FIG - Oregon Outside

Chat with Victoria!

Librarian for: Chemistry, Geological Sciences, and Physics

ph: 346-3076 vmitch@uoregon.edu

Find an article here:

The above search box is searching the following specific databases, that you might want to try individually:

Academic Search Premier

• Good for its mix of popular, news and scholarly articles. You have to exercise your critical evaluation skills to help determine what's what. (Do NOT rely solely on their limit to peer-reviewed feature--it is not reliable.)

GeoRef

• THE database for geology. Covers books, geological survey reports, conference proceedings, as well as journal articles.
  

Web of Science

• Interdisciplinary science database, a heavily-used source for science literature. Highly recommended.

See also:

Google Scholar

• Google for academics.

Find a book

in UOWorldCat (UO Libraries and beyond)
A few book search tips:

• Use less specific terms than when searching for articles. E.g., if you want books that will tell you about Oregon's basin and range geology, look for books on Oregon geology or Basin & Range geology.
• UO WorldCat searches for articles, and many other formats besides books. To limit to books, click on book under format on the left side.
  
• You may get better results if you do a Subject Heading search for a broad term. To do a search by Subject, go to Advanced Search. You also can click on the subject heading links at the bottom of the full record display for a book that you like, to get more like it.

Breaking geology news

 

Tutorials

Reference Sources

Print
(Located in the Science Library)

Encyclopedia of Geology. (5 vols.) SCI REF QE5 .E516 2005

Glossary of Geology  SCI REF QE5 .G37 2005

Hiking Oregon's Geology, 2nd ed. Science Reserve GV199.42 .O7 B57 2004

• Arranged by geologic province.

Oregon's Living Landscape: Strategies and Opportunities to Conserve Biodiversity QH76.5 .O7 O78 1998

• Arranged by ecoregions that somewhat correspond to the geologic provinces, this could be useful in identifying biotic resources and land use issues for your area.
  

 Roadside Geology of Oregon  Science Reserve QE155 .A47 1991

• A guide to the geology viewable from Oregon's highways.
  

Online
*(You must be on campus, or an authorized UO user if off campus, to access)


Encyclopedia of Earth

• An online encyclopedia of geology, geography, and environmental science.
  

*Encyclopedia of Hydrological Sciences

• Could be useful if you're looking for background information on snow and glacier dynamics, or soils, groundwater, etc.
  

*Gale Virtual Reference Library

• You can search the whole collection. The sources under "Environment" are the most likely to be useful for this assignment.

Oregon Dept of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) website

*Oxford Companion to the Earth

• Encyclopedia-type entries on geology and related topics.

*Oxford Reference Online: Earth Sciences

• Contains the above, plus dictionaries related to the earth sciences.

Compare the above reference sources with:
Wikipedia

• Do the articles have identified authors? Are the authors' credentials and affiliations available? Do the articles have references or bibliographies? If so, are there differences in the kinds of references given?
• Wikipedia is a very handy, free Internet source, but it is not necessarily reliable. For a humorous demonstration of this phenomenon, watch this excerpt of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. (Some improvements have been made to Wikipedia since this was aired.)

Return to top

Evaluating Sources

This web page contains a wealth of information on evaluating information sources both in print and on the Web: Critical Evaluation of Information Sources

To determine whether a particular periodical (magazine, journal) is scholarly (peer-reviewed, refereed) or popular, see these pages:

• Scholarly or Popular?
• Types of Periodicals (pdf)

What is "peer-review"?

Here are a couple of pdfs that provide good explanations of what it is (and is not), and why it's particularly important in the sciences:

• Peer Review in a Nutshell
• Sense About Science Short Peer Review Guide
  

(NB: both of the above are produced in the UK, so there are a few Britishisms that may not make sense)

Return to top

Maintained by: Victoria Mitchell, vmitch@uoregon.edu