ES 242:
War and Environment
Spring 2008 · Glenn Adelson

Contents:

• Find background information
• Find books
• Find scholarly journal articles
• Useful subject guides
• Key scholarly websites
• Evaluating what you find

• $300 award for a paper or project of any length from a 100 or 200 level Wellesley College course (2 awards)
• $750 award for a paper or project of any length from a 300 level Wellesley College course, excluding 360s, and 370s (1 award)
• Deadline: April 1, 2008

• Encyclopedia of Earth
• Encyclopedia of Environment & Society
• Encyclopedia of Public Health - Science Reference q RA423 .E53 2002
• Encyclopedia of War and American Society
• Encyclopedias on various wars - from the Wellesley College catalog

• Oxford Companion to American Military History
• Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World
• Oxford Companion to Military History
• Oxford Companion to World War II
• CIAO - Columbia International Affairs Online - look at Focus briefing papers

• Glossary - Homeland Security
• Poisoning, Toxicology, Environmental Health - MedlinePlus intros to biological and/or chemical agents, radiation, etc.
• PDR Guide to Biological and Chemical Warfare Response. Science Reference RA648 .P374 2002

• American Memory - Library of Congress
• Conflict Map - 20th century - Nobel Foundation - caution: may require patience to load
• World Maps - small physical & political maps - Oxford Reference Online
• Topographic and Political Maps of each Continent - Sage e-Reference
• Perry Castañeda Library map collection - University of Texas

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles)

a few tips:

• look for the subject phrase criticism and interpretation – very helpful
• use synonyms to find all the ways your topic is expressed  (war OR battle OR conflict)
• use truncation to save time (environment* for environment, environmental, environmentalist, etc.)
• use Advanced Search and combine multiple concepts using AND for best results

for the sample topic:  "destruction of agricultural lands during the American Civil War"

you could search:  (civil war or war between the states)    [using synonyms]
                           AND (agric* or crops or farm*)                [using * for variations of the words]

• or use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  - find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
  - click on each subject term to find "more like this"
  - for example: search keyword "nerve gas" > subject terms Chemical weapons -- United States and Biological weapons -- United States
  

Some useful subject headings for this course:

• War -- Environmental aspects
• [name of specific war] -- Environmental aspects
  e.g., Yugoslav War, 1991-1995 - Environmental aspacts - Croatia
          Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Environmental aspects
• Violence -- Environmental aspects
• Biological warfare
• Herbicides - War use
• Chemical warfare -- Environmental aspects -- History

• if our copy is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• If NExpress doesn't have it, click on in our catalog (2-4 days)
  
  
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
  
  
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card from the Clapp or Science Reference Desks and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

most useful databases

• Web of Science - interdisciplinary database - keyword/title and citation searching
  • Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), 1956-present
  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded), 1900-present
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index, 1975-present
    
    
• America: History & Life -- index to articles on all aspects of American & Canadian history (can be cross-searched with Historical Abstracts)
  
  
• Historical Abstracts -- index to articles on history from all eras and regions of the world except the US & Canada (can be cross-searched with America: History & Life)

• Biological Sciences Databases - multiple biological databases that span 1970 (or later) onward - Search Tips, Tools, & Results

• PubMed - 1950's onward - index to articles on all aspects of biomedicine, including military medicine - PubMed Basics - PubMed Help
  

databases with some useful content

• LexisNexis Academic News - U.S. and global news sources, English and other languages, foreign news transcripts - dates of coverage vary

• JSTOR - full text of scholarly articles in all fields, up to 3 to 5 years ago (not recent articles!) - JSTOR Search Tips
  
  
• Project Muse - academic journals in the humanities & social sciences, from the past five years - Searching in Project Muse - see JSTOR for prior years
  
  
• Academic Search Premier and Expanded Academic ASAP - great starting point for scholarly & popular articles in every discipline; mostly full text from about 1980 to present - tips: limit to scholarly or peer-reviewed articles - Advanced Search-Guided Help
  
  
• Periodicals Index Online - Index to articles published in over 4500 journals in the humanities & social sciences in 40 languages, 1665 to 1995 - contents & demo

• Homeland Security Digital Library - important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies - WC campus only
  

• Environmental Studies
• Art
• Cognitive & Linguistic Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Political Science
• Primary Sources - Humanities
• Statistics

• American Memory - Collections - US Library of Congress
• Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics, 1494-1948 - Harvard
• Correlates of War - see Vasquez
• Enviro-Health Links - biological and chemical warfare - National Library of Medicine
• Environmental Health Information for Veterans - NY State
• Full Links for Military History - 20th Century - Oxford Reference Online
• United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) - Post-conflict and Disaster
• United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) - Working for People and the Environment
  

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified: February 24, 2008