Confronting Disaster

Need help with your research? Contact:

Kelly Cannon
Outreach and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Humanities & Business Subject Specialist
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
IM (AIM, Yahoo, MSN): refcannon
Reference desk IM: talktotrexler

Reference works (on level A of Trexler Library)

Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present
Reference 904 N251d

The World Almanac and Book of Facts
Ready Reference 317.3 W927
Also available through Academic Search Premier (see below) from 2000-present.

Encyclopedia of Environmental Biology
Reference 577.03 E56o

Glossary of Geology
Reference 550.3 G563o

Encyclopedia of Geology
Reference 551.03 E56o

Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences
Reference 551.46003 E56o

Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences
Reference 550.3 D229e

Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather
Reference 551.503 E56o

Encyclopedia of Global Change: Environmental Change and Human Society
Reference 363.7 E56o

Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change
Reference 363.7003 E56og

Environmental Encyclopedia
Reference 363.7003 E61e

UNEP Year Book (previously Geo Year Book)
Reference 363.7 U56a

Books

Trexler Library Catalog
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > catalog.
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat ***RECOMMENDED***
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Database > Most Popular > WorldCat
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.

Online books

Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/)

Periodical articles

popular and "high brow" press. . .

LexisNexis Academic
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Full text of newspapers from around the world, local as well as national. Coverage back to about 1980. Includes New York Times.

Academic Search Premier
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Good starting place for full text of popular magazines. Back issues as early as 1960s or prior.

Alternative Press Index
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
Articles from "underground" and other fringe periodicals.

academic and specialized. . .

Academic Search Premier
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Limit to "peer reviewed" to acquire scholarly journals. Covers all disciplines.

GeoBase
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for geography and geology.

PAIS
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Standard index for political science and public affairs.

HealthSource
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Articles A to Z
A subscription database. Focus on academic journals publishing in the area of medicine and health.

evaluating the authoritativeness of a periodical. . .

UlrichsWeb
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Online Reference Shelf

getting to the full text. . .

Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > catalog.

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > ILL

Search engines

Popular

Google (http://www.google.com)
Non-selective. One of the largest web crawlers.

Scholarly (use with discretion)

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
An open-access web crawler that looks for content it identifies as "scholarly." Emphasis is on books and journal articles. Intended as a "federated search" to search across disciplines (weighted toward sciences and social sciences). Not always full text. Check our Journal Locator (see above) to see if Muhlenberg has access to the full text.

Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/)
The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in the database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.

Librarian's Index to the Internet (http://lii.org/)
Highly selective search engine and directory of web resources. Both scholarly and popular sites deemed important by a team of California-based public librarians. Entries are accompanied by paragraph-length descriptions.

Subject-related websites

Pew Center on Global Climate Change
http://www.pewclimate.org/

Yahoo Directory Disasters Page
http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/environment_and_nature/disasters/
Organized by type of disaster, this is a good place to go to find a listing of major disasters throughout history.

U.S. Geological Survey
http://www.usgs.gov/
Highly recommended. Click on "Browse Science Topics" for access to information on natural hazards.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
http://www.fema.gov/
Provides general information on different types of disasters, as well as what to do before, during, and after a disaster. Includes a declaration archive of disasters back to 1953, organized by state.

CBS News Disaster Links
http://www.cbsnews.com/digitaldan/disaster/disasters.shtml
Arranged by subject. Look for your topic (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) and you will be provided with a list of links to many relevant sites.

Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI)
http://www.cidi.org/
Provides situation reports for specific disasters back to 1996. Click on the link to "situation reports" for a listing.

Citing sources in an annotated bibliography

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Citation Guides.

For help specifically in compiling anannotated bibliographies in the MLA or APA style, visit Purdue's Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/) for a definition of an annotation and samples.