SCPP3335: Environmental Literature, Ethics, and Action
 Library Research Guide
Librarian: Lois Coleman

For help with your research, visit the reference desk (hours) on the second floor of Barnard Library, or contact a Barnard reference librarian:
       Phone: 212-854-3953
       Chat: IM BarnardReference
       E-mail: refdesk@barnard.edu
Request a one-on-one consultation with a Barnard librarian if you have an in-depth research need.

This guide is intended as a starting point in your research; the databases and reference tools listed here are just a selective list.
 

Finding Books and Journals
  • Use CLIO to find books, journals (but not articles in journals), links to online journals, and other materials in the Barnard and Columbia libraries, including the Health Sciences Library.
  • For a Keyword search, use quotes for a phrase, and ? for truncation (to find variant endings of a word).
  • For a complex search, use Boolean Keyword searching: AND finds records which have all the search terms you entered; OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.  Use parentheses to group terms. Help page on Boolean searching
  • For a known item, search by Title, Author, standardized Library of Congress Subject, ISBN, etc.
Library Locations
Other Libraries:
      Borrowing privileges with Columbia ID:
  • Teachers College Library: EDUCAT 
  • Columbia Law Library: Pegasus
    •
      Access with Columbia ID (but no borrowing privileges):
  • Jewish Theological Seminary: Catalog
  • New York University: BobCat 
    •
Reference Works
  • Encyclopedia of Biodiversity: Barnard Reference QH541.5.B56 E6 2001
  • Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management (online)
  • Encyclopedia of Environmental Studies: Barnard Reference  TD9 .A84 2001
  • Encyclopedia of Evolution: Barnard Reference QH360.2 .E54 2002 (and online)
  • Encyclopedia of Global Change (online)
  • Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change (online)
  • Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (online)
  • Environmental Encyclopedia:  Barnard Reference GE10 .E58 2003
  • International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics (online)
  • McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Bioscience: Barnard Reference QH302.5 .M382 2003
Requesting Books and Articles
  • Use BorrowDirect to request a book from one of our partner libraries if it is not available at Columbia or is checked out (takes a few days).
  • Use Interlibrary Loan to request books and articles from libraries all over the world (can take a few weeks)
  • Science Fast Track delivery service: request articles from journals that Columbia does not own in the areas of science, technology, engineering and medicine
Finding Articles

Finding articles using an index or database is a two-step process:
1.  Find citations to relevant articles;
2.  Find the articles themselves.  Click on elinkto go to the online version if it exists; or search CLIO using the journal title to find out which library has a print copy.

Selected Databases in Environmental Sciences, Biology, and Science
 These are all on the Databases list on the Barnard Library homepage or the Columbia Libraries page. For further help, ask at the Reference Desk on the second floor of the library.
 

  • Agricola: citations and abstracts for articles in animal science, chemistry, energy, entomology, food science, forestry, life sciences, natural resources, and plant diseases, published from 1970 to the present
  • Biological Abstracts: citations and abstracts for articles in biology, plant and animal science, ecology, paleontology, pharmacology, biochemistry, biophysics and bioengineering, published from 1969 to the present
  • Biological and Agricultural Index: index for articles from periodicals in the life sciences and agriculture, including topics such as animal husbandry, botany, cytology, ecology, entomology, environmental science, fishery sciences, food science, forestry, genetics, horticulture, microbiology, plant pathology, soil science, veterinary medicine, and zoology.
  • BioMed Central: an open access publisher providing free access to biomedical research publications including biology and medicine journal articles, current reports, meeting abstracts, and current controlled trials
  • GreenFILE: focuses on the relationship between human beings and the environment
  • Medline: citations and abstracts for articles in biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, published from 1966 to the present
  • PubMed: database from the National Library of Medicine database containing citations to articles in Medline, additional life science journals, and the integrated molecular biology databases included in the National Center for Biotechnology Information retrieval system - use Advanced Search, or the Entrez Pubmed search engine
  • Science Citation Index: Web of Science database of articles in all the sciences, useful for determining if any articles have cited a specific article or book, or to examine the references of an article
  • Scopus: citations and abstracts from journals in biology, physics, chemistry, geosciences, agriculture, medicine, business, social work, and the social sciences
  • SpringerLink: full-text access to journals and books published by Springer - subjects include life sciences, chemical sciences, environmental sciences, geosciences, computer science, mathematics, medicine, physics and astronomy, engineering and economics
  • Zoological Record: index to articles in international journals, review annuals, monographs, meeting proceedings, books and reports, representing research in all major areas of zoology, including: behavior, ecology, evolution, genetics, habitat, nutrition, parasitology, reproduction, taxonomy and zoogeography
 
Other Databases that might be useful:

Find Articles

Search the following databases simultaneously:

  • Biological Abstracts
  • Medline
  • ProQuest
  • Web of Science
 
Researching Congress and Legislation
Selected Web Resources

 
More Research Tools
 
Subject Guides
 
Barnard Library Subject Guides

Columbia Subject Guides

Bibliographic Software: RefWorks and EndNote

Online Style Guide
LibX
  • Download LibX on the Columbia Libraries web site, and read more about how to use this Firefox toolbar.
  • LibX is a plugin for the Firefox browser, customized by Columbia University Libraries to work with CLIO and Columbia e-Link, that makes it very quick to find an article or a book that you come across on the web.  LibX places a toolbar at the top of the Firefox browser.
  • Drag-and-drop titles from a webpage or a PDF to “Scholar” at the top right of the toolbar; LibX will open Google Scholar, and also automatically search e-Link for you, to find links to articles.
  • Drag text to the search box in the middle of the toolbar, and then you can perform various types of search.
  • Select text on a webpage, right click, and a menu provides various options.
  • LibX places a crown icon in web pages containing citations to books. Click on the icon to search the title in CLIO using the book's ISBN number. The icons display in Google, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Yahoo, the New York Times Book Review, and other pages.

Last Modified 10/14/09
Lois Coleman
Reference Librarian

 
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