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000835:Animals, Wild; D035843:Biomedical Research; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D014730:Veterinary Medicine