LibGuides: Resources for REC Researchers: Find Research &amp; Use Scholarly Databases

Suggested Scholarly Databases

My Top Picks for Scholarly Database for Agriculture Research

Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)
Includes Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences and Science Citation indexes, Journal Citation Reports, BIOSIS Previews, BIOSIS Citation Index, Derwent Innovations patent searching, MEDLINE, and Zoological Record. Updated weekly.
AGRICOLA (EBSCO)
AGRICOLA contains bibliographic records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library.

Washington State University Library Catalog (Search It)
Search It is the WSU library catalog. You can search among many different types of resources and order materials from other institutions if they are not immediately available through WSU. You will find the most resources in Search It but you will also find the most noise.

You may also want to take a look at the WSU Libraries General Agricultural Research Guide.

Other Useful Scholarly Databases

AGRIS (FAO)
AGRIS is the international information system for the agricultural sciences and technology. It was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1974, to facilitate information exchange and to bring together world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture. AGRIS is a cooperative system in which participating countries input references to the literature produced within their boundaries and, in return, draw on the information provided by the other participants. To date, 240 national, international and intergovernmental centers participate.
BIOSIS Previews
BIOSIS Previews¨ is the online version of Biological Abstracts¨ and Biological Abstracts/RRM¨ (Reports, Reviews, and Meetings), the largest collection of biological sciences records in the world.
CAB Abstracts (CABI)
Citations with abstracts to the world literature on all aspects of agriculture including forestry and nutrition. Updated weekly. Contains all data from these individual CABI indexes: Agroforestry Abstracts, Field Crop Abstracts, Forest Products Abstracts, Forestry Abstracts, Grassland and forage Abstracts, Horticultural Abstracts, Irrigation and Drainage Abstracts, Nutrition Abstracts : Human Nutrition, Plant Breeding Abstracts, Potato Abstracts, Review of Plant Pathology, Seed Abstracts, Soils and Fertilizers, Weed Abstracts, Wheat Barley and Triticale Abstracts.
“Not all vendors are able to use OpenAthens Federated Access to authenticate users. If you need to access resources from this vendor, please do not use the OpenAthens institutional login on their website. Instead, start from the WSU Libraries Search It tool or Datbases AZ list. Once we move completely to OpenAthens, sign in will be possible directly through the vendor website."
SciFindern Scholar
This service works best with Internet Explorer. First time users MUST register. Full text access to: Chemical Abstracts since 1907, Chemical Abstracts Registry CASREACT: since 1974, Medline since 1985, Chemcats and ChemList since 1979. To learn how to get the most out of CAS SciFinderN, see the SciFinder FAQ and collection of on-demand training videos, webinars, and how-to guides.
PubMed - for WSU users
This link to PubMed is for those affiliated with WSU. PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Syncing Google Scholar and the WSU Library Catalog

You may have been told not to use Google Scholar for your research in the past. The thing is, Google Scholar can be a useful tool - if you use it correctly.

Google Scholar can easily be synced to the WSU Library catalog. When you do this, resources that you find in Google Scholar, that WSU subscribes to, will be fully accessible. This means you get the the full-text of an article by using Google Scholar as a starting point.

If you don't sync the WSU library catalog with Google Scholar your access to research will be severely limited.

Here's the info about how to sync Google Scholar with the WSU Library catalog.

Datasets

A datasset is the raw data that has been collected by researchers and government institutions. There are countless different types of datasets from countless organizations. Helpful datasets pertaining to these projects may include demographic information, opinion and market surveys, soil and horticulture maps, and so much more.

USDA: National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) - NASS conducts hundreds of surveys every year and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of U.S. agriculture. Production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm finances, chemical use, and changes in the demographics of U.S. producers are only a few examples. Also see the USDA Open Data Catalog

USDA: Washington Agricultural Statistics Service - Provides various data sets and statistics as part of the USDA Northwest Regional Field Office.

Data.gov - The large government data repository. Provides open data from the federal to the local level across a wide range of topics from agriculture, consumer, manufacturing, and more.

US Census Information - Provides a wide range of historic demographic information.

Maps & Satellite Images

Maps

Washington State University Manuscripts and Special Collections Early Washington Maps Collections - Over 1200 historic maps of Washington in high resolution.
Washington State Library Historical Maps - A wide range of different types of historic maps regarding Washington State.
USGS Map Collection - A wide range of maps ranging from topographic to land use. Maps are searchable but the website can be cumbersome.
USGS National Geospatial Program - Representing searchable historical geospatial data regarding topography, natural landscape, and manmade environments of the United States.
USGS Water Data for the Nation - These pages provide access to water-resources data collected at approximately 1.9 million sites. The USGS investigates the occurrence, quantity, quality, distribution, and movement of surface and underground waters and disseminates the data to the public.
Library of Congress Map Collection - Large searchable collection of numerous types of maps.

*You can find maps by using the WSU Search It library catalog and limiting your results to display to display just maps. View this image demonstrating how to limit your searches to display just maps.

Satellite Images

Google Satellite Time Lapse - Allows users to look at time lapse satellite images going back, in some instances, thirty-five years.
NASA Worldview - Allows users to create time lapse imagery of geographic locations taken from satellite images.

Land and Title Records

Bureau of Land Management Historic Records - Land survey and mineral information records from the General Land Office going back to 1812.
Bureau of Land Management Washington and Oregon Land Status & Survey Records - Historic documents and records pertaining to land surveys, ownership, and use.

Encyclopedias & Dictionaries

Historical Resources

To find info on the history of land use and agriculture (including photographs, maps, publications, and much more), take a look at the history of agriculture library research guide.