Week 4 Assignment: Background Research Using Library Resources

Week Four Assignment

1. Electronic Reference:

The reference I used was titled “National Energy Policy in the United States” located in The Oxford Companion to Global Change, edited by David Cuff and Andrew Goudie. This was found using the Oxford Reference Collection.

Although indirectly related, the new information I learned was that the United States specifically takes up 25% of the global total for greenhouse gas emissions, largely caused by fossil fuel resources. This just shows that renewable resources are highly needed in today’s world—especially in the United States.

Some subtopics that relate to the search would be renewable energy standards versus how the relate to local economies and politics, possible national energy plans (since there is no current one), and how funding affects efficiency of solar cells. More possible research questions that arose while reading this were “besides finances, why does efficiency of PV materials rise when national funding is provided?” or “What is the relationship between efficiency of renewable energy resources and lower energy demand?”. Some more possible terms for future research. A distinctive term cold be clean energy needs, a broad term would be energy demand, a narrow term would be market correlations, and a related term would be gas emissions.

Comparing to the Wikipedia article found last week, it can be noted that there is a specific direction in this one. Whereas the Wikipedia article touched briefly on almost anything related to solar energy—this one hones in on political and economical needs of clean energy, compared to current energy. Also, the Oxford Reference Collection helps to zoom in on more specific research questions, depending on the article or title found.

2. Book from Search It, the Library’s Catalog:

The name of the book found when using SearchIt, is Global Energy Demand in Transition: The New Role of Electricity by Stephan L. Mintz and others. Some of the Subject Headings listed for this title are: electric power, power resources, electricity supply and such.

Just by looking at the description, not much can be told. It does show that a lot of information from the book came from an international conference in regards to the topic, and that it was held in Washington D.C. in 1994. If I wanted to get a copy of the book, I could pick it up at a whole bunch of locations, such as the WSU Vancouver library. If I’d want to take a drive, I could also pick it up at the University of Washington or Oregon State University. Personally, I’d just stop by the WSUV library.

3. eBook from Search It:

Using SearchIt, I found an eBook entitled: Energy Demand and Climate Change: Issues and Resolutions written by Franklin H. Cocks. Using the ASAP criteria from this week’s lesson, it can be noted that the author, Franklin H. Cocks is a notable and legitimate author. He is a current professor at Duke University and has done extensive research that is backed up by the Department of Energy.

The eBook also has extensive resources including NASA, NOAA, EPICA, and many others. I accessed this by opening up the book and looking at the “references” section. This book was written in 2009, giving it a total of 8 years—not too old, since it fits in the category of recent science. Lastly, the publisher is John Wiley & Sons which actually regularly produces academic journals and books.

4. Reflection: In your Research Journal:

Reflect on the work you did this week and write a paragraph that tells me how you feel about this process, what you learned and how you might do background research differently in the future. (about 100 words, please)

I’d have to say that this process was extremely extensive but helpful in understanding the subject matter. In fact, simply doing research on these three different references already gave me a solid sense of the research question I would focus on, and even some subcategories that I would focus on. It’s interesting to see that understanding the quality of sources, already helps in doing research on the subject matter.