MES Thesis Project Research Page

Winter 2001
Librarian: Sarah Pedersen
x6647   pedersen@evergreen.edu

The Evergreen Library Home Page: www.evergreen.edu/library

Finding the existing research/understanding the structure of information

I. Published monographs (books & government documents) & unpublished monographs (theses)
*TESC's collection: The Library Catalog
        To find a list of MES theses: do an author search--Evergreen State College.
        Graduate Program in Environmental Studies
*The State Library
*CASCADE (direct borrowing from all the Washington State universities)
*World Cat
*Dissertation Abstracts
*Government Documents Page
    Federal Documents
*Environmental Impact Statements: search specific locations and projects in the Evergreen and Washington State Library catalogs

II. Gray literature (unpublished government reports, technical reports)
    Access Washington (Research reports by agencies such as DNR are now put on-line)
    Municipal Research & Services Center

III. Scholary and other periodical literature (journals, magazines, newspapers)
*Interdisciplinary Journal Databases
    Proquest, Ebscohost, JSTOR--the broadcast approach
*Environmental Abstracts (THE index to environmental publications. NOT on the Web!  ONLY at the computers located behind the reference desk)
*Scientific Indexes and Abstracts
*Social Science Indexes and Abstracts
*Librarian-mediated searches of BIOSIS and other Dialog databases--when you need to dig deeper

IV. Web Guides
*Evergreen Web Guides
    General Science Web Pages: Envirolink, etc.
     TESC Program Web Pages:
        Earth Science Web Pages: Scorecard, etc.
        EIS: Land
        Olympic Peninsula
        Community Food Security
        Reinhabitation
        Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute

*Other Web Guides
     Envirolink
    Infomine

V. General Searching in the Web
  *TESC Search Engine Page
    Search Tips
    Searches, metasearches and webcrawlers--some definitions
    Reviews

VI. Evaluating Information and Publications
   *Identify the author or parent organization
        --use of suffixes in the web
        --publishers
   *Look for citations and references identifying sources
   *Seek alternative sources with varying perspectives
        Genderwatch
        EthnicNewswatch

VII. Organizing your research process
     Refer to the Reference Resources page for style manuals and footnote formats
     Print all potentially relevant citations
    E-mail or download (digitize) all citations for future use in your bibliography
    Record the source of your citations (which database they came from)

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