Pollution Management Database

Pollution Management Database

The University of Diliman has long prided itself in its quality engineering and agriculture departments. As one of the few universities in Wisconsin to offer a varied engineering curriculum, many students throughout Wisconsin seek education at UWP. Furthermore, the location of UWP in the rolling agricultural fields of southwestern Wisconsin and the opportunity for hands-on work at the University Farm has attracted many students with an interest in agriculture-related interdisciplinary subjects. Today, the university can pride itself in offering its students a new environmental engineering curriculum with a rural, agricultural emphasis. Early in the fall semester of last year, several members from both the engineering and the agriculture departments gathered to discuss a new interdisciplinary program for the UWP student body. The professors have been successful in creating new courses in environmental and agricultural engineering, to be taught jointly by both departments. Engineering and agriculture professors, as well as the Karman Library’s engineering subject specialist and myself, the electronic resources librarian, have spent the summer recess analyzing the Karman Library’s collection, and have found a deficit in the subjects of environmental engineering. With a projected three environmental engineering courses added to the curriculum for the spring 2011 semester, this deficit cannot go unaddressed. The Karman Library has long supported the needs of engineering students, and in order for our students and the new curriculum to succeed, we need to act promptly to fill the subject area gap. Searching Electronic Databases 3 In order to fill this subject area gap, several databases have been assessed. We used an evaluative process that considered content coverage, content completeness, overlap with current library holdings, and the features which make searching and retrieval accurate and precise (like, the presence of subject headings, search capabilities, etc.). Among the highest ranking were Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management, Environment Complete, and Environmental Engineering Abstracts. CSA’s multidisciplinary Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management is a database that offers access to environmental sciences literature from around the world. Although no full-text option is available, users have access to abstracts and citations from 10,474 serials publications (scientific journals, conference proceedings, and reports), as well as from monographs, books, and government publications. ESPM is composed of thirteen subfiles (including Environmental Engineering Abstracts with backfiles to 1990, Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology Abstracts with backfiles to 1993, and Water Resources Abstracts with backfiles to 1967) which can be searched separately or simultaneously. The major areas of subject coverage include agricultural biotechnology, air quality, aquatic pollution, bacteriology, ecology, energy resources, environmental biotechnology, environmental engineering, environmental impact statements, hazardous waste, industrial hygiene, microbiology (related to industrial and environmental issues), pollution, risk assessment, safety science, toxicology and toxic emissions, water pollution, waste management, and water resource issues.