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 # 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

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")

                  

Periodicals - Online Resources

Through the Library’s Web Site you can locate full-text periodical articles and indexing to periodicals the library subscribes to in paper format.  The library’s web address is: http://www.cos.edu/library


In the blue menu on the far left hand side of the screen is an option that says Academic Journal, Newspapers, Magazines. Click on this option.  The library subscribes to five full-text magazine/newspaper databases over the Internet that may be useful.  They are Lexis/Nexis (full-text articles from many International and National Newspapers including the New York Times), LA Times (full-text articles from 1985 to the present), Academic Abstracts (full-text articles  to approximately 150 magazines and indexing to 850),  Infotrac (full-text articles from hundreds of scholarly journals), and SIRS (full-text articles from a variety of newspapers, magazines, and government reports on controversial topics).
        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.

General Science Index – This is located in the Periodicals Room and indexes approximately 150 scientific periodicals.  For serious sciences research this index will many more citations to magazine articles than any of the COS Online Periodical Databases such as Academic Abstracts or SIRS.

Pamphlet File – Contains newspaper clippings and pamphlets (mainly from the State of California, Federal Government and Non-profit Organizations) that may be checked out.  Environmental topics may include:  acid rain, air pollution, automobile – law, regulations & safety, chemicals, environmental quality, fuel -synthetic,  greenhouse effects, rain forest, San Joaquin River, San Joaquin Valley-California, Tulare County - Water  

News in Science:

Gateways

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.

Electronic Citing


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This page was created:  September 8, 2000.  This page was last updated: March 28, 2007
For questions and comments, please mail to: kathiel@cos.edu

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