Library Guides:  Environmental Resources
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Reference Books   

  • Encyclopedia of Environmental Science       Call# R 363.7003 M743

  • Encyclopedia of Science and Weather        Call # R 551.503.En56  

  • Endangered and Sensitive Species of the San Joaquin Valley          Call # R 639.9 En56

  • Endangered Wildlife World       Call # R 591.529.En56  

  • The Environment A - Z      Call # R 363.7 H825

  • Facts on File Dictionary of Environmental Science       Call # 363.7003 W984

  • Global Warming in the 21st Century   Call # 363.73874 J65

  • McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology # R 503.21 M147  This multi-volume set gives excellent background on many environmental topics. What is an ozone layer anyway?!

  • Statistical Abstracts        Call #  R 317.3 Un 58

  • World Wild Life Habitats      Call #  R 591.5 W927

  • Introduction to Air in California      Call #  R 363.739 C278

  • Introduction to Water in California    Call #  R 363.61 C278

Online Reference Books

 

     Gale Virtual Reference Library:  Full-text articles from Subject Encyclopedias.  The articles give excellent background information and are unbiased.

        CredoReference :   Full-text articles from encyclopedias.
 

 

   Subject Headings/Key Word Searching

Places "endangered species" "water quality" "plant life"
Visalia "drinking water" "urban sprawl" "endangered plants"
"Central Valley" "water pollution" biodiversity "global warming"
"San Joaquin Valley" watersheds "conversation of natural resources" "greenhouse gases"
"United States" "water conservation" "wildlife conservation" "synthetic fuels"
Tulare ecology "invasive animals" enthanol
Kern "sustainable agriculture" "wind power" "nuclear waste"
Fresno "sustainable forestry" "solar power" "hazardous waste"
  "invasive plants" "biodiesel fuels" "air pollution"
  "coastal erosion" "marine pollution" "indoor air pollution"
  "off shore drilling" wetlands  

Searching with Key Words and Boolean Operators:

 When you type words into the search box, the computer will look in the databases for those words and bring back all the records/entries that contain the words you requested (not necessarily the topic or subject matter). In keyword searching, you need to use  the most important words that describe your topic.

Example 1:   How are pesticides affecting the air in San Joaquin Valley?

                      Key words:    pesticides     air    San Joaquin Valley

Example 2:   Are invasive plants a problem in California?

                     Key words:    invasive plants     California

Phrase Searching
Words that need to be searched together in a specific order are usually enclosed in quotation marks.

Examples:    "San Joaquin Valley"    "Central Valley"       "invasive plants"

Truncation
Truncation lets you find all forms of the root word. The symbol most often used is an *.

Example:  educat*  will find educate; education; educating; educated

Boolean Operators

            Keyword searching uses Boolean Operators to link the search terms together. The Boolean operator you will use most often is AND.

The Boolean Operator AND means that the terms connected by it must be in the search results.  In Example 1  the keywords were pesticides and air and San Joaquin Valley,  so my search query would be  pesticide* and air and "San Joaquin Valley"
This would ensure that all those terms would have to be in the record or the computer would not retrieve it.

OR is another Boolean Operator. It is used when you have two words that mean the same thing or are very similar in meaning, and you want to find all the articles regardless of which term is used.

Examples:    "San Joaquin Valley" OR "Central Valley"
                      teen OR youth
When an OR search is combined with an AND search the OR search must be placed in parentheses ( ). This separates the searches for the computer. This search technique is called nesting.

Examples:  air and (pesticides or insecticides) and ("San Joaquin Valley" OR "Central Valley")

                  

 Online Resources

Academic Electronic Databases     http://www.cos.edu/library/electronic.htm

CQ Researcher is a company that creates 20 -25 page reports on current and controversial subjects. A new one comes out twice a month. These reports are especially excellent as they always include charts, graphs, chronology, and will give both sides of an issue.    Recent Reports include: Regulating Toxic Chemicals;  Confronting Warming;  Reducing Your Carbon Footprint;   Protecting Wetlands;  Socially Responsible Investing;  Buying Green

 NewsBank:  Research unique current and archived news content for information on topics, events, issues, people, businesses, and more through this in-depth resource. Easy online access to local, in-state, national and international news sources, including newspapers, broadcast transcripts, newswires, news blogs, news web-only content and video.   Local newspapers include:  Visalia Times Delta;  Tulare Advance-Register; The Bakersfield Californian; Ventura County Star;   San Francisco Chronicle;  Sacramento Bee;    LA Times and others.

ProQuest:  Thousands of  full-text articles from journals, magazines, newspapers, Reports, Dissertations, Working Papers

SIRS:  Full-text articles from magazines and newspapers

NetLibrary: Full-text books on a wide variety of subjects.

Expanded Academic ASAP:   Thousands of full-text articles.

Web Sites

News in Science:.

Gateways

  • California Environmental Protection Agency- http://www.calepa.ca.gov/

  • Ceres- (California Environmental Resources Evaluation System) -  http://www.ceres.ca.gov

  • EPA Guide to Environmental Issues - http://www.epa.gov/compliance Covers such topics as surface and ground water, pesticides, hazardous  and solid waste, public health, public safety, health and environmental risks, enforcement and major environmental laws.
  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - http://www.fws.gov/

  • At the Yahoo Directory there are some lists of web sites. They are located under Ecology , and Conservation,

  • At the Google Directory there are some lists of webs sites. They are located under Environment
     

Endangered Species

Water Quality

Additional Sites

Scholarly Search Engines:

The Scout Report - The Scout Report is a selective collection of scholarly sites. Every site is annotated. You can perform keyword searching for over 5000 sites or use the subject directory which has so far cataloged about one-half of the reports.

INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections - The Library at the University of California at Irvine has brought together nearly 10,000 scholarly internet sites which are arranged in a subject directory but also allows for keyword searching.

Librarians' Index to the Internet - This index to the internet is arranged by subject and the sites are selected and annotated by librarians. Besides the subject directory you can browse a list of subjects used, or use the search engine to perform a full database search. Every site has an annotation written by a librarian.

Citing Sources

 

 


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This page was created:  September 8, 2000.  This page was last updated: June 09, 2009
For questions and comments, please mail to: kathiel@cos.edu