Biology

AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access) is the catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library. The database covers materials in all formats and periods, including printed works from as far back as the 15th century.

Although the NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) does not contain the text of the materials it cites, thousands of its records are linked to full-text documents online, with new links added daily.

The NAL Catalog (AGRICOLA) is organized into two bibliographic data sets:

• The NAL Online Public Access Catalog contains citations to books, audiovisuals, serials, and other materials.

• The Article Citation Database includes citations, many with abstracts, to journal articles, book chapters, reports, and reprints, selected primarily from the materials found in the NAL Catalog.

The records in IPNI come from three sources: the Index Kewensis (1 million records; seed plants only), the Gray Card Index (350,000 records; vascular plants of the New World) and the Australian Plant Names Index (63,000 records; Australian flowering plants, ferns, and allies).

This site summarizes basic information about each data source and the procedures followed in merging the records so that the user can understand the origin and the limitations of the combined dataset.

The images are digitized micrographs of parts of plants that were sectioned, stained, and permanently mounted to a glass slide. Although the earliest specimen was collected in 1769 (Limonia acidissima L., number SV221), the majority were collected in the early 20th century. The Digital Archive shows a small selection of slides present in the Swingle Reference Collection, which consists of 3,200 specimens on over 26,000 glass microscope slides, from 575 plant species.