Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA)

A GUIDE TO FISHING FOR INFORMATION

Prepared by Elisheba Muturi October 31 2006

Database scope and coverage

Content

The Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) is the premier reference in the field of aquatic

resources. It provides abstracts (not full-text) of the international literature dealing with

aquaculture, aquatic organisms, aquatic pollution, brackish water environments, conservation,

environmental quality, fisheries, freshwater environments, limnology, marine biotechnology, marine

environments, meteorology, oceanography, policy and legislation, and wildlife management. The

materials covered includes journal articles, books, reports and conference proceedings.

Dates of Coverage: 1971 - current. Note: There are several hundred records published before 1971.

Update FrequencyMonthly, with approximately 3,700 new records added

SizeOver 1,065,187 records as of June 2006

Selecting Databases 

• From the Library’s homepage, select Indexes and databases• Click on the letter “C” then chose Cambridge Scientific Abstracts from the next screen. • At the CSA screen, click on Specific databases.• Select Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts by checking the associated checkbox.

Search Options  There are three search options:

• Quick search (default search option): searches anywhere looking for the words in any field of the database including full text

• Advanced Search: gives better results as it allows you to select the field you want to search within (title, author, any field)

• Command Search (under the Search Tools tab): requires knowledge of command syntax

Note: In addition to ASFA, you can search any number of different databases such as

Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management and Oceanic Abstracts.

Connectors

Whatever search option you use, you need to know how to connect the words using in order to find relevant items. The connectors include Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and other symbols.

Use To

AND  Narrow search and retrieve records containing all of the words it separates e.g. aquaculture AND environmental impact will retrieve records with both concepts

OR Broaden search and retrieve records containing any of the words it separates eg. rivers or lakes or ponds). This search will retrieve records with at least one of the concepts

NOT Narrow search and retrieve records that do not contain the term following it. Eg. salmon NOT farmed. Use with caution because this will exclude records on both wild and farmed salmon

( ) Group words or phrases when combining Boolean phrases and to show the order in which relationships should be considered: e.g. (louse or lice) and (salmonidae)

* Substitute for characters at the end of search terms e.g. fish* retrieves fishes, fishing, fishery and fisheries. Use with care because common roots can retrieve irrelevant terms. For example, rock* returns rock and rocks, but also rockets and rockers

? Substitute for corresponding number of characters e.g. organi?ation retrieves both organisation and organization

The Advanced Search

.

• Enter the search term or phrase in the query box and select the fields you want to search using the

pull-down menu.

• Carefully determine whether to use the AND, OR or NOT connector (see previous slide). Typically,

use AND for different concepts and OR for similar ones.

EXAMPLE: Your research is on regulations governing coatings to prevent aquatic organisms from attaching themselves to ships and other man-made surfaces.

You learn that the attachment of organisms to man-made structures is called fouling and one of the measures used combat this problem is antifouling coatings.

You enter antifouling coatings

and legislation

Too few results!

The searcher entered antifouling coatings and

legislation and found only 3 results

• To find more relevant results, we need alternative words for our two concepts. • We can get ideas of alternative words from viewing the results we found. • Click on view record

Broaden the search

From the record, we learn that we can use antifouling substances or fouling control for the concept of antifouling coatings. Descriptors are terms used to describe the item in the ASFA database

Revised search…too many results!

• We look at other records and find more terms for our concept. • We then reformulate the search as follows

This search now retrieves 604 articles. This is better than 3 but far too many.

Concept 1: antifouling coatings OR antifouling substances OR antifouling agents OR antifouling technology OR fouling controls ANDConcept 2: legislat* OR policy OR regulat*

Note: *finds all the words with that root: Legislat* finds legislate, legislation, legislating…OR connects similar terms; AND connects different concepts

Narrow the search…just right!

• If you do not limit the search to a specific field, the default search is anywhere ie. the words in any field of the database including full text. This is called a keyword search because it searches anywhere.

• We can narrow results by limiting the search to selected fields such as author, title, abstract or descriptor. Field searching usually provides fewer and more relevant results than keyword searching.

• Below, we limit the search to: descriptor, language, publication type and date.

Note that fourth row was added by clicking on add row at the top right

corner. The final results were only 55!

TIP: Use field search to verify citations. For example, to find an article by John Smith published in 2001. Use the drop down menu to select the author field (Smith, J)

and publication year (2001)

Search History

• The database creates a numbered list of all the searches done during the session. The Search History button lets you look at previous searches.

• Click on the Search History button on the top right

Combine searches 1

These are the searches carried out in the current session Displayed are the terms used and the number of results found. To combine searches, click on combine searches on the top left

Combine searches 2

You can combine the current searches using AND, OR and NOT. You can even combine previous searches with new terms.

In this example search #21 is combined with Europe* to find results that apply to Europe (or European).

You must include the # sign before the number.

Save searches

The search history displays only the searches done in the current session. You can save your searches in order to run them in later sessions and create new searches. Running the searches later will allow you to retrieve newly published articles added since the last search. • When you save a search for the first time, you will be prompted to create a profile with an e-mail address and password • Click on saved searches to view searches already saved.• You can save a search as an alert. You use the same e-mail address and password for alerts and saving searches. •An alert allows you to receive new records via e-mail as they are added to ASFA. The database

is updated weekly.

The command search

• Select the Search Tools tab, and click on Command Search•In the command mode, it is possible to search within specific fields using the appropriate field tags•To determine the "field tags" to use, look at the Insert field code drop-down menu.

DE= limits search to articles with the term in the descriptor fieldKW= any word in the record (key word)LA= specifies the languagePT= publication type

Others include TI= limits the search to the title field AU= limits the search to given author PY= limits search to material published in the specified year

NOTE: Number of opening parentheses must match the closing ones.

Find good terms using thesaurus 1 • The thesaurus is the list of standardized terms used to describe the topic. • The descriptors are obtained from the thesaurus • Thesaurus terms improve the search results by matching your query to the database language

• Select thesaurus from the search tools tab• From the drop-down list, select ASFA thesaurus• To browse for required term, enter antifouling coatings.

Note: The thesaurus is only available when searching ASFA as a single database

Find good terms using thesaurus 2

• Select “hierarchy”

• Hierarchy indicates the relationship between the terms while the alphabetical index simply displays an alphabetical list.

• The entry shows that we should use antifouling substances instead of antifouling coatings because this is the thesaurus term

•Click on the antifouling substances link

Use thesaurus terms to search

The entry antifouling substances indicates:1) the broader term for the concept is: agents 2) the related terms include fouling control

•The concept we want is well expressed by the two terms: antifouling substances and fouling control.• To select them, check the boxes next to antifouling substances and fouling control • Select “use OR to broaden” on the lower left. • We use OR because the two terms are similar and represent the same concept.Note: Terms selected from the thesaurus are automatically searched in the descriptor field only.

Refine your search using indexesIndexes are lists of terms found in key fields. They could be useful for two reasons:• you want to browse them to see what is available - for example, you may want to see which journals are represented in

the database • you want to limit your search to a particular field but you are not sure of what options you have.

There are four indexes:• Author name: all the authors of articles in the database• Journal name: all the journal titles in the database• Publication type: the different document types – such as journal articles, bibliography, reports• Source: Organizations that have issued the content.

• To browse the indexes, click on the search tools tab

• Click on the indexes tab

• For publication type, select publication type index from drop down menu

• Select publication type from the alphabetical list

After the search…Retrieve the article

• To the right of the record display, you can retrieve more records tagged by a given descriptor – such as biocides - by clicking on it.

• To retrieve the actual article, click on the yellow “UBC eLink” button • As ASFA records contain only abstracts, the “UBC eLink” searches behind

the scenes for a full-text source• The screen that opens will tell you whether the article is available online as

full-text and if not, how else to find it.

Full text available online!

• This article is available online via EBSCOhost• To retrieve the full-text, click on the “GO” button.

Oops… full text is not online!This article is not available in an online source. A number of options are given: 1) looking in the UBC catalogue to see whether the journal title is owned by UBC2) searching for the item using a web search engine3) ordering the item via interlibrary loan if item is not available from either of the above sources

The UBC library journal button searches the

catalogue and indicates whether the print version of

item is held by UBC.

If the item is not available in UBC’s collection, first try CISTI orders (for science journals) If not available via CISTI, request it via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) form

Try searching the web using Google Scholar or other web search tool to

see whether the author has put the article on the free

internet

Finding the print version at UBC

• The catalogue record shows the location of the journal as the Barber Learning Centre • Use the call number to request for it

Note: UBC may have the journal but not the volume/year that you need. For example, if you want an article published before 1976, you would have have to order

it via CISTI or ILL

This item is available in print only (UBC print holdings)

Click on the UBC Print holdings link to see the catalogue record

Output your search results 1  The results page automatically separates retrieved records by data type. The types are arranged in two rows of tabs:• Top row: indicates overall type of data retrieves – published works, illustrations, websites etc.• Bottom row indicated different publication types – journal articles etc.

• Mark the records of interest

• Click on the save,print,e-mail link above the records display .

• If you have a Refworks account, click on the Refworks link to export your records.

Output your search results 2 

1 Confirm that the number of selected records is correct2 Choose one of the format display options

3 Choose one of three ways to output your references3a You can create a bibliography using Quikbib3b You can e-mail the references to yourself3c If you have a RefWorks account, click on this link to export directly to your account

Note: Refworks is free to UBC staff and students. Click here for more information.

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TIP If you have questions on searching ASFA or any other

database or how to find relevant material for your research contact

your subject librarian.