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The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Veterinary and Animal Sciences

Library and other info sources for Vet & Animal Science students, staff and faculty.

Books on the Shelves

The Libraries' catalog, Discovery Search, provides a call number and location for each physical item. The call number consists of an alphanumeric string based on the Library of Congress classification system. View an example of how to read a call number.

Materials on vet and animal sciences reside primarily in the SF call number range. 

SF1-1100 Animal Culture

SF41-55 History

SF84.82-85.6 Economic zoology

SF84.82-85.6 Rangelands. Range management. Grazing

SF87 Acclimatization

SF600-1100 Veterinary Medicine

Agriculture can be found primarily in the S range, and aquaculture can be found in the SH range.

SH1-691 Aquaculture. Fisheries. Angling.

E-books

An e-book is an electronic or digital book that is available for reading on your computer (desktop or laptop), tablet, or mobile device.

Other e-book resources:

Search terms

Try specific terms first, then try more general ones.

  • Specific terms (Northern Flicker or Colaptes auratus) give fewer but more precise results
  • General terms (like birds or woodpeckers) give more results, but are less precise

Precision gives fewer items (or none!), and you may miss books that might have a chapter on what you want to learn about.

Use both scientific and common names for organisms, connected with or, as above.

Try using truncation (forest* will find forest, forests and forestry) and variant spellings so you won't miss important titles.

Popular magazines

When starting a research project, it is sometimes helpful to search popular magazines to scaffold information and learn the level of information communicated to a public audience.

The database Academic Search Premier is the ONLY database that will let you search specifically for magazine and trade publications.