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A Guide To Searching For Alternatives to the Use of Laboratory Animals
Resource originally developed by Krys Bottrill, former Deputy Scientific Director of FRAME. Updated May 2007.
This guide assumes no previous knowledge of search techniques nor of the facilities available for obtaining information from the Internet.
It is presented as a series of pages, as listed under Contents below, which can be hyperlinked to via the submenu to the left of this page. Some of the links on these pages are internal, leading to other pages in the guide, others are links to external websites.
In order to access these links, it will be necessary to connect to the Internet.
You may find it useful to incorporate some of these links into your own bookmarks. This may be done by right-clicking on the link and selecting "add to favourites" or "add bookmarks", depending on the browser used.
Contents
Search Basics
Basic principles applying to the construction of search profiles for use on Internet search engines or on any on-line database. General considerations relating to the choice of search terms and to the use of operators to define the links between the terms.
Search Terms and Strategies For Searches on the Three Rs
Suggestions for how to approach a search on the Three Rs and a list of terms relating to reduction, refinement and replacement.
Internet Search Engines
A comparison of selected Internet search engines and meta-searchers.
Databases available on the internet at no charge
A description of some of the databases which can be freely
accessed from the Internet, together with brief guide notes on how to perform searches within some of these databases.
Mailing lists, newsgroups and discussion forums
A description of Internet resources for enabling peer communication.
Links
External links of relevance to the Three Rs and to the use of the Internet (includes all links mentioned in the other sections of this guide plus some more).
Accessing the invisible web
Information regarding specialised resources that are appearingwith the aim of enabling easier access to the Invisible Web (that part of the web that is not searched by standard search engines).