Eye on the Environment

Whether you have been committed to saving the environment since the first Earth Day in 1970, or you've just picked up Al Gore's disturbing wake-up call on DVD, there are a host of e-resources suited to your interest level and academic background. Here are our favorites.

EBSCO

Content EBSCO offers numerous options for support of environmental research, including adding the freely available GreenFILE database either as a separate resource or integrating it within the EBSCOhost profile. Having gone through several title changes (Environmental Issues & Policy Index, Environmental Policy Index, and Environmental Knowledgebase OnLine, as well as a few print incarnations), the database presently known as Environment Index (EI) provides indexing to a wide range of topic areas, such as ecosystem ecology, renewable energy sources, marine and freshwater science, pollution and waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, urban planning, and more. With citations from 1600-plus national and international titles dating back to the 1940s (including 1100-plus active core titles) as well as more than 100 monographs, this resource also features an in-depth thesaurus; author profiles will soon be provided for 5000 authors in the discipline. Incorporating this index with Academic Premier and/or Business Premier enables institutions to offer a first-rate package for environmental studies programs.

EBSCO's best overall product for full-text coverage in this subject area is Environment Complete (EC), which contains all of the above as well as 680-plus full-text journals, including many of the most established titles in the discipline, for example, Conservation Biology, Environment (back to 1975), Ecologist, Evolution, and Population Studies (back to 1947). The added value of EC is that more than 400 of these full-text titles are not available in either Academic Premier or Business Premier.

And how can you go wrong with free? That's what people are saying about GreenFILE, which features a collection of scholarly and general interest titles, in combination with local and national government documents, covering a variety of topics (e.g., alternative fuel sources, global climate change, green building, and sustainable agriculture). The initial release includes indexing and abstracts for 600-plus titles (nearly 300,000 records), including Bioscience (from 1964), Compost Science (from 1975), Conservation Biology (from 1989), Journal of Ecology (from 1913), and Journal of Environmental Planning & Management (back to 1948), as well as open access full text for 4700-plus records.

Searchability Although a great deal is soon to change by publication date with the unveiling of EBSCOhost 2.0 in July, searchers familiar with EBSCOhost products will know what to expect in terms of features and capabilities. Since we did get a sneak preview of 2.0, we can offer some observations.

The basic search option is a simple find box in the middle of the screen (very clean), and searchers can also display additional search options/limiters, which open below the box. The Result List page is also quite different and is probably where users will find the most enhancements. All the standard options that searchers are familiar with are still available, typically via a “More Options” link.

Related information is offered below limiting, including thumbnail images (related Images from EBSCO's Image Collection appear as part of the appropriate result sets) and newspaper cites via NewsBank (if a library subscribes). On the left panel users can narrow their results by Source Type, Subject, and more.

Of the 680 full-text titles available in EC, 533 have the IQV (Image Quick View), with 85 percent in native PDF format (scanned PDFs don't include IQV). All EBSCOhost journals with native PDFs will have IQV on an ongoing basis by 2009.

There's much more worth mentioning, including SmartText Searching where any text from any article or document can be searched, two different Visual Search options, Advanced Search with subject mapping, and icons for export options. Persistent links are now bookmarkable to del.icio.us and other bookmarking tools, and article searches and publications are now also bookmarkable.

All in all, quite an improvement with its user-friendly focus, and one that will get others eager to explore when EBSCO turns the switch this summer.

Price It's based on 2400 FTE, with additional local consortia consideration; EI goes for $3,293, while EC goes for $5,078. As already mentioned, GreenFILE is free. A 30-day trial is available for both EI and EC.

Who Needs It? With its clear message of “focusing on the relationship between human beings and the environment,” GreenFILE will be popular among the general public as well as secondary and academic institutions. Either add a link or ask EBSCO to include the product in your institutional profile for cross-searching with other subscription databases. EI and EC will truly add to the needs of environmental studies programs, with their wide-ranging coverage of energy, waste management and recycling, renewable energy systems, water resources, environmental geotechniques, environmentally friendly buildings, and hydrology.

Ovid

Content Although our primary focus here is the Environmental Science (ES) database, we thought it pertinent to add content information for two other relevant resources, GEOBASE and GeoRef, both available from Ovid (where we previewed them) but also through several other vendors, including OCLC, EBSCO, Engineering Village, and ProQuest.

ES is compiled by subject specialists at CABI Publishing, a not-for-profit international scientific organization that produces CAB Abstracts and CAB Reviews and Forest Science Database, along with a number of other databases, journal/abstracts, print materials, and ebooks. With more than 600,000 abstracts and citations and 40,000-plus records added annually, ES is extremely valuable for academics and research specialists interested in the environmental aspects of agriculture, forestry, food, and rural development, providing coverage on topics such as soil erosion, the impact of tourism on the environment, deforestation and forest decline, and biological treatment of wastes. Nearly all the records have 300- to 400-word English abstracts prepared by a team of scientists and linguists; a specialized thesaurus of index terms has been developed to provide easy access to all records in the database. Updated quarterly, coverage extends back to 1973. ES is currently accessed through the WebSPIRS (our preview method) or OvidSP platform and is also available on CD-ROM (updated quarterly).

GeoRef, established by the American Geological Institute (AGI) in 1966, provides access to the geoscience literature of the world and is generally considered the most comprehensive database in the geosciences. It contains over 2.9 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports, and theses, with 90,000 references added annually. AGI also provides free access to recent geoscience publications with GeoRef Preview Database.

GEOBASE (Elsevier) contains information from seven abstracts journals: Geological Abstracts, Geomechanics Abstracts, Geographical Abstracts: Human Geography, Geographical Abstracts: Physical Geography, Ecological Abstracts, International Development Abstracts, and Oceanographic Literature Reviews. Multidisciplinary in nature, this resource provides bibliographic information and abstracts for development studies, earth sciences, ecology, geomechanics, human geography, and oceanography. It provides current coverage of 1800-plus journals, with archive coverage of several thousand additional titles. Ovid now offers enhanced value to the database through the GEOBASE Links Package, providing links to free Open Access full-text titles and useful links to relevant Internet Resources on the web.

Searchability It's worth mentioning that although OvidSP will be the gateway for all Ovid products in 2009, GEOBASE is currently offered only via WebSPIRS. In addition to the Basic and Advanced search modes, OvidSP provides a set of helpful “Search Tools,” including Map Term, Thesaurus, Permuted Index, Scope Note, Explode, and Classification Code.

Although many users erroneously (in our opinion) view WebSPIRS as clunky, it is a fairly intuitive and powerful interface, effortlessly satisfying both the “get it quick” and complex queries. The basic search box (Search) allows users to enter keyword/phrases and limit to Anywhere, Subject, Title, or Author using a pull-down menu. The system also permits limiting by specifying a term or phrase found in one of 30 database fields, such as recycling systems to find a specific phrase in the abstract, or Tegucigalpa Honduras to narrow results to a particular author address.

Another useful feature for basic search refinement, especially supportive for the nonsavvy searcher and those unfamiliar with the subject content, is the Suggest tab, which displays alternatives related to the user's search term, taken directly from the database descriptor terms. This in theory will retrieve more-precise search results, which we can attest to with this example: entering the phrase climatic change, the suggested terms included climatic-change, environmental-impact, and global-warming as hyperlinks that can either be added to an existing search or selected to browse all records with the specific descriptor or identifier.

Users can select multiple databases to search if subscribed, and often the individual resource is segmented by date and displayed as individual databases to be selected: ES 2007-2008/0, ES 2005-2006, etc. Navigation is clear throughout the session, and the brief and full record provide links to full text if subscribed, as well as to links to the institution's OPAC for holdings/text access.

In addition to CABI indexing, which includes five different fields, the databases use CABI Codes, which are subject classification codes that indicate the main subject areas covered by the record in CABI indexing or Descriptors fields. Each record is indexed with terms that describe all the important concepts within the article, and searchers can use the CABI Codes just like any other keyword (and/or combined with additional terms) for honing in on precise results.

As detailed, Search affords both a quick or quite sophisticated method for entering queries. Additional search modes organized by tabs at the top navigation panel include Advanced, to combine search terms and specific index fields with pull-down options; Index, to browse specific terms within the selected databases; and Thesaurus, to search using the databases' controlled vocabulary. Other tabs are Find Citations and Search History.

Price ES: one user, $5730 to five users, $6,425; GeoRef (OvidSP): based on 2400 FTE, $2,114; GEOBASE: one user, $10,316, to five to eight users, $16,506. Site license available upon request. Thirty-day trials are available.

Who Needs It? All three resources have value for supporting environmental research, depending on the particular curriculum needs and specialty focus, although ES will be appreciated at larger research institutions and by those with a more specialized science-based view of the discipline. As mentioned, all products will eventually be available on the OvidSP service, so don't let the “clunkiness” of WebSPIRS be a deterrent. Ovid let's you take a free “test drive” with its Resource of the Month program, allowing users to sample content, tools, and services.

Gale Cengage

Content Gale's Environmental Studies and Policy Collection (ESPC) is just one of 22 subject-related resource products identified as “PowerPack Collections,” principally designed to address a subscribing institution's specific curricular and/or programming needs. Advertised as a series of subsets of Academic OneFile or InfoTrac OneFile, either affords subscription access to any or all of the collections at no additional charge. Institutions may also elect to subscribe to the individual collections as well, if a library doesn't have either OneFile product.

Other collections include Criminal Justice, Diversity Studies, GLBT Life and Issues, Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy, and War & Terrorism. As with other Gale databases, PowerPack Collections are cross-searchable using the Gale PowerSearch platform and appear as individual products on an institution's common menu display.

Currently with more than three million articles from 760-plus titles, ESPC contains nearly 200 full-text scholarly and popular publications. In addition to journals and magazines, it also includes unique reference-type content published by Gale and other reference publishers not found in Academic OneFile. Although some content extends back through the 1960s, the majority of indexing begins in the 1990s.

ESPC provides access to the multiple viewpoints of this broad field of study and perspectives from the scientific community, governmental policymakers, as well as corporate America. Big and small names alike are represented, including the American Meteorological Society, Cornell University, Earthwatch Expeditions, Elsevier, Greenpeace, National Public Radio, Rodale, SAGE Publications, Sierra Magazine, Springer, University of Chicago Press, NRC Research Press, and Wildlife Society. Popular journals include American Scientist, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Journal of Applied Microbiology, Marine Mammal Science, Reviews in Environmental Science and Biotechnology, and more.

Academic OneFile, a large aggregated database, contains 12,500-plus academic journals, the majority of which are peer reviewed and contain 5000-plus full-text articles, available in both HTML and PDF formats. Journal content is supplemented by monographs and major newspapers, including the New York Times from 1985, the London Times from 1985, and the full audio collection of NPR programs from 1990 to the present, with searchable transcripts.

Searchability ESPC can be searched independently or with other Gale databases using the PowerSearch platform. A simple “Find” box at the top of the common database menu screen allows for quick entry, and users can easily add any of the relevant subscribed resources available for cross-searching. Going directly to the individual collection, four options are presented—Basic, Subject Guide, Publication, and Advanced. Results are organized within tabs for Magazines, Academic Journals, Books, News, and Multimedia. Our basic keyword search for china and hydropower yielded articles from four magazines, 27 journals, and ten news sources.

Everything can be marked for later export/save/download or handily bookmarked (individual queries, search results, articles) either with a durable URL or tagged to your favorite bookmarking tool such as del.icio.us. Once a document is selected, users have additional options to view in HTML or native PDF format, search related subjects, search within the particular issue or publication, refine the search, and use a variety of tools to download/email/print/save/export/generate a citation, or translate the document into eight languages. A Basic Search can be limited to peer review, full text, images in documents, and by date range, publication title, and subject.

We decided to expand our search with the related subject link to hydroelectric power plants and added the keyword term controversy to search within the 387 results (SU [“hydroelectric power plants”]) And (TX [controversy]). Our new results set included four magazine and nine scholarly articles, 110 new sources, and three book entries.

Additionally, advanced options allow users to use Boolean searching for 22 indexes from a drop-down menu, including Entire Document, Named Work, Previous Searches, and Word Count. Experienced researchers can also take advantage of the CCL (command control language) Advanced Search mode for those who want a tad more control with their search syntax.

PowerSearch provides a variety of features and functionality including a “Breadcrumb Trail” linking system to display the sequence of pages navigated, search alerts, with RSS export capability, and “Did you Mean?” for those of us who need a bit of help with spelling.

Price Any of the PowerPack Collections can be freely added to the institution's profile if subscribing to a OneFile product. If not a subscriber, pricing for ESPC is based on FTE and ranges from $1500 to $2000. Thirty-day trials are available.

Who Needs It? Gale's primary purpose in marketing the PowerPack Collections is to make it easier for a researcher to get right to the relevant content. While a federated search product can also be set up to create subject clustering, if an institution already subscribes to Academic or InfoTrac OneFile there is no financial burden in adding any of the collections. But if an institution doesn't have access to either OneFile database and has other Gale subscription products that can be cross-searched (especially for those of us with state consortia contracts), it is a relatively inexpensive way to provide access to a wide range of valuable content in support of this increasingly important area of study.

ProQuest

Content From the end user perspective, one of the blessings of the ProQuest Information and Learning/Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) union was that it left each company's distinctive product line intact. For the environmental researcher, this is particularly fortuitous given that the CSA portion of the web site lists a dozen different electronic resources under the “Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management” umbrella. The focus here is on Pollution Abstracts (PA); others include ASFA 3: Aquatic Pollution and Environmental Quality Abstracts, Risk Abstracts, Sustainability Science Abstracts, Toxicology Abstracts, and Water Resources Abstracts, to name a few.

Comprised of over 300,000 records, with coverage from 1100 journals that goes as far back as 1981, PA aims to make available the environmental information needed to contend with all aspects of pollution, from compliance with government regulations to resolving day-to-day problems to responding to emergencies. With such an encompassing mandate, PA incorporates both scientific research and government policies and such topics as the atmosphere, emissions, mathematical simulations, the effect of pollution on people and animals, and the response to global pollution issues. All aspects of pollution are addressed, including air, marine, freshwater, noise, land, and radiation pollution.

PA also features primary source journal research, conference proceedings, and other types of materials on sewage and wastewater treatment, waste management, and toxicology and health.

Searchability Connecting to PA brings up the CSA Illumina interface with the simple Quick Search box in the foreground and tabs for Advanced Search and Search Tools readily accessible. Just below the Search box there's a note on the usage of a Boolean AND, truncation, and quotation marks around an exact phrase for improved search results.

We started with a keyword search on farm-raised salmon, and after examining one of the resulting records and clicking on the More link in the Descriptors area of the display, we selected that term along with Salmon aquaculture from the Object Descriptors field. Immediately below the descriptors there appeared the option of conducting a New Search Using Marked Terms, and here we clicked the radio button reading “Use OR to broaden” the search. Results increased from two hits to five, so although this was not a particularly dramatic search in terms of recall, it did demonstrate how simple CSA makes it to revise and reexecute a search strategy.

The results list allows the searcher to view a full record, link to library holdings, or find full text if available. It also displays any Objects associated with the record. For the records we examined, the Objects turned out to be figures from the text of the article. However, PA would only allow us to look at thumbnails of these figures, so, from our perspective, this feature was more frustrating than beneficial.

Date range can be set using a pair of pull-down menus, and searchers may easily limit results to the Latest Update, Journal Articles Only, and/or English Only by clicking the appropriate boxes.

The Search Tools tab gives the user access to his or her search history, the PA thesauri (in English, Spanish, and French), and various indexes. The CSA Illumina interface supports a comprehensive array of search capabilities, including the use of Boolean operators, several types of proximity searching, and various options for using truncation and wildcards.

CSA also provides a really nice suite of tools for working with the results once a search is done. Users may save, print, or email all the references in the results list or mark specific citations for closer consideration. Libraries with RefWorks subscriptions will have that link displayed on screen, enabling their users to export the results into new or existing bibliographic files.

We marked several citations from our results list and clicked on the Save, Print, Email link, which took us to a page that laid out the various options for each function. Output format, selected via a pull-down menu, includes Short, Full (with or without references), and Custom (in which the user may choose any of the available fields for inclusion).

Price PA lists for $3,575 for institutions with fewer than 3500 FTE. Consortial pricing may also be available.

Who Needs It? An essential tool for anyone—from the undergraduate level on up—researching, regulating, or developing policy on any aspect of environmental pollution.