An example of some difficulties: myostatin

The 26 September issue of Science has a News (i.e., tertiary/quaternary) article:


Schwarzenegger gene? A mutated myostatin gene
causes the heavy muscling of this Belgian Blue bull.

AGRICULTURAL GENETICS:
Gene Mutation Provides More Meat on the Hoof

Steven Dickman

(SUMMARY)
Scientists have for the first time identified a gene that influences an economically important trait in beef cattle. When mutated, the gene, which codes for a protein called myostatin, leads to a phenomenon called "doubling muscling" in which the muscles grow much larger than normal, while still retaining their tenderness. Because the gene has also been found in nine additional animals, including the pig, turkey, and chicken, the discovery may lead to development not only of meatier strains of cattle but of other domestic animals as well.

The full text of the article provides various additional details: names of discoverers and leaders of research groups (Sejin Lee and Alexandra McPherron of Johns Hopkins; Tim Smith of USDA and John Baff of New Zealand; Michel Georges of University of Liège), mention of an "in press" article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [turns out to be Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 94, pp. 12457-12461, November 1997], of an article by Lee and McPherron published in May [but with no citation], and the sentence

Discovered just 4 months ago in mice by Lee and his graduate student Alexandra McPherron, myostatin normally serves to limit skeletal muscle growth... mutations block its activity and the animal's muscles grow larger --but without harming meat quality..." (pg 1922)
The Oxford English Dictionary confirms my hunch about the origins of the term 'myostatin':

myo- mi;o, combining f. Gr. muj (gen. muo-j) muscle, in many scientific terms

If my task was to gather more information, where would I begin and how would I proceed? Clearly, I need to

Because the 'discovery' of myostatin is so recent, it's pretty obvious that there wouldn't be books about myostatin. But can I find any books that are about the general subject area of which myostatin is a specific example? That's a matter of vocabulary, and these are some of the elements mentioned in the Science article:

A search in Annie for the keyword "muscle" turns up 40 items --not too many to look through-- and these look especially promising (relatively recent, too), and are at the very least worth a look: 

 AUTHOR       Matthews, Gary G., 1949-
 TITLE        Cellular physiology of nerve & muscle / Gary G. Matthews.
 PUBLISHER    Palo Alto : Blackwell Scientific Publications, c1985.
 SUBJECT      Nerves -- Cytology.
              Muscles -- Cytology.
              Electrophysiology.
              Neural conduction.
              Cell physiology.
 Science Library        QP363 .M38 1985

 TITLE        Molecular basis of morphogenesis / editor, Merton Bernfield.
 PUBLISHER    New York : Wiley-Liss, c1993.
 Science Library        QH511 .S6 no.51
 (has sections on Myogenic factor gene expression in mouse
  somites and limb buds, Myogenic lineages within the developing somite, 
  and Positional specification during muscle development)

 TITLE        Skeletal muscle / section editor, Lee D. Peachey, associate
                editor, Richard H. Adrian, executive editor, Stephen R. Geiger.
 PUBLISHER    Bethesda, Md. : American Physiological Society ; Baltimore :
 SERIES       Handbook of physiology ; section 10.
 Science-Reference      QP6 .H25 1977 sect. 10

 AUTHOR       McComas, Alan J.
 TITLE        Skeletal muscle : form and function / Alan J. McComas.
 PUBLISHER    Champaign, IL : Human Kinetics, c1996.
 SUBJECT      Striated muscle -- Physiology.
 Science Library        QP321 .M3376 1996
Because myostatin is such a recent discovery, we'd expect useful information to be in quick-reacting media, including newspapers and magazines. We know that there's an article by Lee and McPherron, published in May. How do we set about finding it with just that information?
The tool of choice is UnCover, a database of 17,000-odd tables of contents of (mostly) scholarly journals. And sure enough, a search for 'mcpherron' yields this: 
AUTHOR(s):       McPherron, A.C.
                 Lawler, A.M.
                 Lee, S-J.
TITLE(s):        Regulation of skeletal muscle mass in mice by a new
                   TGF-beta superfamily member.

           In:   Nature.
                 MAY 01 1997 v 387 n 6628
         Page:   83
As fate would have it, when I first went looking for it this issue of Nature was shown in Annie as being bound... but it has returned and I was able to find and photocopy the article
Reasoning that AGRICOLA might have relevant material (though it's not up-to-date enough to include the Lee-McPherron work), I did a search for double muscling and found some useful information in the abstracts (we don't have the relevant journals at W&L).