The Herplit Database consists of approximately 50,000 citations dating from 1586 to the present. Approximately 35% of the publications listed were published prior to 1980. About 17% of the publications have been published since 1996.
The database is simply a compilation of the herpetological citations I have accumulated. This database receives no funding and makes no attempt to be comprehensive. It contains typographical errors and I apologize for this. Some of the citations have been received from other herpetologists and contain some of their annotations or may be incomplete.
Search or Download: The entire Herplit Database can now be downloaded as a series of Tab-delimited text files. These files can be imported directly into EndNote as well as most other database programs. A trial version of EndNote can be downloaded from the web and will allow you to import and search the Herplit Database off-line.
Purpose: By making this database available on the web, I hope to assist herpetologists find publications, or at least citations, of interest for their research. A small percentage of these publications are available for sale. To see if the publications you want are available visit my inventory at Bibliomania.
Searching: The search engine is designed with four fields.
Boolean searches ARE NOT available. Each field works as an "and"
search. The "Author" and "Title" fields are
self explanatory. The "Keyword" searches the entire
citation. You can use more than one field at once to narrow your
search. In addition, you may also restrict the search to a specific
time period by filling in the "year" fields.
You may broaden a search by only typing part of a word. For example
"Amphibi" will find citations containing Amphibia, Amphibian,
and Amphibien as well as any other citations containing that much
of the word. Do Not use an asterisk * to denote only a partial
word. "Amphibi*" will not find any citations using this
search engine. Citations in the database are in several different
languages you might want to try searching with non-English keywords
as well. Also, many citations contain foreign letters sich as
å ø æ é è ß ü, etc.
you should also use these letters in your searches. For example
to find papers about Mexico you should search for Mexico and México
(drop the 'o' from both if you want the search to find Mexican
as well)
After each search you may check the box next to any citations
that you wish to save. When you have finished searching, click
on the "Mail citations" button. Fill in the e-mail address
you want the citations sent to and click "Mail". The
complete list of checked citations will be sent to your e-mail
address. NOTE: Only the citations are e-mailed to you, NOT the
entire publication.
Database Exchange: I maintain my database on a Macintosh
using EndNote. I would be happy to exchange this database with
anyone. If you send me a Zip disk with your bibliographic database
- I should be able to import EndNote, ProCite, as well as some
other databases. I will return your zip disk with my database
as either an EndNote database, or a text file if needed.
Please contact me at breck@herplit.com
if you are interested in exchanging databases.
Database on CD: The Herplit database is also availabale on CD as EndNote files. There is, however a small charge of $5.00 to cover the cost of the CD and postage.
Acknowledgements: A special thanks is extended to Ronald Altig, Mississippi State University; James C. Ball, York Serpentarium; Jaime Bosch, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid; Janalee Caldwell, Oklahoma Museum of Natural History; Richard C, Cripps; Michael E. Dorcas, Savannah River Ecology Lab; Rafael de Sá, University of Richmond; Matthew Godfrey, Université Paris XI; Roy W. McDiarmid, National Museum of Natural History (USA); Robert Murphy, Royal Ontario Museum; Carlos A. Navas, Universidade de São Paulo; Tony Tucker, Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service; Laurie Vitt, Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Kent Vliet, University of Florida, and P. Zwart, The Netherlands. for sending their databases.
Please feel free to contact me with comments or suggestions regarding this site.
