• Reference Services
• November 2006
• Issue: 207

Resources for Studying Climate Change and the Environment

The state of the environment is, if you'll pardon the pun, a hot topic; the earth's ecosystem seems to be under attack on many fronts, and might just be fighting back, as evidenced by the 2005 hurricane season and shifts in global weather patterns.

The strong popular and critical response to Al Gore's recent documentary An Inconvenient Truth testifies to the hunger for comprehensive information about the environment here in the US. The United States is in a unique position; we're one of the world's top polluters, and we may just keep that spot, since our country has signed the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for global warming, but we have resisted ratification, which means that the agreement has no force. The US has also recently implemented a $2 million budget cut to the Environmental Protection Agency. In response, the EPA plans to close some of its regional library facilities, although it plans to try to deliver as many services as possible electronically.

The good news is that information about the environment and climate change is widely available. In addition to the free resources at web sites like the Pew Center for Climate Change http://www.pewclimate.org/ which "brings together business leaders, policy makers, scientists, and other experts" and the UK-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/ , a collaborative effort among six British universities, there are many electronic resources that facilitate research of climate change.

Nylink offers several different sources of environmental information; each has its own distinct character and advantages.

Columbia Earthscape offers an introduction to climate change and earth science issues. Earthscape presents its well edited content with an emphasis on application. One of the possible ways to delve into its diverse collection is by browsing its four quadrants: Teaching, Learning, Research and Policy. For example, in the teaching quadrant, there is a section on course content for 20+ earth science and climatology topics, an extensive list of resources on pedagogical issues and trends, and sample syllabi. Recent additions to Earthscape include the USGS Environmental Studies of theWorld Trade Center Area, New York City, After September 11, 2001, and several publications from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Among those publications is Does tomorrow ever come? Disaster narrative and public perceptions of climate change, which discusses the portrayal of climate change in popular culture. One of Earthscape's attractions is its low cost. Any of Nylink's members could purchase a subscription to Earthscape for less than a thousand dollars. Learn more about Earthscape, or sign up for a trial, at http://www.earthscape.org/ .

LexisNexis Environmental offers depth of content and great access to full text. Based on the Environment Abstracts CDROM, LN Environmental also incorporates news, journals and commentary from major daily newspapers and consumer magazines, more than 40 law reviews, codes and regulations from Federal and state authorities and agencies, case law from the EPA, OSHA and the Department of the Interior, and Federal and state waste data and hazardous materials information. There is some overlap with LexisNexis Academic content, but many of the sources in LN Environmental are unique to that resource. LN Environmental is available to academic and school libraries. See the Nylink Cooperative Services web site for pricing information: http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/1univ/envir/ , or get a list of sources, and information about setting up a 30-day trial, at the LexisNexis Environmental web site: http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/1univ/envir/ .

Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management (ESPM) may have the most intensive serials coverage of these four databases. ESPM is a substantial (almost 1.8 million records, with more added monthly) and well-indexed set of abstracts and citations from more than 6000 serials. Coverage is international, with articles translated into English from 52 different languages, and extends back to 1967 for some sources. Available by subscription on the CSA Illumina platform, or via OCLC FirstSearch. More detailed information about ESPM is available at the CSA web site, http://www.csa.com/factsheets/envclust-set-c.php .

GEOBASE: in addition to great content, GEOBASE has the advantage of flexible access, since it is available from Nylink on the OCLC FirstSearch platform by subscription or via the per search option. This database of worldwide literature on geography, geology, and ecology covers journals (peer-reviewed and trade), books, monographs, conference proceedings, and reports, from over 2000 sources. Coverage of some sources in GEOBASE dates back to 1980. More information about OCLC FirstSearch is available at the Nylink web site: http://nylink.org/RR/ref2.htm .

For libraries that use the full-text options provided by OCLC's Electronic Collections Online, the GEOBASE and GeoRefs indexes link to available full text in ECO. The index to ECO can be searched on a per-search basis, and full-text articles can be accessed from more than 3,000 journals for a per-article fee that varies by publisher, from $15 to $40. While a library does need to establish access to the index via purchase of a block of searches to get started with this option, there is a great deal of flexibility in managing ECO: administrators can select just certain journals to "turn on," set a monthly budget for perarticle use, choose journals based upon a price threshold, and/or password-protect access to the full-text. Subscriptions to ECO journals are also available. View a complete list of ECO journals at http://www.oclc.org/electroniccollections/journals/title/ .