Developing a specific topic for the bibliography (neither too general nor too narrow/specialized) will require looking at (reading, evaluating) a lot of material that won't make it into the final bibliography, but will help you learn enough about the bacterium in question to construct a bibliography that does more than just go through the motions.

You are (for all intents and purposes) limited to journals we have in our library, including the various online journals (under exceptional circumstances InterLibrary Loan can be arranged, but don't bet the farm on it). That said, there's a lot to be learned from abstracts of articles from sources that are not in our library.

Much of your exploration will be done in online indexes, accessible via the Biology Department page and/or Library Gateway => Research Resources => Periodical Indexes. Choosing amongst the myriad possibilities is part of the fun, and no single source will tell you everything (but every source will tell you something). Here's a matrix of references to particular bacteria in various databases.

You will probably find the American Society for Microbiology site useful. There's a search facility for ASM journals --note that we have Journal of Bacteriology and Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews in the Science Library, and that Dr. Simurda has the last 4 years of Applied and Environmental Bacteriology in her office. I suggest that you limit your searches to those 3 journals, and that you use the 'qualified' search (try words in title first).

Among the online journals available to us, the following Academic Press journals (articles available in full text if the computer you're using has Adobe Acrobat configured to work with Netscape) might be useful (different degrees for various bacteria):

Anaerobe
Food Microbiology
Microbial Pathogenesis

See the whole list of Academic Press biology journals. There is also a search utility that might be worth trying.

You might find it fruitful to search the Springer Link database, since we have electronic access to full text of Springer journals (see the list of Springer Biology journals and link to password).

A piece of serendipity: I happened to look at the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine (Sept 4) because of a story I heard on NPR this morning and chanced to see a review article on Legionellosis (pp 682-687).

***NEW***: SciCentral guide for microbiology resources