Information Research Weblog

If you are a bird-watcher ('birder', if in the USA) or, more seriously, of an ornithological bent, you'll find the Ornithological Worldwide Literature (OWL) site of interest. It's a collaborative affair:

OWL is a joint effort between the American Ornithological Union and the British Ornithological Union and Birds Australia. The database is hosted by the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, based in the Zoology Department of Oxford University, UK

Moreover:

Eventually, the online database will go back 50 or more years to acquire citations to the serial literature. OWL will proceed well into this century with a database of the current worldwide literature that would be of interest to ornithologists.

The database is reported to have 19,000 entries at the moment - but that should increase substantially, given the plans.

Be sure to take a look at 'Help with syntax' before you search - otherwise, like me, you are likely to get nothing but an error message. There's no automatic 'AND'ing.

Curious that a site with the acronym OWL, should have a picture of what appears to be a plasticene humming bird!

That acronym is really too common. A quick search reveals:

• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL)
• OWL - the discovery magazine for kids
• OWL.org (Our Web Location for education)
• OWL Composite Protein Sequence Database
• OWL Web Ontology Language
• OWL - Older Women's League
• Career OWL
• The ESO 100-m OWL Telescope concept
• OWL-online.de
• Openwall GNU/*/Linux
• [A site for women's organizations in Russia]

I thought I'd give the links, just in case someone isn't interested in birds!