812 Walsh #3 812 Final

Walsh Assignment #31 Maura Walsh LI812XO Assignment #3 1. Include Assignment #2. Attached separately 2. Select another database to use in your search. This database MUST be from another Vendor unless you receive prior approval from the Professor. Search this database for your topic. Provide the following information about that database: WilsonWeb: General Science Full Text and Omnifile Full Text a. Subjects covered by the database The Omnifile database covers six of Wilson’s full text databases including the General Science Full Text; these are the most pertinent subjects from all of them for this search; listing all the subjects in the database would require too much space. Atmospheric Science Biology Biotechnology Botany, Chemistry, Conservation Earth Science

Ecology Environment Environmental Science Government Regulations Health, Mathematics Medicine Microbiology

Oceanography Physics Physiology Policy Sciences Political Science, Soil Science Zoology

b. Types of sources indexed Full text of articles from over 1,750 publications and article abstracts and indexing from over 3,500 publications. c. Time period covered by Database and how often it is updated Indexing (1982- ), Abstracting (1984- ), and select Full Text (1994- ); updated daily d. Vendor of database H.W. Wilson Company e. Is there an electronic version of a thesaurus available? Yes f. Does the database contain abstracts? Full-text? Indexing, abstracts and full text g. What choices do you have for capturing data (print, email, download, etc) Data can be marked and then either saved, emailed, downloaded in PDF or normal text

formats,

Walsh Assignment #32 exported as citation only to other software programs or printed.

h. Search statements that you use for searching the database See Appendix A: Database WislonWeb 3. Select several of the Internet search tools discussed in class and use them to search the Internet for your topic. Provide the following information: See Appendix B: Internet Results 4. Write a 5-page essay Attached below 5. Include a bibliography listing 5 items that you found through your searching. Some should be from the Library Database and some from the Internet. Indicate which source. WilsonWeb Database: Lawrence et al. , (2006).Most of Arctic's near-surface permafrost may thaw by 2100. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. v. 87 no. 3 , 279-80. Internet: Google (direct search after Nobel prize announcement): WMO and UNEP, (2007). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . Retrieved October 14, 2007, from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Web site: http://www.ipcc.ch/ Wisenut.com: Schneider, Stephen (2007). What is the probability of “dangerous” climate change?. Retrieved October 14, 2007, from Climate change Web site: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Impacts/CliImpFrameset.html?http ://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Impacts/WhatIsTheProbability.html Alexa.com: International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), (2007). IPY. Retrieved October 14, 2007, from International polar year Web site: http://www.ipy.org/ OAIster.com: Department of Energy, (2007). Final report: An automated system for measuring microphysical and radiative cloud characteristics from a tethered balloon. Retrieved October 14, 2007, from Information bridge Web site: http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/822044bd25Zg/native/822044.PDF Essay

Walsh Assignment #33 Researching in the digital age is a relatively new skill and one that seems to evolve continually. The question ‘What do studies of the Polar Regions tell us about global warming?’ is probably an especially interesting example of what such a search can entail. It became much more absorbing than was expected and, in trying to progress from the full spectrum of what is available to the specific documents that would be most valuable; a few unexpected results were revealed. The approach deemed most useful was a journey of discovery that would clarify and contextualize the subject for anyone who was trying to distinguish between the glut of oftentimes competing and conflicting data available. Neutrality was the desired point of embarkation, but is it ever possible to start a project free of preconceptions or to recognize them and yet avoid being negatively influenced by them? The impact of global warming on our world today is such a hot topic that this project involved an overload of information in two already very crowded mediums: databases and the internet. At times this excess seemed almost a larger challenge than actually finding information. There has been a lot of politicalization of the topic in our own society and around the world and this is clearly reflected in the sheer volume of results available in both mediums. The database in assignment two, Geobase, was picked initially because it seemed the best for the topic. This time WilsonWeb was selected because it appeared to be one of the largest and the challenges of finding data in this more extensive context added interest to the project. Nevertheless, WilsonWeb proved to be perhaps too all-inclusive and cumbersome to explore satisfactorily. Whereas WilsonWeb ostensibly had more to offer, the General Science Full Text part of WilsonWeb contains only 360 titles (including The New York Times Science section as well as many non-scholarly works) and includes full text for only about 60 titles. Geobase has 2,000 international journals. Although there were more journals, the advanced search in Geobase

Walsh Assignment #34 seemed to have provided options that were more useful in paring the results little by little. In WilsonWeb it was more a case of feast or famine. Of course non-scholarly articles can be quite useful for this topic and the WilsonWeb Omnifile was utilized as well. There was a thesaurus, a tool not found in Geobase, but perhaps because of the nature of the topic or the structure of the thesaurus itself, it was not at all helpful. It was arranged in an outline style with a number of results given for each part. Clicking on one part only seemed to turn the results around and didn’t actually help define or focus the results in any meaningful way. There were also many more complex varieties of methods available for capturing the data once it was gleaned. The marked records could be exported in a variety of ways and to a variety of places. However, once again, these choices seemed unnecessary and unnecessarily convoluted. How much of this distaste came from being accustomed to and pleased by Geobase is difficult to determine. However, there is no doubt that familiarity with a database breeds a peculiar and unexpected type of loyalty. On the open seas of the internet search engines there were many visible ploys. Sometimes the results appear to have been hijacked by groups with an agenda that probably bears little resemblance to either the real science of the topic or technological savvy. The internet search was launched on Yahoo.com. Interestingly enough, Wikipedia seemed to come first here in the results no matter how the search terms were altered. Later detective work showed that Yahoo currently owns Wikipedia, which made the results seem much more logical. Ask.com gave similarly dismal results. There seemed to be many pages to be waded through before a practical result could be fished out and tagged for later examination. Some of the page titles seemed slanted in an absurdly obvious manner, for example ‘Did Jesus predict global warming?’ was in fact the title of a page at Unityinchrist.com. This was actually the third referenced site on the MSN results page. But others lurked behind more reputable sounding

Walsh Assignment #35 names like ‘The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM)’, ready to hijack the innocent. Obviously not all spiders are created equal. Alexa.com became an invaluable resource in helping deduce the puppet masters behind the webs. However sometimes the information at Alexa.com is quite technical and can be difficult to interpret. SourceWatch.org also provided some illumination, though they may have an ax to grind as well. It is difficult to be an innocent at sea. Wisenut.com was frustrating at first because the same search terms could not be employed. Nonetheless the results proved to be fairly useful because they were subdivided in very meaningful categories such as “Published in peer-reviewed”, “Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies”, “Global Warming Forecast”, and “Refute, Scientific”. However the advanced search option offered here did seem rather useless. A9.com and Kartoo.com were similarly disappointing with lots of really bad results like the ‘Heartland Institute’ and ‘Junk Science’. It was very difficult to be inspired to look further with such a mishmash of results and, in both cases, extremely displeasing aesthetics. In the first instance, A9.com gives the impression of being much more interested in selling books than helping find information. The results page is literally half advertisements. In the second case, the little genie in Kartoo.com is too cartoonish to believe that authentic scientific research is being conducted and the results just look like ugly blobs even after the color scheme is tweaked. Some results led to much better things. For example a page on wisenut.com led to another by Stephen Schneider. Googling this name led to a report about a conference held in Seattle last year where Schneider was cited as a world expert from Stanford University. Then an exploration of Stanford.edu led to Schneider’s homepage and a list of links and publications that were extremely valuable.

Walsh Assignment #36 Serendipitously, a check on one of his books led to the University of Washington book store webpage where there was a link for the UW ‘common book’, required reading for all incoming students. It was called Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert, published in 2007. This led to a check of the New York Times’ Books section where it was given high praise along with another book called The Weather Makers; How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery. Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, initially wrote a series of articles for that magazine that later grew into this book. In it she explains the science and the studies as well as examining what we can do. Flannery is an Australian scientist who unequivocally states that the arguments about global warming should be over and done with and we, as industrialized nations, need to take action immediately. Maps were another great resource for this search and good ones for the topic were found on Nws.noaa.gov as well as Earthtrends.wri.org. Both of these pages were found by following a RUSA link to the combined index (1999-2006) of the best free reference web sites. OAIster.com led to one of the best scientific, yet easily understood documents of the search, a final draft report that doesn’t seem to have been formally published, or at least not under the same name. It is called Final report: An automated system for measuring microphysical and radioactive cloud characteristics from a tethered balloon and it is the last citation given in the bibliography for this assignment. It was found on a page called InformationBridge.com. Here free public access is provided to full-text documents and bibliographic citations produced by the Department of Energy and maintained by The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). This page is searchable and provides access to documents that cover a wide range of subjects, many of which were extremely pertinent to the topic under investigation. The Digital Library Federation at http://www.diglib.org/ provides E seminars, class models, and

Walsh Assignment #37 sample syllabi Their searchable database gave four rather good results for global warming and Polar Regions. They have 62 data contributors and more than two and a half million records. Finally the research led to the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. This document seemed to be the culmination of what the search had intended: a document that appeared to be as apolitical as possible and explained in clear and concise terms what is actually happening in our world. The last curious twist of fate blew our quest into the harbor of good hope on Friday morning, October 12th, with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC. That seems a ringing endorsement and very good portent. If only it had been announced a few weeks earlier, the journey might have been swifter; but the edification would also have been more cursory.

Walsh Assignment #38

Appendix A: Database WilsonWeb Search term

Results Keyword (k)

Subject (s)

Title (t)

k+s

k/ft/pr

s/ft/pr

t/ft/pr

k+s/ft/pr

9774/3028/544

6009/1790/345

1504/384

109/33/10

0

8/3/3

Greenhouse effect

3219/516/126

2294/394/100

246/18/2

Polar regions

1545/251/157

228/33/18

74/8/7

pr = peer reviewed, ft = fulltext Global warming (GW) Arctic region

Pollution

k+t k+t/ft/pr

50197/12099/5258 33105/7788/4196 6225/1274/648

Pollution + Polar region

45/7/3

10/0/10

1/1/1

Arctic global warming

1/0/0

0

0

10504/1651/782

1368/222/65

2063/267/126

Global warming + Polar regions

34/10/1

19/4/0

0

21/4/0

1/0/1

Polar regions + Global warming

"

"

"

28/8/1

3/1/2002

4067/862/325

2988/514/211

1490/255/118

3042/539/217

1574/260/132

"

"

"

4496/816/311

4340/757/302

1002/331/39

0

50/11/8

10149/1587/760

1152/187/55

2041/265/126

1157/189/55

2044/266/126

Climatic changes

3789/961/420

3519/905/396

31/1/1

CC + Arctic/Antarctic

4533/814/326

3002/505/213

1485/224/118

3007/505/213

1576/224/128

120/25/10

85/19/6

0

Pollution + Polar or Arctic

Gw + Arctic/Antarctic Arctic and Global warming Carbon dioxide emissions (CDE) CDE + Arctic or Polar

CC + Antarctic

16/0/12

1390/232/68

32/6/3

4/1/2001

2220/287/135

91/19/6

Walsh Assignment #39

Appendix B: Internet Results What do studies of the Polar Regions tell us about global warming?

Search Terms 1

Search Engine Full Question Yahoo

2

FQ + Peer reviewed

3

Search Engine

FQ + PR + 2007

549,000

38,100

7,070

Ask

22,800

1,720

1,090

*Didn't accept

MSN

31,346

8,007

6,713

more than seven

A9

31,346

6,413

5,458

words; put in seven

Alexa

20,000

2,000

44

key words, then got

2,270

209

54

customized results

Clusty

113

113

113

Kartoo

455,000

43,700

1,600

10,800

2,130

1,480

290

32

12

14,592

10

925(?)

25

2

2

209

18

8

Google Scholar

Ujiko Exalead Ixquick Icerocket

nws.noaa.gov

Wisenut.com*

categories listed here

Global Warming

Climate Change 22

Full 16

590