LibGuides: Environmental Studies &amp; Science Research Guide: Essential Resources

Essential Databases for Environmental Studies and Science Research

Agricola (EBSCO)
A database of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Library, comprised of journal articles, monographs, theses, technical reports, patents, software, and audiovisual material on the topic of agriculture dating back to 1970.

On Campus Guest Access
Environment Complete (EBSCO)
Environment Complete is a multidisciplinary database providing indexing and full-text access to a wide variety of journals and other publications in the fields of agriculture, ecology, biology, environmental law, public policy, and related fields.
On Campus Guest Access
GreenFILE (EBSCO)
GreenFILE is a large collection of indexing and abstracts for scholarly, government, and general-interest publications covering all aspects of human impact on the environment, including climate change, sustainable agriculture, green building, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
On Campus Guest Access
JSTOR
Interdisciplinary database for core journals in the fields of the arts & humanities, social sciences, and life sciences, providing archival access to each journal beginning with volume 1.

Where should I search first?

Library catalog vs. scholarly databases vs. the open web: it matters where you start your search. Different tools will bring you different types of information. None of these options is inherently "better" or "worse" than another, but beginning in the wrong place could add unnecessary time and effort to your search.

Start with the library catalog for:

Books and eBooks
DVDs and other physical items
"Known items": you have the title of an item (any item: article, book, journal, movie...) and just want to find out if you can get it through the library

Start with a database for:

Primary, peer reviewed research articles
Review articles
Conference papers
Magazines, newspapers, and trade publications
Exploratory searches: you want to find out what has been published on a given topic

Start with the open web for:

Basic background information on sites like Wikipedia
Looking up authors to check their credentials and history
Information about the peer review and editorial processes of particular scholarly journals
Repositories, archives, and other openly accessible online sources for specialty information such as: data sets, technical documents, government documents, images, computer code, etc. Consider asking a librarian for help with these kinds of searches!

Environmental Studies and Science at Gonzaga

Learn about the Environmental Studies & Science Department
Information about the Environmental Studies Program, with details about degree requirements, faculty and staff, class descriptions, and student resources.
Sustainability at Gonzaga
More information on Sustainability at Gonzaga.
Center for Climate, Society, and the Environment at Gonzaga University
Located in Foley Library, the Center opened in 2021 provides resources and opportunities to students, faculty, community members, and leaders in the inland northwest to meet the unprecedented challenges facing humanity and the wider natural environment in the 21st century.

Top Resources in Related Science & Technology Fields

Please refer to the full Biology Research Guide for resources, tools, and services in biology, biochemistry, and biomedicine.

Agricola (EBSCO)
A database of the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Library, comprised of journal articles, monographs, theses, technical reports, patents, software, and audiovisual material on the topic of agriculture dating back to 1970.

On Campus Guest Access
Environment Complete (EBSCO)
Environment Complete is a multidisciplinary database providing indexing and full-text access to a wide variety of journals and other publications in the fields of agriculture, ecology, biology, environmental law, public policy, and related fields.
On Campus Guest Access
BioMed Central
BioMed Central (BMC), a subset of Springer Nature and one of the first and largest open access STEM publishers, provides access to over 300 peer-reviewed journals in a wide variety of fields, including but not limited to biology, medicine, chemistry, and environmental studies.
Biomedical Reference Collection (EBSCO)
This collection provides access to full-text, indexed and abstracted biomedical research journals covering a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pre-clinical sciences. Coverage also extends to include structured research evaluating current and past health care systems.
On Campus Guest Access
PubMed

PubMed is an openly searchable and highly comprehensive database of biomedical literature, providing citations from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text open access content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Please refer to the full Chemistry Research Guide for more resources, tools, and services in the fields of chemistry and biochemistry.

American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications
A database of full-text publications from the American Chemical Society, including scholarly journals, eBooks, reference works, and standards.
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is an online, fully searchable data reference book of chemical information used by scientists worldwide. The Handbook regularly updates existing tables with the most current data and introduces new topics of interest to the scientific community.

PubCHEM
PubChem is an open chemistry database from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). PubChem is a key chemical information resource for scientists, students, and the general public.

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PubChem mostly contains small molecules, but also larger molecules such as nucleotides, carbohydrates, lipids, peptides, and chemically-modified macromolecules. We collect information on chemical structures, identifiers, chemical and physical properties, biological activities, patents, health, safety, toxicity data, and many others.
ChemIDplus
A dictionary of over 400,000 chemicals (names, synonyms, and structures). ChemIDplus includes links to NLM and other databases and resources, including links to federal, state and international agencies. ChemIDplus is a product of the NIH.

SciFinder
SciFinder is a research discovery application that provides integrated access to a comprehensive and authoritative source of references, substances and reactions in chemistry and related sciences. Logins and client software provided by the Chemistry Department and are NOT available directly through Foley.

SciFinder is a product of the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Services division.

Please refer to the full Engineering Research Guide for more resources, tools, and services for civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, computer science and engineering, materials science, and engineering management.

IEEE Xplore Digital Library

The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore Digital Library provides full-text access to journals, transactions, and magazines and conference proceedings published since 1998 and IEEE standards from 1948 to the present.
Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library
The ACM Digital Library is a comprehensive database covering computing and information technology. The repository includes the complete collection of ACM publications plus an extended bibliographic database of core works in computing from scholarly publishers.
ASTM Compass: Standards and Engineering Digital Library
ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Compass provides access to voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services, as well as access to a number of engineering journals, manuals and monographs, selected technical papers and reports, and data series.
Ei Engineering Village: Compendex
Ei Engineering Village: Compendex is a comprehensive engineering literature database of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines. Every record is indexed using the Engineering Index Thesaurus to ensure discovery and retrieval of engineering-specific literature.
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Library
ASCE Library is a full-text civil engineering database providing the contents of peer-reviewed journals published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Online access for core ASCE journals begins in 1983.

Please refer to the full Mathematics Research Guide for more resources, tools, and services for mathematics research.

MathSciNet
MathSciNet is a database from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) which provides indexing, abstracts, and reviews for much of the mathematical sciences literature, and includes Mathematical Reviews, which publishes over 40,000 expert reviews of currently published literature per year.
arXiv
arXiv is an open-access repository of electronic preprint papers that are approved for posting after moderation (but not peer review). arXiv provides access to scientific papers in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.

Please refer to the full Physics Research Guide for resources, tools, and services for research in physics.

American Physical Society (APS) Journals
APS Journals is a full-text database of all scholarly journals and publications from the American Physical Society, a leading publisher in the field of physics. Includes complete coverage for Physical Review Series I-II (1893-1960) and Series III (1960-present) Phys. Rev. sub-journals; Physical Review Letters; Reviews of Modern Physics; and the open-access magazine Physics. Physical Review Series I-II are available in the Physical Review Online Archive (PROLA), which is included in the APS Journals database.
IOPscience (Institute of Physics Publishing)
IOPscience is a full-text repository of Institute of Physics (IOP) publications, including scholarly journals, eBooks, and open access conference proceedings.

Environmental Studies & Science Research Guide

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Essential Databases for Environmental Studies and Science Research

Where should I search first?

Environmental Studies and Science at Gonzaga

Top Resources in Related Science & Technology Fields