International Field Guides

Diane Schmidt,
Biology Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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About This Site

This site merges the book A Guide to Field Guides: Identifying the Natural History of North America published by Libraries Unlimited in 1999 and its companion Web site International Field Guides.  After the publisher returned copyright to the published material, the author decided to combine the two products and create a searchable database of field guides created for plants, animals, and other objects around the world. Except where noted, all guides listed here were personally examined by the author.

What is a Field Guide?

Typically, a field guide is a small, lightweight book used to identify plants, animals, or other (natural) objects.  It is designed to be taken out in the field, on a hike, or otherwise used outdoors and usually contains many illustrations, whether drawings or photographs, and limited text. Generally speaking, field guides are also intended to be used by amateurs, hence the emphasis on visual identification.  There are a number of different technical manuals, atlases, floras and faunas, handbooks, and keys for the use of professionals which are not listed here.

One feature found in many, though not all, field guides is a key.  A key is defined as "an arrangement of the salient characters of a group of plants or animals or of taxa designed to facilitate identification" (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 1993); computer scientists might call them decision trees.  Most formal taxonomic keys are dichotomous keys, in which the user must select one or the other of two opposing choices (leaves opposite or leaves alternate, for instance), which then leads to another set of choices until the plant or animal is finally identified.  There are many other varieties of keys, including tables and visual keys with illustrations or silhouettes of the species to be identified.  Although keys generally require some practice to be able to use well, they can be very helpful.  Trees in winter, for instance, are more easily identified using a key than the usual field guide descriptions.

Why a List of Field Guides?

Well, for one thing, there are a lot of them! As of August 2007, this database listed over 5,000 field guides and more are published daily.  Almost every American home and library has at least one field guide from the most popular field guide series, and the same is also true for other regions of the world.  Besides their obvious utility in helping to identify animals and plants, they are also good sources for illustrations and often natural history information as well.  In addition, field guides are popular tools in the biologist's toolbox, and for many of the same reasons that amateur naturalists find them useful.