Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : July 2002

Zoological Record Online Enhanced

Zoological Record Online (ZR) (File 185), produced by BIOSIS, now has an enhanced record format, which adds additional subject information to each record and presents indexing terms in a more intuitive manner to facilitate searching.

These enhancements give users more control over ZR's comprehensive content and source coverage. Universities, research centers, museums, conservation projects, and zoos all use ZR to find research and new developments relating to the natural biology of animals.

ZR has been available via Dialog for more than 20 years with a backfile to 1978. With these new enhancements, Dialog users will be able to access this information with added functionality and ease of retrieval.

Enhancements

• Broad Terms - The addition of the Broad Terms (DE, BT) field adds important subject categories to each record. Because these categories are controlled terms chosen from the fully accessible ZR thesaurus, it allows users either to expand a search to a broader level or limit search criteria to one or more specific subject areas.
  
  
• Systematics - Information regarding new scientific names and systematic changes to animal names is now located in its own field - Systematics (DE, BS). This field contains all the information on taxonomy and nomenclature (new species, etc.) for which ZR is particularly renowned. And because it has essentially the same structure as the general Descriptors field, it offers the same opportunities for precision searching.
  
  
• Super Taxa - The valuable taxonomic classification hierarchies are still included in the Super Taxa (DE, SX) field. This provides the broader taxonomic context for the animals named (e.g. Ctenomyidae - Rodentia, Mammalia), and consequently, a way for users to broaden or narrow a search along taxonomic levels.
  
  
• Taxa Notes - The Taxa Notes (DE, TS) field contains English vernacular names (e.g. Insects, Invertebrates, Mammals) for broad groups of animals relevant to the item. The updated ZR thesaurus now contains these natural-language names along with the controlled terms.
  
  
• Update - Another useful search is provided by the Update code (UD). Though not displayable, it can be searched to retrieve all records in a specific update of ZR. To search for records in the latest update, search UD=9999. To view the updates available, use the expand command (e.g., expand ud=).

Summary

Content

Sources

View Figure 1.

top