Research Guides: GLBL 280: Global Environmental Issues &amp; Alternatives: Books, Government Publications, & Online Documents

What are these resources good for?

Books: Background information and discussion of the topic from a variety of angles
Government publications: Information from the country's government -- these would be considered PRIMARY SOURCES, but you need to take this information with a grain of salt.
Online documents: Find non-traditional materials such as white papers, conference proceedings, etc.

Books, Government Publications, and Online Documents

LibrarySearch This link opens in a new window
Search for items (e.g., books) owned by the UO Libraries, Summit Libraries; also for articles and other scholarly research materials.
WorldCat This link opens in a new window
WorldCat provides access to library catalogs from around the world. The database contains millions of bibliographic records describing books, journals, recordings, videos,and much more. Request an item from WorldCat via interlibrary loan only if you can't get it through the UO or Summit.

Individual Governments & Government Agencies

United States:

Other countries:

See also: "Finding Government Information via Google", below

Europa World Plus This link opens in a new window
Political, social and economic information about countries and world regions. Includes government directories, so you can, for example, find the name of a country's department or ministry that deals with environmental issues.

IGO and International Sites

Official Documents of the United Nations (ODS)
ODS covers all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. Resolutions are available from 1946.
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
World Bank - Environment Reports & Data
European Environment Agency (EU)
International Environmental Treaties Database
Created by UO Professor Ron Mitchell. Database of information about treaties, with links to some treaty texts and associated data for selected environmental treaties.

CIAO: Columbia International Affairs This link opens in a new window
Wide range of scholarship focusing on international affairs that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences.

ELDIS: Electronic Development and Environment Information System
Online documents on development topics from thousands of sources, available via the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the U. of Sussex.

Find Government Websites & Publications using Google

Enter your topic's keywords and then, in the Search by Site or Domain box, type: your country's country domain extension.

However, you may also need to find the government domain extension, if there is one.

For Francophone countries that is".gouv", e.g. .gouv.sn for Senegal
For Spanish-speaking countries it's ".gob", e.g. .gob.sv for El Salvador
For English-speaking countries, or where English is one of the official languages, or for English-language pages from countries with non-Roman alphabets, try ".gov", e.g. .gov.vn for Viet Nam
In the Language box, pull down the menu and select English
- Some documents will only be in the language of that country, and thus must be searched for in that language.