LibGuides: First Year Students' Guide to UW Libraries: Agriculture

Keyword Tips

What is a keyword?

A keyword is an informative word used to describe the content of a document.
For example, keywords are words/phrases you can put into a search bar that will pull up books, articles, and other library resources with content relevant to the entered word/phrase.

When doing research about Agriculture in different countries, it can be important to understand that every country utilizes different terminologies for the same type of materials.

One example for this is "corn":

1. If you are doing research for this term within the United States, you would search "corn"

2. If you are doing research for this term within Europe, you would search "maize"

Secondary Source Databases

AGRICOLA (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Major agricultural indexing database that is based on the National Agriculture Library collection and includes journal articles, book chapters, books, theses, patents, software, media and technical reports back to 1970. On the ProQuest platform.
National Agricultural Library Digital Collections This link opens in a new window
Interface for searching and browsing the digital collections of the National Agricultural Library, including the full text of peer-reviewed articles by US Department of Agriculture authors. Other collections include: Fruit and Vegetable Market News Collection; Historical Gypsy Moth Publications Collection; Organic Roots Collection; Plant Inventory, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Reports of Bean Improvement Cooperative and National Dry Bean Council Research Conference; Rural Development Publications Collection; USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection; World's Poultry Science Association (WPSA) Collection.
JSTOR Global Plants This link opens in a new window
Botanical indexing/full-text database the reproduces backfiles of journals to their beginnings, botanical specimens, reference works, correspondence and illustrations. On the JSTOR platform.
Plant Science (part of Environmental Science Index) This link opens in a new window
Database contains citations and abstracts of scientific literature on plant science, focusing on all plant scientific aspects, especially pathology, symbiosis, biochemistry, genetics, biotechnology, techniques and environmental biology.

Websites & Other Resources

National Agricultural Library
This is a good resource that can help launch you into more information about any agriculture topics.
PubAg
This is a comprehensive agriculture research that is completely free of charge.

Books and Reference Materials

Often there are core books or resources related to different subjects that can be helpful to better understand the subject. For agriculture the United States Department of Agriculture is a great resource and they often post publications that can be a great resource to students.

Reference Book: Agriculture
Provides a good background on different topics related to Agriculture including farming, food security, family farms, and more.
USDA Agriculture Statistics
This annual publication includes data on agricultural production, supplies, consumption, facilities, costs, and returns and is intended as a reference for common use.