Asian Elephants in Sri Lanka: A Selective Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

The Asian or Asiatic elephants called as Elephas maximus are distributed in South- East Asia from India in the West to Borneo in the East. Normally the Asian elephant is smaller than the African elephant. As such Asian elephants are often exaggerated. Asian Elephants in Sri Lanka is very popular and very important topic at present. Besides there is a gigantic connection between elephants and Sri Lankan society. Elephants are connected with various aspects such as zoological aspects, ecological and environmental aspects, historical aspects, art and religious aspects, literature and folklore aspects and sociological aspects. However there is limited literature related to Asian elephants in Sri Lanka. This research attention has been paid to collect all literature like books, journals, manuscripts, journal articles, newspaper articles, non-book materials, websites and internet sources related to Asian elephants. The main objective of this study is to identify all the literature related to Asian elephants in Sri Lanka. Other objectives are to categorize the literature about Asian elephants and to create a selective annotated bibliography of Asian elephants in Sri Lanka. Mainly this research is based on the secondary data. Secondary data is gathered from dictionary, encyclopedia, periodicals, text books, web sites, etc. The main tool of the study was the National Bibliography of Sri Lanka. The study was conducted within a limited period; since 2000-2015. According to the National Bibliographies, bibliography data was collected related to Asian elephants. There are 12 National Bibliographies per year and nearly 200 National Bibliographies were studied. But number of publication were several. So that study was conducted back till 1990. This study tries to collect 100 or more entries of bibliography related to the Asian elephants. This selective annotated bibliography of print books and web sources is meant to provide guidance to academic libraries to build a collection of all the resources related to Asian elephants.