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Plant Science Subject Guide — Other Information Sources

Cooperative Extension Information

The US Cooperative Extension System is a non-formal education program based at US land grant universities. It is designed to help people implement research-based knowledge in their lives. State extension services publish high quality, free information on many topics, including agriculture, health, disaster preparedness, energy, family issues, nutrition, landscaping and pest management. 

Anyone can search for extension information Google Scholar with "cooperative extension" [your topic]. For example: cooperative extension chicken botulism, This will search cooperative extension publications around the country which mention botulism in chickens. In Google Scholar you can force words to be searched as a phrase in the results by putting them in quotes. You can force a word to be in the results by putting a + in front of it (no space.)  For example: "cooperative extension" +chicken +botulism will require the phrase search and the last two words to be in the resulting hits.

Extension documents are a rich and ever-updated source of targeted practical information from across the country. They are not primary or peer reviewed.

Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries digitizing and making accessible the early literature documenting the study of living organisms since the time of Linnaeus. Millions of pages of taxonomic literature have been scanned, including books, journals, conference proceedings and other works. Most works are pre-copyright (< 1927) An excellent and growing resource. A guide for using the BHL is available here.

National Agricultural Law Center

The National Agricultural Law Center, based at the University of Arkansas, is an independent legal research and information service for the United States agriculture community. It is funded by the US. Department of Agriculture.Within its scope of coverage are animal welfare, biotechnology, food, biosecurity, corporate farming, environment, forestry, food safety, pesticides, renewable energy, water, and many other topics. The Center's resources and reports are available to researchers and the public. Includes a searchable blog on daily developments and RSS feeds on developments in a wide variety of topics.