Environmental Studies Research Guide

Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research. They will help you gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors, while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.

Find Books Using GriffinSearch

You can use GriffinSearch to find print and e-books available through Giovale Library. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:

Search Term Search

Academic Videos Online (AVON)

AVON provides unlimited access to a comprehensive selection of videos curated for the educational experience.

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Videos about Environmental Studies

WorldCat

WorldCat.org lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through interlibrary loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.

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InterLibrary Loan (ILL)

InterLibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials and access journal articles that are owned by another library.

InterLibrary Loan

Utah Academic Library Consortium

Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster College students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the member library you are interested in for details.

Utah Academic Library Consortium

Popular Titles and Featured Texts

 

The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are those that are most useful for finding research published in environmental studies.

GriffinSearch

GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.

Search GriffinSearch

GreenFILE

GreenFILE is a research database focusing on the relationship between human beings and the environment, with topics ranging from global warming to recycling to alternate fuel sources and beyond. Comprised of scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports, GreenFILE offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the ecology.

Search GreenFILE

GREENR

GREENR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources) is an electronic resource that focuses on the study of sustainability and the environment. Topics include global warming, food safety, access to health care, and the impact of economic development on international relations.

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Environmental Studies and Policy

Addresses environmental concerns and research with coverage from journals and book reference content.

Search Environmental Studies and Policy

Non-profit and non-government organizations in Utah can also be a source of research for environmental topics.

• Great Salt Lake Institute
• Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
• Nature Conservancy Utah
• Utah Rivers Council
• Citizens Climate Lobby
• HEAL Utah
• Seven Canyons Trust
• Utah Clean Energy
• Utah Dine Bikeyah

Citing your sources helps you avoid plagiarism and shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic. Proper citations allow your readers to track down your sources and help them understand how your research is connected to the work of others in your field. On this page, you will find guides and tools to help you format citations, and you will learn about what constitutes plagiarism.

How to Cite Sources

With all of the many ways that you can plagiarize someone’s work, either accidentally or on purpose, how can you make sure that you’re citing your sources correctly each and every time? One way is to become familiar with reputable sources that will help you learn or confirm that how you are citing your source is correct.

PurdueOWL contains writing guides, grammatical rules, and citation help that will assist with many writing projects.

Zotero is the ideal tool to gather, analyze, and document all of your sources. It is compatible with GriffinSearch and other library databases, allowing you to save citations and articles while you research. Visit the Zotero website to find out more, or stop by the library for some help getting started.

Citing Images

You must always provide a citation for your images, just as you would any other source. Usually these citations will appear in captions and may be compiled into a list of illustrations in a paper or presentation. The format of your citation will vary depending on the citation style that you have chosen to use, but it will most likely include the following information:

• Artist's/creator's name
• Title
• Creation date
• Current location (museum or other repository)
• Place of creation
• Dimensions
• Material/medium
• Information about the source you acquired the image from (website, book, etc.)

Most citation materials will include information about citing images.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism means taking someone else’s work or ideas and trying to pass them off as your own. Plagiarism can either be intentional or unintentional, and even the most careful writer could accidentally plagiarize without fully knowing it. For example, did you know that it is plagiarism even if you misattribute a quote to the wrong author? Even if you cited the source and took care to put it in your bibliography, if the wrong person received credit for someone else’s work, it can still be considered plagiarism. Other forms of plagiarism include:

• Copying and pasting someone else’s work and turning it in as your own
• Using a quote from someone without giving them credit
• Not putting a quotation in quotation marks
• Changing a few words here and there, but keeping the main ideas of a sentence without giving credit to the original author
• Copying pictures from Google or another website to use without saying where you found the image

Of course, all of these scenarios of potential plagiarism can be avoided by knowing how to properly cite your sources.