AWIC Literature Search Training

Literature Search for Alternatives: Meeting AWA Information Requirements

The regulations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) require that investigators provide IACUCs with documentation demonstrating that alternatives to procedures that may cause more than momentary pain or distress to the animals have been considered and that activities do not unnecessarily duplicate previous experiments. To meet this federal mandate, investigators may conduct a thorough literature search regarding alternatives.

Thursday, February 25, 2016, 1 pm to 3pm

NCABR and staff from the USDA’s Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC) have partnered to present training on conducting literature searches for alternatives to animal research and testing. This training will provide participants with an opportunity to review the Animal Welfare Act and other regulations, discuss the definition and examples of alternatives, and explore relevant databases and online resources.

The objectives of the webinar are to provide:

• An overview of animal welfare regulations and the information requirements;
• An overview of alternatives and 3Rs concepts;
• An overview of relevant databases and online resources;
• Suggested terminology and tips for searching the scientific literature;
• Examples of search strategies and their results.

Webinar Facilitator

D’Anna Jensen, B.S., LATG
Technical Information Specialist
Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC)
National Agricultural Library
U.S. Department of Agriculture

D’Anna has a B.S. in Biology with minors in Wildlife Biology and Animal Science from the University of Maryland. She is a certified Lab Animal Technologist with the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science. She has extensive experience with dairy, swine, and equine on the farm, as well as biomedical research models from mice and rats, to dogs, cats, swine, sheep, goats, horses and even ducks. She has been extensively involved in the curricula development and implementation of the AWIC Workshop Training program since 1990. As a certified trainer and facilitator she has provided training to biomedical research companies, universities and government agencies around the country. She also serves as a non-affiliated member of the Animal Care and Use Committee of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (2010-present). Prior to working for AWIC she lived on a Jersey dairy farm, spent 8 years in research at the University of Maryland and 4 years at NIH in postoperative intensive care with research involving kidney and bone marrow transplantation, sepsis, hepatitis and heart disease.