Week 6: Bonus - Ask a Librarian Chat

After a week of researching on dolphin communication in the wild, I found three scholarly articles that I thought were the best. From there, I downloaded them to McGraw Connect and annotated them. After peer reviewing some of my peers' annotated bibliographies and starting my introduction to my literature review paper, I realize that the articles that I picked may have not been the best ones.

I noticed that the Big Three did not come from a range of time periods. Rather, they were published within the past decade. In addition, I realized that the three articles were too specific in subtopic. They focused on dolphin whistles, but there are other forms of vocal cues in dolphin communication I have yet to research and review such as screams, clicks, and chirps. To find these articles, I relied on solely Academic Search Complete.

After consulting with Amy, a librarian located in Wisconsin, via 24/7 Chat, she introduced me to numerous other databases that I could use, especially those that are geared towards the biology: BIOSIS, Web of Science, and Environmental Science Index. Through BIOSIS alone, I found an article titled "Whistling in a noisy ocean: bottlenose dolphins adjust whistle frequencies in response to real-time ambient noise levels" by Chantel van Ginkel, which will be useful when I address the negative impacts of Navy sonar on dolphin communication towards the end of my literature review or my advocacy project. I also found an article titled "Signature whistle variation in a bottlenosed dolphin, Tursiops truncatus" by Vincent M. Janik. This article provides more research information about dolphin whistles but from another angle, suggesting that all dolphins have their own unique or familial whistle. Furthermore, this article was published in 1994, which allows for analysis of the progression of dolphin communication research and growth.

For me, this article was helpful because it further opened my eyes to the ample amounts of databases I can conduct my research on. It also pushed me to chat with a librarian, which in all honesty, I would not normally do. However, since I realize how non-troublesome the whole chatting process is and how quick their answers are, I will utilize this resource more in the future for other research projects.

My chat with Amy, a librarian from Wisconsin