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HIST BC2385 Global Environmental History (Fall 2024)

A research guide for Professor Caglioti's Global Environmental History Class (Fall 2024)
Reference materials include things like dictionaries, handbooks, bibliographies, and encyclopedias. They can provide general overviews of a particular topic, definitions, lists of relevant published materials, etc. They can be general or specialized in nature and are an excellent starting point for your research and can help you generate keywords and phrases that you can use as search terms in the library catalog.

Environmental History Reference

Environmental Studies Reference

General Reference including Encyclopedias

Scholarly Encyclopedias

Similar to Wikipedia, these resources provide an overview on a given topic, but the authors are experts in the fields they are covering. Below you will find a few general encyclopedia collections with coverage across a wide variety of fields. 

 

 

 

On Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia's coverage is vast. It can be useful, but it's important to remember that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone in the world, and some articles are more reliable and accurate than others. As with any source you use, it's important to verify the information you find.  

Strengths of Wikipedia

  • Wikipedia is updated frequently. New information can be, and often is, added to the site within minutes. Due to editorial limitations, scholarly encyclopedias are usually updated annually. 
  • Because Wikipedia crowd sourced, there is the potential for a broader authorship than is found in academic publications. 
  • Citations in Wikipedia offer a wider array of materials, including articles and resources that are available for free and online.

Weaknesses of Wikipedia

  • Editors on Wikipedia are not necessarily experts. Authorship on Wikipedia is often anonymous or obscured.
  • Articles are always changing, making them difficult to cite in your research. An article you read today, may look quite different tomorrow.
  • Articles can be vandalized, providing wildly inaccurate information.

Ways to use Wikipedia

  • Use Wikipedia to get a general idea about a topic you are interested in.
  • Wikipedia is great for generating keywords for further searching in CLIO and elsewhere.
  • Check the citations, recommended resources and external links to guide you to more scholarly work.

 

Suze Meyers, Feminist Wikipedia, 2016.