Books, review articles, encyclopedias, and web sites are good places to find background information on topics. While you may not be able to cite some of these sources for your paper, you can still save yourself a lot of time and frustration by learning some background information. Here is a link to a list of web sites which might help you find background information on Marine Mammals. Finding Books on Marine Mammals. One of the most effective ways to find books in a library on a particular subject is to search using subject headings.
Subject headings are words assigned by librarians to describe the overall content of a book.
This is a more precise and often more comprehensive way to search than using words in the title. To search for books on marine mammals in the UCSC Science Library the following subject headings will be helpful. For a review on how to use subject headings in CruzCat or the Melvyl catalog, go the the Library Resources section of Nettrail . Whales Pinnipedia Dolphins Sirenians Whaling Cetecea Also experiment with common and scientific names of specific marine mammals. There are several databases available to you that will be useful in identifying articles on marine mammals.