Final: biological warfare

The subject I chose was biological warfare. I learned that there is a lot of worry in the world today about biological warfare and the possability of it being used against the US at some point. It is a very big worry for citizens around the US becasue of the mass destruction that it threatens to potentially unleash.
To begin my research i started with the first source on the list to make it easier to keep track of things. This source was the library catalog. After selecting the catalog i chose the section "words" and proceeded to type in "biological" AND "warfare." This produced a fair number of results that, with a quick scan through, were deemed adequate for the topic. I then chose the book "Biological warfare: Opposing Viewpoints," by William Dudley, figuring it would give me a good perspective for both sides of the issue. The book was produced in 2004, which is reasonably recent enough for a book with relevant information on a topic. The active link for the site is: http://libcat.csueastbay.edu/search?/Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D/Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D&SUBKEY=biological%20and%20warfare/1%2C94%2C94%2CB/frameset&FF=Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C. After collecting the nevessary information and the call number to find the book I proceeded to Academic Search Premier.
To begin my search in Academic Search Premier i entered the same words that had proven successful before: "biological" AND "warfare." However, this search turned up a wide variety of results mostly not relating to my topic. I then revised my wording by placing both words on the same line, only to find that it made virtually no difference. After thinking for a while how i could narrow my search, i went back to each word on each line and then added AND "advancement." Luckily, this turned up with a much narrower results page and one of the first results proved to be useful. I chose "Technological advancements for the detection of and protection against biological and chemical warfare agents" which is an article by Lisa M. Eubanks,
Tobin J. Dickerson, and Kim D. Janda1 written in the chemical Society Reviews. I deemed this source credible based on the fact that it was from February of 2007, which is recent enough. The current link for this cource is: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24198200&site=ehost-live. After finishing with Academic i went back to the "A-Z list" and found my specific database.
For my disciplinary database i chose "Biological Abstracts," because i figured it would have information relating to biological warfare. Fortunately i was right, but I ran into some of the same problems with unrelated results that surfaced in my previous search. I started by searching for "biological" AND "warfare" once more and received a similar result of many unrelated topics, one of them relating to a "flying squirrel!" I then decided that what worked before might work again, and tried adding "advancement" to the search terms. Unfortunately this was not nearly as successful as before and still popped up with many unrelated results. So i tried to think of another word i could replace advancements with and came up with the word "weaponry." This search was very profitable, coming up with a very limited number of results, but all of great relevance. From the results i chose "Terrorism from a public health perspective" which was published in 2002 and written by Gregory Evans, James crutcher, Brooke Shadel, Bruce Clements and Michael Bronze. I once again figured that the date would serve as a reasonable piece of criteria for the book, being unfarmiliar with the topic. The current link for the source is: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=boh&AN=BACD200300015268&site=ehost-live. I then proceeded to the broadest search which i saved for last so that i could use the specific information to narrow my search.
I headed over to the search engine Yahoo and typed in biological warfare. I was typing that in it came up with similar options and i noticed that one of them was "history of biological warfare." I decided to use this figuring it would give a different type of information to my mostly current forms of sources so far. The results for that were very vast as search engines usually are, but still contained many relevant links. I scrolled down a few and found one on "gulfwarvets.com." I figured having a firsthand account of the conception of these items would add a different side to all the sources with authors who probably had very limited first hand experience with them. After looking over the site I deemed it usable and gathered the necessary information. The link to the site is: http://gulfwarvets.com/biowar.htm.
To continue my research i would actually stick more to the databases just becasue they produced more relevant results. To my surprise the search engine was not the best way to find what i was looking for. While it provided my research with a different spin on what i had gathered so far it was far to general to find hard facts quickly on. The databases, after tweaking my search terms, was much more useful for finding facts and statistics. Two research questions i would use if i were to continue searching would be: how dangerous is biological warfare on a worldwide basis, and what countries are known to be studying biological warfare in some way? To try and find answers to these questions i would look towards the databases Science Direct, and Web of Science. Overall i found this random topic surprisingly easier than the one i chose to find relevant information on. This gives me the idea that i am being too specific with my search ideas and need to expand out on a topic, then use the results to narrow it down. I also suspect that I am more familiar with the procedure and avoided the delay of learning where to start and what to look for.

Bibliogragpic Information (also given in essay)

Library Catalog:
Biological Warfare: Opposing Viewpoints-
http://libcat.csueastbay.edu/search?/Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D/Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D&SUBKEY=biological%20and%20warfare/1%2C94%2C94%2CB/frameset&FF=Xbiological+and+warfare&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C

Academic Search Premier:
Technological advancements for the detection of and protection against biological and chemical warfare agents-
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=24198200&site=ehost-live

Specific Database: Biological Abstracts:
Terrorism from a public health perspective-
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=boh&AN=BACD200300015268&site=ehost-live

World Wide Web: Yahoo:
Gulf War Vets.com-
http://gulfwarvets.com/biowar.htm