News from Library@EPA

We would like to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From today the library has stopped issuing the old Library Updates. From now on we will use this spot to let you know what is happening in the Library.

To keep yourself informed about what is going on at Library@EPA you will need to subscribe to this Blog by selecting either the email option or the RSS feed option on the right.

We plan to update this each Monday, but should there be something we need to alert you about more quickly e.g. when our search engines or other resources become temporarily unavailable, we will notify you via this spot at a non-scheduled time.

We look forward to seeing you and or hearing from you all in the New Year

Walk Score

Although the about information on this site claims it is set up to investigate the walkabalilty of North American site it also allows the user to check out the Walkability of a neighbourhood in many places around the world including Australia. Use it to find out how walker friendly your own neighbourhood is or to locate great places for a walking holiday.

ARROW Discovery Service

The number of records in the ARROW Discovery Service has reached over 250,000. Each of these metadata records link to research outputs held in 26 university repositories across Australia and includes theses, preprints, postprints, journal articles, book chapters, music recordings and pictures.

Turbo charge your Google Search

If you wish to maximise your internet searches just check out the tips on this page.

This is just one great sample of the tips there
"The Place holder *
10. Use a placeholder word.
The "*" essentially represents a placeholder word (aka wildcard), and there a number of ways to use it. For example, if you're trying to look up a conference, but you only remember the first and last word of the conference, you can enter "nonprofit * conference" to look up conferences that include an additional word. Or think of "*" as a fill-in-the-blank test for Google. Enter * founded the Red Cross to learn who started the organization. In addition, if you want to search for terms that don't appear next to each other, add a "*" between them to indicate that one or more words should separate them." – Firth Gowan in Turbo-Charge Your Google Search viewed on Techsoup

EPA Fugitives

This site has bee n set up by the United States EPA as a new web-based tool to help track down and apprehend those accused of violating environmental laws and evading arrest.

Energy [r]evolution

The energy [r]evolution is an independently produced report that provides a practical blueprint for how to half global CO2 emissions, while allowing for an increase in energy consumption by 2050. By dividing the world into 10 regions, with a global summary, it explains how existing energy technologies can be applied in more efficient ways. It demonstrates how a ‘business as usual’ scenario, based on IEA’s World Energy Outlook projections, is not an option for environmental, economic and security of supply reasons.

57 Useful Google Tools You Never Heard of

As the name implies, this article lists a wide variety of search tools available on Google which show that Google has all sorts of uses most users don’t know about.

Environmental Auditing

This site contains an index, and links to Environmental audits conducted worldwide. Users can search by country or browse through and extensive subject listing. It also contains studies and guidelines related to environmental auditing.

Australian National Dictionary

This was the result of a joint initiative of the Australian National University and Oxford University Press. This free online dictionary of Australianisms has been donated to the nation by Oxford University Press.

Queensland Parliament Tabled Papers Database

In 2007 the Queensland Parliament developed a single repository database for all papers tabled in the Queensland Parliament, which is accessible on the Queensland Parliament's website. Over time, this database will be updated to include papers tabled in previous Parliaments.
Details of papers currently available:

52nd Parliament (10 October 2006 to date)

51st Parliament (23 January 2004 to 15 August 2006)
50th Parliament (20 March 2001 to 13 January 2004)
49th Parliament (part) (22 April 1999 to 23 January 2001)

There are a number of different types of papers tabled in the Legislative Assembly including Annual reports, Budget papers, Committee papers, Legislation (bills, expl. notes), Legislation (Subordinate), Miscellaneous papers, and Overseas Travel reports.

Entrez:The Life Sciences Search Engine

Although this is not a new resource it is one well that is worth looking at. It is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (U.S.) and provides access to a wide-range of databases and access to some full text articles.

Policy Archive

This is a digital archive of global, non-partisan public policy and contains summaries and full text, videos, reports. briefs and multi-media material of think-tank, university, government, and foundation-funded policy research. There is a subject index, an internal search engine, abstracts, email notifications of newly added research and will shortly include user-generated publication reviews. Over time it is planned to expand to include policy content from international and corporate organizations.

NewGenCoal

Site established by the Australian Coal Association and its member companies to explain the issues related to climate change faced by the industry and the solutions they are working towards in Australia and worldwide.
Through the COAL21 Fund, the Australian black coal industry has committed over $1 billion to help develop low-emissions technologies such as carbon capture and storage. We believe a new generation of coal technologies will be an essential part of a global response to climate change.

Vroosh

Try this new metasearch engine. It has a very clean add-free look and works well for searching for Australian sites.

ASU Global Institute of Sustainability

Located in on the US greenest universities, this Institute has set up a tool, Campus Metabolism, to help anyone track energy and resource usage throughout the campus. They are also investing in solar panels and wind turbines to provide clean and sustainable energy.

The Mammal Family Tree

ABC catalyst programme (23/10/2008)

The Mammal Tree is a graphic presentation demonstrating our relationship to the other mammals and how long ago we shared a common ancestor. After a decade of complex computing researchers came up with this "tree" which grows from the centre out to the edges which represent the present day. The centre represents that point in time, some 166 million years ago when all living mammals shared a common ancestor.

City Green Buildings

An alphabetical listing, from Absorption Chiller to Worm Bin (”System for on-site management of food scraps and other organic materials. Similar to a compost bin, a worm bin uses worms to digest organic wastes, in a process known as ‘vermicomposting’.”)created by the City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development. The site also includes resources for those who wish to “build green”

Renewable Energy Atlas of Australia

The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed for everyone interested in renewable energy, including government policy makers, decision makers in the renewable energy industry and educational and community institutions who wish to learn more about renewable energy in the Australian context. The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed to provide enough information to give a high level overview with appropriate contact details for those who wish to pursue their investigations further.

Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
“This collection of eastern Asian photographs represents the work of intrepid plant explorers who travelled to exotic lands in the early years of the twentieth century and returned to the Arboretum with not only seeds, live plants, and dried herbarium specimens, but also with remarkable images of plants, people, and landscapes.”

Climate Change Series

This news series "looks at the politics of climate change." Includes stories related to the developed world and emerging economies, opinion pieces, and interactive features on climate change agreement and mapping carbon dioxide emissions. Provides links to stories on the science aspects of global warming. From the website for the UK newspaper the Financial Times

Encyclopaedia of Life

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species. Each site is constantly evolving and features dynamically synthesized content ranging from historical literature and biological descriptions to stunning images, videos and distribution maps. Join us as we explore the richness of Earth’s biodiversity!

Vertical Farm

Project developed by Dr. Dickson Despommier who advocates using skyscrapers for farming. The site includes news updates, presentations and designs.

IUCN World Congress

Barcelona, 5-14 October 2008

More than 8,000 of the world’s leading decision makers in sustainable development: from governments, NGOs, business, the UN and academia. Together in one place for 10 days: to debate, share, network, learn, commit, vote and decide. The objective: ideas, action and solutions for a diverse and sustainable world.

World database on Protected Areas

Source: UNEP
"The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is compiled from multiple sources and is the most comprehensive global dataset on marine and terrestrial protected areas available. It is a joint venture of UNEP and IUCN, produced by UNEP-WCMC and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN-WCPA) working with governments and collaborating NGOs. Over the last 12 months UNEP-WCMC, supported by the Proteus Partnership, has been redeveloping the World Database on Protected Areas. Using the latest GIS, web and database technologies the WDPA has been extensively redesigned into a web-enabled spatial database platform with custom data editing, downloading and analysis facilities. Over the course of the next 16 months, the opportunities to interact with the new WDPA will be slowly unveiled."

Oxford Digital Library

Oxford University is in the process of digitizing items in its collection and this page gives access to some samples of the treasures amongst which there are images from Flora Graeca for the 21st Century, John Gould’s Ornithological Works and Key 19th Century Entomological Literature

Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program

The National Library of Australia, in collaboration with the Australian State and Territory libraries, has commenced a program to digitise out of copyright newspapers. The free online service will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles. This will include newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s, when copyright applies. The Beta service now contains 150,000 newspaper pages from 1803 onwards. Additional pages are being added each week. The Courier-Mail has been digitised from June 1846 to December 1899 to date.

Nature.com databases and Gateways

Useful links supplied by Nature which includes a link to Nature Reports Climate Change

Assisted Migration and Rewilding

A list of list of links to useful journal and magazine articles maintained by the Torreya Guardians, a self-organized group of naturalists, botanists . ecologists and others with a deep concern for biodiversity protection.

Ocean Science

The European Geosciences Union has been working on a number of open access journals over the past few years, and Ocean Science is just such an endeavor. The primary objective is to publish a very high quality scientific journal with free web based access for researchers and other interested people throughout the world.

BirdLife International: State of the World's Birds

Concerns about the world's biodiversity are not new, but the BirdLife International organization has taken on an important challenge by documenting the state of the world's birds via the important research papers featured on this site. The news they offer is not terribly encouraging, but these documents will be important tools for anyone interested in these pressing issues. The primary work here is divided into four sections that includes an introduction, along with three additional sections that cover why birds are declining, the current state of information about bird populations, and what can be done to improve the status of birds around the world.

Carbon Offset Watch

This is the first independent ranking of Australian offset providers, completed in August 2008. The site is managed by Total Environment Centre and supported by CHOICE and Institute for Sustainable Futures.

How Buildings Learn

This began as a terrific book of the same name by Stewart Brand, who investigated why some buildings grow and change and adapt to the lives of the people who inhabit them, while others simply don't meet their inhabitants' needs. He's adapted these ideas for this 6 part BBC video series. Anybody involved in designing a new building or adapting an existing one would benefit from the book and this series.

The site includes a video clip of selected sections of the video series.

BCIN

BCIN, the Bibliographic Database of the Conservation Information Network, is the Web's most complete bibliographic resource for the conservation, preservation and restoration of cultural property. A worldwide network of libraries and documentation centres contribute data on their combined holdings, including previously unavailable material from private sources, to the BCIN database.

Cited literature includes:
books, published and unpublished monographs and serials
conference proceedings
technical reports, journal articles, theses
audio-visual materials
software and machine-readable files

RSS Feeds and Podcasts

An online index which provides a list of the RSS feeds and podcasts currently being produced by agencies of the Australian Government.

Your Development

Australian website providing practical information on how to create sustainable urban residential developments and contains fact sheets, case studies and links to other useful sites.
This is a national project developed in partnership with CSIRO and the Australian Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage, and the Arts. Content has been written and reviewed by leading researchers and industry experts.
Once a user is signed in they can use the site interactively.

ZooKeys

This is a peer-reviewed, open-access, rapidly produced journal launched to support free exchange of ideas and information in systematic zoology.

OpenSIGLE

OpenSIGLE combines the resources of major European information and document supply centres who have joined together in an association known as EAGLE : European Association for Grey Literature Exploitation.

It provides open access to SIGLE bibliographical references of reports and other grey literature (GL) produced in Europe. Examples of GL include technical or research reports, doctoral dissertations, some conference papers and pre-prints, some official publications, and other types of grey literature. OpenSIGLE covers pure and applied science and technology, economics, other sciences and humanities.

Scirus Topic Pages

This is a free, wiki-like service for the scientific community, where scientific experts summarize specific scientific topics, and where links to the latest, most relevant journal literature and web sources are presented on one page.

Library SuperSearch

SuperSearch provides a single access point to databases, library catalogues and e-journals. You can search up to 10 resources simultaneously or link directly to an individual resource. SuperSearch then allows you to link to the fulltext if available.

Training will be available in the 1st and 2nd weeks of September. Keep an eye on the Library home page for details.

Environment and Research

This News Alert Service is provided by the European Commission.

DG Environment has decided to establish this service in order to reinforce the links between science and policy. The service provides scientific information in the field of the main themes of the Environmental Action Programme and relevant to DG Environment policy priorities in support of the knowledge based approach.

The target audience are policy makers as well as the wider public.

The Getty Conservation Institute

The Getty Conservation Institute "works internationally to advance conservation practice in the visual arts." and their mission includes conservation projects that involve architecture, individual objects, and site examinations. Site contains a "What's New" area on the right-hand side of the homepage which has short videos on Asian orange colorants, information about Middle East heritage databases, and a direct link to the latest edition of the GCI's newsletter, "Conservation". It also has a "Free PDF Publications" area contains access to full-length books, reports, glossaries, and short papers published by the GCI as well as "Videos and Audio" area containing talks."

Green Vehicle Guide

This is a tool designed for those considering purchasing a new vehicle and facilitates comparisons on the greenhouse and air pollution emissions ratings of up to 3 current makes and models.

The rating is calculated using data provided by manufacturers from testing the vehicle against Australian standards.

There is also a link to the Fuel consumption calculator maintained on the Department of the Environment Site

EBSCOhost 2.0

New look arrives on the EBSCOhost databases

EBSCOhost 2.0 is live and has introduced the following new features to the site.
• A new simpler basic searching screen
• The ability to preview an article or image by mouseover
• New result list
• New detail display
• New search history capability
• Enhanced personalization features
• New organization of limiters and expanders
• New search modes including SmartText
• URLs that can be bookmarked

EDIE

EDIE stand for Environmental Data Interactive Exchange and is
Europe's biggest environmental website. Edie combines an unparalleled directory of products and services from thousands of specialised companies with an online news service reporting on the latest environmental stories as they break.

International Standard. ISO 15270

Plastics : Guidelines for the recovery and recycling of plastic wastes.

This International Standard has been developed to assist all plastics industry stakeholders in the development of
• a sustainable global infrastructure for plastics recovery and recycling;
• a sustainable market for recovered plastics materials and their derived manufactured products.
For the reduction of plastics waste and in support of the objectives of sustainable development, top priority should be given on a product life-cycle basis to
• general reduction of material and energy resource use;
• specific optimization of the use of plastics raw materials.

NOTE: Unfortunately you can’t link directly to this; you need to type in the no. of the standard and click All to view document

Environmental Expert

Environmental Expert connects over 500,000 environmental industry professionals from around the globe to over 15,000 companies that provide the products, services and information they need to do their job successfully.

Environmental Expert is more than just an online marketplace! Unlike other sites, the Environmental Expert portal contains an unmatched wealth of industry-related information and resources, like publications, events, articles, job postings, press releases & news, thus ensuring that professionals use Environmental Expert as a professional tool and keep coming back to stay in touch with what's happening in the industry

World Legal Information Institute

WorldLII provides a single search facility for databases located on the following Legal Information Institutes: AustLII; BAILII; CanLII; HKLII; LII (Cornell); also provides links to over 15,000 law-related web sites in every country in the world. WorldLII's Websearch makes searchable the full text of as many of these sites as WorldLII's web-spider can reach.

Internet Bird Collection

The Internet Bird Collection (IBC) is a non-profit endeavour with the ultimate goal of disseminating knowledge about the world's avifauna. It is an on-line audiovisual library of footage of the world's birds that is available to the general public free of charge. While the initial aim is to post at least one video per species, the long-term objective is to eventually include several videos showing a variety of biological aspects (e.g. feeding, breeding, etc.) for every species.

6 Productivity Tips for MS Word

Web Worker Daily has put together a list of tips for increasing our productivity using Microsoft Word. The article walks us through how to accomplish 6 productivity tasks such as: 1. Doing Table Calculations Directly in Word.- 2. Compare Two Documents.- 3. Deja Vu. - 4. Save Multiple Documents Simultaneously. - 5. Paste Your Formats.- 6. Building Your Styles Skills.

Globe-Net

This site, maintained by the Globe Foundation of Canada, is a weekly guide to the business of the environment on-line, providing up to date information on business opportunities and market intelligence tailored to the needs of the environmental sector.

U.S. Department of Energy: Clean Cities

"Keeping cities clean and "green" is at the top of many policy makers lists these days, and the "Clean Cities" initiative at the U.S. Department of Energy is a great place to learn more about everything from alternative fuel sources to hybrid vehicles. Visitors to the site can sign up for their free electronic newsletter, take a look through the alternative fuels and advanced vehicles data center, and read through "Clean Cities Now", which is their quarterly newsletter. Policy makers and others will definitely want to click over to the "Coalitions" area. Here they will find information on how to start a coalition of local stakeholders to work on these issues in their area. Additionally, visitors can look through the "Coordinator Toolbox" area for information on how to fund various projects and how to communicate with fellow stakeholders and participants."

Doodle

This is an interesting site! "Doodle helps finding suitable dates for group events, e.g., an appointment, a conference call, a family reunion, etc.. Doodle is particularly useful to people who do not use a common calendar.

What can Doodle be used for?
Doodle is extremely flexible. Typically, Doodle is used for scheduling events: Be it an assembly, a team conference, a business lunch, a dinner among friends, a general assembly, a workshop, an excursion, a company event, etc.

But you can use Doodle differently as well, for the exercise planning of your sports club, for instance, or to find out who travels to the company excursion by train and who by car as well as who has space left in the car.

Doodle is a Web-based service which is free and requires no software installation."

Conservation GeoPortal

"The Conservation Geoportal is a collaborative effort by and for the conservation community to facilitate the discovery and publishing of geographic information systems (GIS) data and maps, to support conservation decisionmaking and education. It is primarily a data catalogue, intended to provide a comprehensive listing of GIS data sets and map services relevant to biodiversity conservation. The Conservation Geoportal does not actually store maps and data, but rather the descriptions and links to those resources, known as "metadata."

It includes the following capabilities:

Search for data and maps by keyword, category, geography, or time period
Save your search queries for future use
Use the built-in Map Viewer to display, manipulate, and combine live map services
Create, save, and email custom maps using data from various map services
Publish metadata for your maps and data so others can find them

The Conservation Geoportal is designed to make it quick and easy for conservation practitioners to find, and if possible, preview and download GIS data and maps. This is a free tool for all conservation practitioners and supporters to use and contribute content."

EcoNet

EcoNet is "a wireless sensor network which allows data collection of environmental factors virtually anywhere and also allows its monitoring from any point where internet is available." EcoNet is still in demonstration mode, but shows how "having data continuously monitored in a cost-effective manner increases substantially the chances of uncovering anomalies early enough to investigate them promptly and thoroughly." This is a really interesting invention which could be applied to "related domains; for example monitoring disposal of hazardous material, monitoring of water quality, monitoring ice cap movements in the Arctic or using imagery data to monitor hard to witness phenomena."

World Environment Library

Developed in 1999, the World Environment Library "contains 400 publications (45,000 pages) of ideas and solutions in the fields of Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Environmental Impact Assessment, Energy, Health, Natural Resources, Policy, Sustainable Development, Waste Management and Water." Search via keyword, title, subject or organisation.

Running the Numbers

This is an amazing depiction of resource use/waste!! Chris Jordan, an American artist, has produced Running the Numbers which "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on." Incredible detail!!!

Fire ecology and management in northern Australia

"These teaching materials have been developed from a collaboration between the Tropical Savannas CRC and the Bushfire CRC and staff in their partner agencies...[The website contains] research papers, website resources, management case studies and monitoring tools [which provide a] greater understanding of the issues surrounding fire in northern Australia." This website will be useful for those studying or working within natural resource management.

Catalog of Fishes

Looking for a fish?
The Catalog of Fishes is the first treatment of all described fishes since Linnaeus in 1758. Originally in print, the on-line version includes all species, genera, and references, along with the classification, introduction, and list of museum abreviations. Included are about 56,000 described species and subspecies (= species) of fishes, about 10,600 genera and subgenera (= genera) of fishes, and about 21,700 references. About 200-300 new species are being described each year.

Water footprint

"Water footprint", "virtual water" and "water neutral" - these concepts relate to the volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by individuals, businesses or nations and how humans can reduce, neutralise, compensate or offset their water footprint. This is a really interesting site with links to footprint calculators and a product gallery where an indication of how much water is used to produce specific foodstuffs is provided.

ThoughtBlend

This is new and interesting! ThoughtBlend is a collection and forum of good ideas. Users can post their own ideas, or they can view, rate and discuss the ideas of others.

Peak Everything

This article from Treehugger explores eight commodities we are running out of, including rice, metal, dirt and electricity as well as oil, and attempts to explain why.

HighWire Press

"HighWire Press is the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth! As of 5/26/08, [HighWire Press assists] in the online publication of 1,884,244 free full-text articles and 4,785,577 total articles. There are 15 sites with free trial periods, and 44 completely free sites. 248 sites have free back issues, and 1050 sites have pay per view!"

The Business and Biodiversity Offset Program (BBOP)

BBOP is a new partnership between companies, governments and conservation experts to explore biodiversity offsets - to demonstrate conservation and livelihood outcomes in a portfolio of biodiversity offset pilot projects; to develop, test and disseminate best practice on biodiversity offsets and to contribute to policy and corporate developments on biodiversity offsets. The library link, in particular, contains a range of up-to-date documents on biodiversity offsets.

Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)

"The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious ... project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites — one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species — that provide the entry points to this vast array of knowledge. The entry-point for each site is a species page suitable for the general public, but with several linked pages aimed at more specialized users. The sites sparkle with text and images that are enticing to everyone, as well as providing deep links to specific data.

The EOL dynamically synthesizes biodiversity knowledge about all known species, including their taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being, and distribute this information through the Internet. It serves as a primary resource for a wide audience that includes scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students around the world."

Biodiversity Heritage Library

"Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. The group is developing a strategy and operational plan to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections. This literature will be available through a global “biodiversity commons.”

Participating institutions:

American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
The Field Museum (Chicago, IL)
Harvard University Botany Libraries (Cambridge, MA)
Harvard University, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, MA)
Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, MA)
Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO)
Natural History Museum (London, UK)
The New York Botanical Garden (New York, NY)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Richmond, UK)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington, DC)

The participating libraries have over two million volumes of biodiversity literature collected over 200 years to support the work of scientists, researchers, and students in their home institutions and throughout the world. The 10 member libraries of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) members now have over 1.124 million pages of key taxonomic literature available on the web."

State Library of Queensland webcasts

Access State Library of Queensland webcasts to view recorded talks by a variety of speakers including Ian Townsend on extreme weather and the futurist Tony Stevenson discussing "our complex relationship with the future and how even just thinking about it can bring about change and a different world for our children and future generations".

Treehugger

Have you seen this site before? It's great! "TreeHugger is the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. [It's] a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information [including an] up to the minute blog, weekly and daily newsletters, weekly video segments [and a] weekly radio show."

Our Iceberg is Melting

This is the website to accompany the book The Iceberg is Melting (which the library has just made available!). Here you will find a summary of John Kotter’s research on successful change, excerpts from web seminars on change, tips from change leaders and more!

Green Thing

This is an interesting site! Green Thing is a new online community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you'll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it!

Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO Australia) is a nationwide network of professionals working to reduce our oil vulnerability. ASPO aims to bring the probabilities, risks and opportunities that Peak Oil presents to the attention of decision-makers.

ASPO is part of a network of organisations around the world affiliated with the original Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). The formation of ASPO-Australia is an initiative of the Sustainable Transport Coalition. ASPO Australia's patron is Hon. Andrew McNamara MP, chair of the Queensland Govt Oil Vulnerability Task Force and Queensland Minister for Climate Change, Sustainability and Innovation.

The website provides links to documents, presentations, news, articles and more!

Climate Policy online!

With thanks to the support of the Economic Services, Strategy and Policy Division, we are pleased to announce we now have an online and print subscription to Climate Policy. From the journal home page: "Climate Policy presents the highest quality refereed research and analysis on the policy issues raised by climate change, and provides a forum for commentary and debate. It addresses both the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change, within and between the different regions of the world. It encourages a trans-disciplinary approach to these issues at international, regional, national and sectoral levels. The journal aims to make complex, policy-related analysis of climate change issues accessible to a wide audience."

Picture Australia

Picture Australia is an Internet based service that allows you to search many significant online pictorial collections at the same time. Browse the "Picture Trails" - themed albums include history, society, travel and places, or search for a particular image.

How Much Is Enough?

Zen Habits is an interesting and thought-provoking blog written by Leo Babauta. In this entry he questions 'how much is enough?'. Browse the categories on the right for further stimulating ideas.

Pronetos

Would you like to network and collaborate with scholars in your discipline from around the world? Sign up to Pronetos to create or join an online community in your field of interest. Click on the articles link to access interesting papers lodged by scholars from a range of disciplines.

Eden Project

The Eden Project is based near Cornwall, England, and is dedicated to exploring and sharing information about people's relationship with and dependence upon plants for food, clothes, shelter and medicines etc. But it is much more than that. It is also a creative space which shares environmental messages via a blending of art and science. Check out the website for more information!

Australia 2020

The official website for the Australia 2020 Summit which was held on the 19 and 20 April. Read the initial report as well as information about the participants and the 10 Topics which were the focus of the Summit.

Newstext

Don't forget, if you are looking for full-text news articles from the last 10 years from a range of national and regional Australian newspapers, Newstext can help! Click on "News Services" to access the username and password to access the site.

Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

This is a really interesting site which provides links to examples of electronic cultural atlases. A cultural atlas is "a matrix of spatial and temporal information with associated cultural information or attributes." Browse the cultural atlases by region, country or city or explore the projects being undertaken.

International Journal of Wildland Fire

Library@EPA is pleased to announce we have reinstated our subscription to The International Journal of Wildland Fire.

This online journal publishes articles on "basic and applied aspects of wildland fire science including, but not confined to, ecological impact, modelling fire and its effects, and management of fire... The Journal has an international perspective, since wildland fire plays a major social, economic and ecological role around the globe."

GreenFILE

Library@EPA is pleased to announce the addition of a new database, GreenFILE, from EBSCOhost.

"GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for approximately 295,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,600 records."

Try it today!

Integrated Botanical Information System

"IBIS, the Integrated Botanical Information System, is a single relational database that links the data held in the various collections of the Australian National Botanic Gardens, the Australian National Herbarium, the Australian Plant Image Index and the Australian Plant Name Index." From this one site access plant names, photographs, collaborative projects and more!

OECD/EEA Economic Instruments Database

Looking for information on instruments used for environmental policy and natural resource management?

This database, developed by the OECD and European Environment Agency, provides information on "environmentally related taxes, fees and charges, tradable permit systems, deposit refund systems, environmentally motivated subsidies and voluntary approaches used in environmental policy in OECD Member countries, EEA member countries and countries otherwise co-operating with EEA, not being members of OECD."

To search, select an environmental domain, issue or theme (water pollution, air pollution, climate change, etc.). Next, select one or more countries by placing a "tick" next to the relevant flags which appear. Then, click on "Submit" to obtain the information available.

eJournal USA: The Greening of U.S. Corporations

"This issue of eJournal USA delves into what those familiar with the history of the environmental movement in the United States might see as a surprising trend — the way U.S. corporations in recent years have embraced environmentally friendly ways of doing business. What prompts a corporation to “go green”?"

FUMSI

FUMSI publishes artcles, tools, and a monthly magazine, to give you practical help with information skills. Under How do I FUMSI?, click on the individual sections to find tips for finding, using, managing and sharing information.

Rubbish Free Year

Join New Zealand couple, Matthew and Waveney, as they rise to the challenge of spending a year without creating any rubbish. Lots of ideas, statistics and links included.

Good Stuff? - A Behind-the-Scenes Guide to the Things We Buy

"Have you ever wondered where chocolate comes from, if antibacterial soap is good for your family, or how to recycle an old computer? If you've had these or other questions about the environmental and social impacts of the products you buy and use, Good Stuff is for you. It contains many of the tips, facts, and links you'll need to start making more informed purchases that benefit your health and the environment."

Google Advanced Search Changes

Have you made use of the advanced search in Google? It provides more options to narrow your search and the page has recently changed to make it even easier to input your terms and select from a range of tools to refine your search further. Click on the link above to access the new format.

Australasian Digital Theses Program

This is a great site for locating new research produced at Australian universities. It provides full text digitised PhD and Masters by Research theses covering the years 1998 to present, with some earlier titles also scanned.

Newstext

Looking for full text newspaper articles from the last 10 years? Newstext provides access to over 150 News Corporation newspapers worldwide, including the Courier Mail, Sunday Mail and The Australian. NB There is a username and password to log on.

EcoLabelling.org

"This recently launched site has already compiled data on more than 260 of the world's estimated 410 green labelling schemes, with the overall goal of taking the mystery out of the bewildering herd of green labels by studying the foundations of all types of eco-labels aimed at both consumers and corporations."

Looking specifically for electronic documents on the EPA library catalogue?

Try this trick. In the 'Boolean Search' option, type your keyword and add 'and http' to narrow your search to any records that contain a web link.

Example: sustainability and http

Abbreviations.com

Browse acronyms and abbreviations by category. Select 'International' to access the 214 Australian entries.

The Centre for Natural Burial

"A modern natural burial is an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices where the body is returned to the earth to decompose naturally and be recycled into new life." This interesting site compares conventional funerals and natural burial options.

Here is just one excerpt from the extensive Media Archive: "Nearly a million gallons of embalming fluid is buried across North America each year...exposure to formaldehyde has led to a higher incidence of leukemia and cancers of the brain and colon among funeral directors."

Sapling.info

This architectural, planning and landscape information gateway features reviewed links to topics including sustainabiity, regneration, heritage and urban design.

Koedoe

Published by the South African National Parks (SANParks) in the interest of conservation globally, "Koedoe aims to provide information and insight into the areas of conservation and science within protected areas across Africa. The journal publishes papers on a wide range of themes and from a wide range of ecosystems, with a focus on protected areas of all kinds." Koedoe have recently announced that the journal will now be published online in an open journal format which means all articles will be available to download for free!

Scitopia

"Scitopia.org searches the entire electronic libraries of the leading [American]voices in major science and technology disciplines and provides relevant results, without the noise of other Internet search engines. More than three million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and technical conference papers, spanning 150 years of science and technology can be searched through the site."

Darwin on-line

This site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more. Works include 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of man, all editions of Origin of species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th).

Botanicus Digital Library

Botanicus is a freely accessible, web-based encyclopedia of digitized 18th and 19th century botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.

WaterWiser, the Water Efficiency Clearinghouse

Looking for news, information, research results, discussion forums, references and searchable information databases on water? Look no further! WaterWiser provides information on water conservation, efficiency and demand management to meet the information needs of the water conservation community. Produced and maintained by the American Water Works Association.

H2ouse Water Saver Home

This site is great! Take an online home tour to discover water saving opportunities in each area of your home. Plus, there are lots of useful resources to explore.

Try out these handy Google features!

Calculate
Type a calculation directly into Google, click enter and watch your answer appear!

Define:[word]
Need a quick definition? Easy! Type 'define:[followed by your word]' for instant word sleuthing.

Synonyms
Not getting enough hits? To broaden your search, type the 'tilde' symbol(~) before your chosen word to find synonyms of that word.

For more tips, see the Google Help Cheat Sheet

Livestock Library

The Livestock Library is freely available on the internet and provides full text access to information from 12 organisations, including the departments of agriculture and primary industries of all Australian states. The recent addition of a federated search allows users to search over 70,000 documents relating to Australian agriculture in a single search. This database may be useful for searching for information on the impacts of specific wildlife on crops, for example.

del.icio.us

Would you like to be able to store your favourite bookmarks online, enabling you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere? Or be able to collaborate with colleagues sharing useful websites via a shared account?

Introducing del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site, which enables you to tag your bookmarks to make it easier to organise and manage your online resources. To use, simply set up an account and you're away! For more assistance, please contact the library.

Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) includes a fully searchable Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 138,500 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format.

IDEAS

Looking for economic information? IDEAS claims to be the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and is freely available on the Internet. It contains over 550,000 items of research which can be browsed or searched, and over 450,000 can be downloaded in full text! Try it out today!

Ecohealth

EcoHealth is an international, peer-reviewed journal focusing on issues, research, and integration of knowledge at the interface of ecological and health sciences.

Society of Environmental Journalists

The website of SEJ provides a daily annotated environmental news service and links to websites and resources on topics from acid rain to zoos.

Bali Climate Change Conference

Website of the UN Climate Change Conference held in Bali; includes webcasts, documents, links to IPCC documents.

Australian Environmental Law Enforcement and Regulators Network

(AELERT) is a network of environmental regulatory agencies who are responsible for the management of natural resources or the protection of the environment. It aims to build relationships between jurisdictions to facilitate the sharing of information and to improve the regulatory compliance capacity of member agencies. It also seeks to develop national standards for training and best practice in environmental regulation.

Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute

The website of the Leopold Institute provides a wealth of free downloadable documents relating to wilderness research and management, recreation impacts, wildland fire and visitor use of wildnerness areas.

Clearwater Information Exchange

Clearwater is a not for profit programme aimed at increasing awareness of sustainable water management. You can freely use and contribute significant publications, case studies, research papers, ground breaking project reports on all types of water projects.

.ScienceDirect

Each year, ScienceDirect provides free access to the first issue for the year to many of their electronic journals. Titles of interest include Atmospheric environment, Biological conservation, Desalination, Environmental science & policy, Forest ecology & management, Freshwater ecology, J. of arid environments, J. of environmental management, Landscape & urban planning, and Water research.