Search Hints

Author:

A partial author's name can be put in this blank. Note that the search will be look for the string you enter to occur anywhere in the author field. E.g. If you enter the string "doug" in the author field, the authors returned would include H.W. Dougall, Iain Douglas-Hamilton and Nigel C. Dougherty because each of these contains the string "doug" in their names. Also note that this field is NOT case sensitive - "doug" and "Doug" will return the same entries.

Year:

A search can be done on a specific year, or for articles published about a certain year. For example, typing in "1992" will return just those articles published in 1992, and those articles listed as published in "[1992]", or about 1992. However, typing in "[1992]" as the search criteria will return those articles published in 1991, 1992 and 1993 and those articles listed as "[1992]".

Keyword:

This search field looks under the keywords under which the articles were classified. There are two options for entering keywords: through the drop down list and manually. Using the drop down list gives the advantage of allowing you to pick a specific keyword, knowing that it exists with no typos. However, there are over 300 keywords, which can make using the drop down list daunting. Due to the size of the list, a field where the keyword can be typed in was added. This field is not case sensitive and will find partial words. For example, typing in "len" will find those articles with keywords "EYE LENS" and "AGE LENGTH". When a keyword has been selected from the drop down list, and a keyword has been typed in, the keyword from the drop down list is used in the search.

Word:

This search field looks for the string to appear in the title or abstact. The search is NOT case sensitive, so entering "survey" will find occurances of "survey", "Survey" and "SURVEY" in the title or abstract. It is possible to type in a search string which is longer than the box given, e.g. "Luangwa Valley elephant". Note that typing in more than one word will be interpretted as a string, e.g. "Luangwa Valley elephant" will find only those articles with exactly that string in the title or abstract. It will NOT find anything containing just Luangwa or just Valley or just elephants, etc.

Click on the button labelled "Update" to perform the search. If there were more than 200 hits, only the first 200 will be returned, with a note stating how many hits there were in total.

Once a search has been done, returning some titles, a button labelled "Mail Report" wll appear. Clicking on this button will prompt you for your e-mail address. Typing this in and clicking on the "Mail Report" button will mail your results - including year, author, title, abstract and keywords - to the e-mail address entered.