GOING GREEN ONLINE

Research in environmental studies has at least two related political aspects: awareness of environmental problems and potential solutions can stimulate activism, and greater knowledge can make one a more effective activist.

Meriam Library subscribes to a variety of databases which include environmental information, particularly Academic Search, GEOBASE, GeoRef, ScienceDirect, and Wiley Interscience. As part of our subscription to the very popular Ebsco databases such as Academic Search, ERIC, and PsychInfo, we now have access to GreenFILE. Here’s the company’s description of it:

“GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government, and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.”

In other words, it is a large database consisting exclusively of environmentally related content. My search of “sustainability” retrieved nearly 7,000 records. When I limited that search with the term “college,” it still retrieved 400. Most of the full text is current, while the indexing and abstracts go back to at least 1970. Most include “Find it” links to full text or our catalog. It uses precisely the same search platform as the other Ebsco resources, but includes its own thesaurus under the “Subject Terms” tab. With a large, specialized database such as GreenFILE, a thesaurus is very useful to steer your search toward the most relevant results.

GreenFILE can be found on the Articles and Databases page at http://www.csuchico.edu/lref/guides/rbn/index.htm, can be accessed directly at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=8gh, and will be added to appropriate subject resource pages. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

—Jim Dwyer, Meriam Library, Bibliographic Services