A searchable database of literature on freshwater mollusks is now available online at: http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu:591/mollusk/biblio.html .
It is also linked via the Illinois Natural History Survey Mollusk Collection page: http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/mollusk.html, and we plan on placing a link to the database on the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society (FMCS) web page (http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu/fmcs/) in the near future.
To date the bibliography database includes over 10,000 references on freshwater mollusks. The database was a collaborative effort by Kevin Cummings, Illinois Natural History Survey; Art Bogan, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences; Tom Watters, the Ohio State University Museum of Biological Diversity; and Chris Mayer, Illinois Natural History Survey. The project was funded by the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation: http://www.nfwf.org/.
The initial goal of the bibliography was to try and build a database of every published reference on freshwater mussels in North America. The project has grown to include freshwater mussels worldwide, gastropods, sphaeriids, corbiculids, and dreissenids. However, the references entered for those groups are far less comprehensive, particularly with respect to the literature pre-1980.
The types of publications covered include; journals, books and book chapters, theses and dissertations, popular articles, and gray literature (govt. documents, consulting reports, etc.). Abstracts from symposia or conference proceedings have also been entered but are not exhaustive.
In addition to searching on the standard fields (author, date, title, journal, and volume) searches can be broadened or restricted by using a combination of geographic, taxonomic, or subject fields.
The geographic fields include check boxes for specific continents and a data entry field for a specific state or country. If you are searching for a two word location (i.e Mississippi River), use a hard (option) space between the words. This way you find only the river and not the state. The taxonomic fields include check boxes for the major groups of freshwater mollusks (Unionoida, Gastropoda, Sphaeriidae, Corbiculidae, and Dreissenidae).
A data entry field for family is also available but the vast majority of records on the database lack information for that field at this time.
A number of admittedly subjective subject headings are also available for searching broad topics with one keystroke. The fields at present include: systematics, zoogeography, life history (in a very broad sense), age & growth, food habits, glochidia, parasites, physiology, genetics, anatomy, methods, management, endangered species, paleontology, pollution, biographies and obituaries, bibliography, collections, reproduction, predation, buttons & pearls, native Americans, exotics, habitat, and behavior. Using these fields will often return a large number of citations but they can be useful for browsing a large number of papers in a specific subject area.
We hope to refine these subject categories in the future and ideas for additional fields are welcomed. The check box field can be used in conjunction with other data entry fields to narrow down a search. For example, checking gastropods, North America, and genetics will return a set of references without having to type in numerous key words in the title field. Finally there are options for the number of references returned (5, 10, 20, 30, 50) and sorting the results at the bottom of the page.
It is hoped that this will be a dynamic database. It is still very much in the beta phase at this point so if you notice that a particular reference is incorrectly cited or missing please forward changes and additions to ksc@inhs.uiuc.edu. Although we would like to be able to provide reprints or copies of papers to those without access to a good research library it is impossible to do that at this time, so don't ask :)
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Kevin S. Cummings
Illinois Natural History Survey
607 E. Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
Email: ksc@inhs.uiuc.edu
URL: http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cbd/collections/mollusk.html
Join the Freshwater Mollusk
Conservation Society Today!
URL: http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu/fmcs/
This page is located on the following pages:
On Data,
FW Bivalves, Terrestrial, & Mala2 Pages
Dated Letter April 12, 2001
Permission to put on web site given by Kevin Cummings