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Walsh Assignment #3

Maura WalshLI812XO

Assignment #3

1. Include Assignment #2.

Attached separately

2. Select another database to use in your search. This database MUST be from another Vendorunless 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 Texta. Subjects covered by the database

The Omnifile database covers six of Wilsons 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

BiotechnologyBotany,

Chemistry,

ConservationEarth Science

Ecology

Environment

Environmental ScienceGovernment Regulations

Health, Mathematics

MedicineMicrobiology

Oceanography

Physics

PhysiologyPolicy Sciences

Political Science,

Soil ScienceZoology

b. Types of sources indexed

Full text of articles from over 1,750 publications and article abstracts and indexing from over

3,500 publications.

d d b b d h f d d

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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 didnt 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

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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 calledField 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

fi l d ft t th t d t t h b f ll bli h d t l t t d th

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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 Changes 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.

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Appendix A: Database WilsonWeb

Search term Results

Keyword (k) Subject (s) Title (t) k + s k + t

pr = peer reviewed,ft = fulltext k/ft/pr s/ft/pr t/ft/pr k+s/ft/pr k+t/ft/pr

Global warming (GW) 9774/3028/544 6009/1790/345 1504/384

Arctic region 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

Pollution 50197/12099/5258 33105/7788/4196 6225/1274/648Pollution + Polar region 45/7/3 10/0/10 1/1/1 16/0/12 4/1/2001

Arctic global warming 1/0/0 0 0

Pollution + Polar or Arctic 10504/1651/782 1368/222/65 2063/267/126 1390/232/68 2220/287/135

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

Gw + Arctic/Antarctic 4067/862/325 2988/514/211 1490/255/118 3042/539/217 1574/260/132

Arctic and Global warming " " " 4496/816/311 4340/757/302

Carbon dioxide emissions

(CDE) 1002/331/39 0 50/11/8

CDE + Arctic or Polar 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

CC + Antarctic 120/25/10 85/19/6 0 32/6/3 91/19/6

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Appendix B: Internet Results

What do studies of the Polar Regions tell us about global warming?

Search Terms

1 2 3

Search Engine

Full Question

FQ + Peer

reviewed

FQ + PR +

2007

Search Engine Global

Warming

Climate

Change Full

Yahoo 549,000 38,100 7,070 Wisenut.com* 22 16 590

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

Google Scholar 2,270 209 54 customized results

Clusty 113 113 113 categories listed here

Kartoo 455,000 43,700 1,600

Ujiko 10,800 2,130 1,480

Exalead 290 32 12

Ixquick 14,592 10 925(?)

Icerocket 25 2 2

nws.noaa.gov 209 18 8

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