Guide to Shelfmarks
Journals
Electronic Books
Key Reference Books
Online Bibliographical Databases
Other Useful Library Resources
Useful Web Links

 Guide to Shelfmarks

The main collections of books can be found on Level 4 and Level 5 of the Library.

Books in heavy demand are placed in the Short Loan Collection on Level 1. The Short Loan Collection contains 1 day loan books; 7 day loan books are shelved with the ordinary loan books on the upper levels.

Use the Library catalogue to find the exact shelfmark and location for each book. If you are searching for books on a particular topic, use a keyword search.

The main collection of books for Environmental Engineering has shelfmarks beginning 614

 Journals

Printed Journals

These are kept in the library. Search by the journal title on the Library Catalogue to find out where a journal is shelved. Some current issues are shelved on Level 1.

Electronic Journals

The ejournals@surrey portal links to the full-text electronic journals available from the University of Surrey. You can view the full-text articles on screen and save, email, print them, create alerts for searches etc. Collections of Science e-journals are available at these sites (follow links from the ejournals@surrey portal)

 Electronic Books

You can use the Electronic Books page to access eBooks on Environmental Science and Engineering. The most useful collections for textbooks will be Environet BASE. Also relevant books are available via Safari Books online, Ebrary and Knovel as The Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences.

For dictionaries try Credo Reference.

There are also links from some titles on the Library catalogue to electronic versions of the text - look for "e-link"

 Key Reference Books

• Dictionary of Environmental Science & Technology QR 614.7(03)POR
• Engineering Tables and Data QR 62.01 HOW
  Useful figures, values, data, equations.
• Environmental Encyclopedia QR 614.7(03) ENV
• Kaye & Laby’s Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants. QR 53.081 KAY
  Compact and easy to use source of physical and chemical data.
• Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. 66 ENC
  This comprehensive, multi-volume work is the place to look first.
• Water Encyclopedia (Water supply; hydrology; wastewater) 551.148 LE

 Online Bibliographical Databases

Online databases are the best way to search by topic for journal articles. Some databases will link to the full text of articles, others will only supply bibliographic details. Key databases for Environmental Science and Engineering are:

Inspec is a major physics and astronomy database from The Institution of Engineering and Technology containing details of more than 11 million publications. It includes significant coverage of areas such as geophysics, oceanography, mineralogy, crystallography and planetary geology.

Scopus is an interdisciplinary database that indexes the contents of nearly 18000 journals in the physical sciences, engineering, earth and environmental sciences, life and health sciences, social sciences, business and management. It contains 38 million references from 1823 to date.  

ISI web of science delivered by the national data centre, MIMAS, this service includes access to the Science Citation Index database, which is an inter-disciplinary index to over 5,300 journals in physical, natural and biomedical science and technology.

Digimap is a collection of EDINA services that deliver maps and map data of Great Britain to UK tertiary education. Data is available either to download to use with appropriate application software such as GIS or CAD, or as maps generated by Digimap online.

 Other Useful Library Resources

Newspapers

The Library takes certain daily British broadsheet newspapers. Recent copies are on Level 1 of the Library and older copies are kept on Level 2.

British newspapers and a huge variety of international papers can also be read electronically on Nexis.

Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985: The complete digital edition of The Times (London) capturing the entire newspaper, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

Also of interest may be The Times (1910-1999) and The Sunday Times (1970-1999) which are held on microform on Level 2 of the Library.

Statistics

The Library's printed statistics collection is on Level 2. The collection includes statistics from the British Government and international organisations. There are two sequences in the statistics collection, books/monographs all with the shelfmark beginning 31 and also statistical periodicals shelved in A-Z order by title.

Check StatnetBase The full text of 70 books in the field of statistics

Some useful websites are:

National Statistics - The site for the UK's official statistics, it includes information on the economy, population, and society.

ESDS International This is a database only available by using your Athens username and password. ESDS International provides access to a range of datasets including macro data from OECD, IMF, World Bank and IEA.

Eurostat -The EU Statistical Office. It is possible to view structural, long, and short term indicators free of charge as well as the online version of Statistics in Focus which provides information on key statistical surveys.

EDC

The EDC collection is on Level 2 of the Library and contains a variety of materials produced by the Official Publications Office and other agencies and institutions of the EU

Standards and  Patents

The Standards and Patents page tells you which sets of standards are available for use in the Library and on the web and where to find them. The University Library subscribes to the complete set of British Standards Online.

The library does not keep copies of patents. You can search for worldwide patents via the UK Patent Office web site but you cannot obtain the full text online. Once you have identified a patent you want, you can obtain a copy through the InterLibrary Loan service.

Exam Papers

The Exam Papers Database offers past papers from 1998.

Guides to Referencing

Look at the help pages provided by the University of Surrey.

Further guides are available from:

University of Birmingham and Bournemouth University (especially useful for citing electronic references.)

Also look at Pears, R. A and Shields, G. (2010) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 8th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. which is available in the Library at 808.02 PEA

 Useful Web Links 

Intute

Intute Gateway to subject catalogues (including Civil Engineering) with links to high quality Internet sites, selected and described by specialists from within British academia.

The Virtual Training Suite offers free tutorials on Internet research skills to help with your university course.

Online Textbooks

Stratospheric ozone: an electronic textbook was produced under NASA funding and provides sound coverage of the subject by chapter, accompanied by figures, review questions and references.

Causes of climate change: introduction to the atmosphere This is a section from an online textbook (Fundamentals of Physical Geography, Michael Pidwirny, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada) which discusses causes of climate change.

Reference Works

Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and interactions with society.

Glossary of energy terms is produced by the California Energy Commission and is an alphabetical listing of terms relating to energy in its various forms.

Course Materials

Environmental resource management: theory of resource management lecture notes The Town and Regional Planning Department at the University of Dundee produced a series of four lecture notes on environmental resource management.

Water resource systems, fall 2006: 1.731 These course notes are provided by the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as part of the MIT OpenCourseWare project.

E-Learning Materials

World lecture hall publishes links to pages created by faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver course materials in any language. Materials are organised into subject categories and may include course syllabuses, assignments, lecture notes, exams, class calendars, multimedia textbooks, etc.

Exploring the environment: modules and activities is an online series of modules that aim to introduce students to environmental problems using problem-based learning (PBL).

Possible degradation of the Earth's atmosphere: remote sensing tutorial contains details of space observations of a number of changes in the Earth's climate and atmosphere, part of the "Remote Sensing Tutorial", hosted at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Radioactive decay calculator from the Health, Safety and Environment Department of the University of British Columbia, Canada, provides a calculator for determining the decay of radioactive materials.

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) The aim of the Subject Centre is to support and enhance learning and teaching in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES).

Publications

OpenDOAR offers access to repositories worldwide and provides a trial search service for the full-text of material held in open access repositories listed in the Directory.

Academic papers

Peer-reviewed papers are key to academic research on environmental issues. Your lecturers will point you to some on your reading lists, and we will look at other ways of finding them later, but here are some examples:

• Elements of good practice in integrated river basin management: a practical resource for implementing the EU water framework directive produced by the WWF, this document focuses on the topics discussed in seminars on water and agriculture; the role of wetlands in river basin management; and good practice in river basin planning and details the key issues.
• Petrol lead in a small island environment published in the International Journal of Risk and Safety, this paper investigates the connection between high blood lead levels in the Maltese population and the environment in which they live.
• Climate change 101: understanding and responding to global climate change This page provides access to a series of reports created by The Pew Centre for Global Climate Change.

Official documents

Official reports can also help inform research. This is just a taster to show you the sort of thing we mean:

• Main findings of the IPCC special report on carbon dioxide capture and storage outlines the methods and uses of carbon capture and storage for the removal of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
• EU's contribution to shaping a future global climate change regime is a webpage from the European Commission's section on Environment. It provides information and documents on the Commission's comprehensive package of measures to establish a new Energy Policy for Europe and efforts to keep climate change to manageable levels.
• Department of Energy and Climate Change The Department's website provides information and access to official documents on climate change, what causes it, how the world and the UK could be affected, what is being done by the Government to tackle the effects of climate change, and how industry, businesses, and individuals can do their bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Open Archives

Directory of open access journals: environmental sciences provides access to hundreds of quality controlled, open access journals across numerous subject areas, including environmental sciences.

Ethics in science and environmental policies is an open access journal published by the Inter-Research Science Center, Germany.

Energy and environmental science is a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) to draw together various aspects of "the chemical sciences relating to energy conversion and storage, alternative fuel technologies and environmental science".

Journal of environmental policy and planning The website of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, an academic journal that aims to provide "a forum for the critical analysis of environmental policy and planning".

Journal of the air and waste management association is a scholarly publication issued by the Air and Waste Management Association (A and WMA).

GEOBASE: the bibliographic database for the earth, geographical and ecological sciences is a multidisciplinary database supplying bibliographic information and abstracts for development studies, the earth sciences, environmental science, geosciences, human geography, and oceanography.

GeoRef information services: American Geological Institute (AGI) provides access to the world's geoscience literature.

Other Library Catalogues

COPAC is a union catalogue, giving free access to the merged online catalogues of many of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland plus the British Library. It contains records of over 31 million library resources.

British Library catalogues on the web The British Library is the national library of the UK and receives a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland. Their catalogues list over 150 million items held in the collections - most of which can be ordered by inter-library loan from your local library.

Other libraries' web catalogues a list of other library catalogues on the Internet, including the national libraries of other countries.

Geological Society: library catalogue provides access to over 300,000 volumes of books and serials, takes around 800 current serial titles and has a collection of over 35,000 maps.

Internet Search Tools

Intute: environment provides free access to high quality resources on the Internet covering climate and environment; energy and resources; environmental economics; environmental law and legislation; environmental management and conservation; environmental policy; landscapes; pollution science; and waste management.

ECOLEX: the gateway to environmental law is an information service on environmental law, operated jointly by FAO, IUCN and UNEP. It combines the environmental law information holdings of the organisations and seeks to put this information at the disposal of users worldwide.

DestiNet: sustainable tourism information portal is an information portal that aims to present and disseminate best practice in sustainable tourism development.

World wide web virtual library: sustainable development is art of the WWW Virtual Library, maintained by staff at the Center for Economic and Social Studies on the Environment. The resource offers annotated links to organisations, journals, events, archives, databases, and other information resources in the field of sustainable development.

Online Data Services

Survey of contaminated land in Wales This dataset is hosted by the UK National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD) and provides access to data gathered for the Welsh Office to "identify the extent and nature of land contamination in Wales".

Scottish environment statistics online provides access to a range of environmental statistics provided by the Scottish Executive.

European diatom database (EDDI) developed by Steve Juggins at Newcastle University, and funded by the European Commission, is an online database and environmental reconstruction system developed to aid the application of diatom analysis to problems of surface water acidification, eutrophication and climate change.

UK air quality archive provides up to date information on air pollution across the UK, and provides an extensive database of statistics relating to air quality in the UK from 1960 to the present day.

Organisations

Institution of Environmental Sciences is the professional body for UK environmental scientists.

Royal Geographical Society with IBG is the United Kingdom's learned society for Geography and Geographers. The Society supports and promotes many aspects of the geosciences and environmental science.

Society for the Environment (SocEnv) the independent body that regulates the award of the Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) qualification.

Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) is the professional body which represents waste management professionals predominantly in the UK but also overseas.

British Wind Energy Association its roots are in the academic, research and environmental movements in support of wind energy. The site has links that include: wind farms in the United Kingdom, and events and news.

Government Bodies

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) The Department's remit covers the environment, sustainable development, rural development, wildlife and countryside, farming, food and drink, animal health and welfare, fisheries, plants and seeds, horticulture, and water.

Environment Agency This site gives information about the Agency, its objectives and activities. There are descriptions of environmental issues and links to relevant sites for each of them.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the UK Government department with the overall aim of creating the conditions for business success; and helping the UK respond to the challenge of globalisation.

European Commission: Environment The site includes information on environmental legislation, funding opportunities and the Commission's main policy areas e.g., climate change, air quality, waste, water, urban environment, protection and biodiversity, chemicals, environmental law, and radiation protection.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) aims to encourage sustainable development by promoting environmentally friendly practice. The site provides extensive information about UNEP's work and programmes, its organisation, divisions and services, events, and publications.

Research Centres & Councils

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research conducts trans-disciplinary research that aims to advance the science of integration, and to search for, evaluate and promote sustainable solutions to climate change.

Natural Environment Research Council is the leading body in the UK for research, survey, monitoring and training in the environmental sciences.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is the largest of the UK's research councils which aim to ensure the existence, within the UK, of thriving generic technologies of the kind that industry needs and uses.

Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum on Environmental Research (SNIFFER) identifies and manages environmental research on behalf of members and stakeholders.

Environmentalresearchweb offers news and analysis to the environmentally informed. It is hosted by the Institute of Physics (IOP).

Gateways

Journal TOCs  is a free service which provides Tables of Contents to the latest scholarly journals.

TechXtra is a free service where you can find books, articles and websites. There is also industry news, technical reports and technical data.

Academic Information
An engineering Gateway from the US

Academic Information - Water Resources
A Gateway to information in environmental studies, law, oceanography, geology, agriculture, marine studies, etc. [US bias]

Climate Data Online
The National Climate Data Center maintains the US Climatic Data Online (CDO) system, providing records from the late 1800s. Currently provided at no charge to .edu and .noaa users, with charges by credit card for others.

ContaminatedLAND.co.uk
A large amount of information on contaminated land in the UK is available at this site. It is aimed at environmentalists and planners who are working in the field. The site includes background papers on contamination, its causes, relevant legislation and standards, and site investigation procedures, plus details of forthcoming conferences, the full text of some case studies, and many links to other web resources.

ELDIS
Information on environmental issues, management, economics, disasters, social issues.

The Engineer Includes industry news items, an events listing, a company directory and links to websites

Envirolink Network [Non UK]
EnviroLink Network is an on-line environmental information service, and clearinghouse of on-line environmental information. The Environmental Library includes events announcements, e-mail list archives, government resources directory, organization, current issues listings.

ETDEWEB
ETDE World Energy Base includes information on the environmental impact of energy production and use, including climate change; energy R&D; energy policy; nuclear; coal; renewable energy technologies and much more. Free Access is available to all users on the UniS campus.

RUDI
Resource for Urban Design Information

 Associations / Institutions

Engineering Council
The national representative body of the engineering profession.

European Society for Engineering Education
SEFI is a non-profit making organisation which aims to promote information on engineering education, develop cooperation between educational engineering institutions, and promote cooperation between industry and educational institutions.

This site gives information about the Society, its membership, its Working Groups,its publications, and a diary of forthcoming SEFI meetings and events.

Energy Institute
Publications, News and Meetings

International Institute for Environment and Development
IIED aims to provide expertise and leadership in researching and achieving sustainable development at local, national, regional and global levels.

Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment
The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment is the UK's leading professional body for individuals involved in environmental management in industry, commerce and local government. The IEMA server provides information on, and news from, the Institute, together with key Institute and other documents. Links to related sites are given.

Conferences & Events

Z-Electronic table of contents (ZETOC) is a searchable database of the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents. This includes around 20,000 current journals and around 16,000 conference proceedings published per year dating back to 1993, and is updated on a daily basis. It includes an email alerting service.

The Royal Geographical Society annual conference provides opportunities to attend seminars and network with professionals and academics in the environmental sciences.

Blogs

Globalisation and the environment This topical blog is run by Rob Elliott, Matt Cole and David Maddison, three environmental economists at the University of Birmingham. It complements their website which examines different economic aspects of the globalisation and the environment debate, and to which a link is given from the blog.

Greenbang is an online news service in blog format which reports on innovations in environmental technology and other possible solutions to global climate change.

Message boards

Environment site forum This forum site has threads discussing a wide range of topics including environmental news, global warming, climate change, solar energy, GMOs, energy conservation, wind energy, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, biofuels, deforestation and recycling.

Video sharing sites

bigpicture.tv: talking heads, talking sense Big Picture TV, a fully independent video channel from journalist Marcus Morrell, "streams free video clips of leading experts, thinkers and activists in environmental and social sustainability".

Google Earth - climate change in our world Climate Change in Our World is a collaboration between the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Google, which provides links to two Google Earth interactive animations illustrating how climate change could affect the Earth.

Podcasts

Ecologist TV The online version of the Ecologist, the environmental affairs magazine, provides access to podcasts covering environmental issues by scientists and well-known environmentalists.

Science magazine: science podcast The Science Magazine website provides podcasts built around the latest stories that are found within their journal and sister sites.

Email discussion lists

JISCmail is the national academic mailing service for the UK. Check its directories for relevant lists. It is possible to search descriptions of lists and archived messages before you decide to sign up.

Land use and environment: JISCmail is a searchable webpage of mailing list archives in the areas of land use and environment from the UK JISCmail academic mailing list service.

SDRN list The Sustainable Development Research Network Mailing List from JISCmail provides a forum for the exchange of information on sustainable development research in the UK and worldwide.

GEO-ENV list The Geological Society Environment Group (GEO-ENV) Mailing List, hosted by JISCmail, is a list which incorporates the activities of the Geological Society Environment Group and provides a forum for discussing the interface of environmental issues with geology.

News & Media

EarthWire/UK: the environmental news portal EarthWire/UK provides a free daily overview of environmental news from the United Kingdom.

Environment: NewScientist considers the ways in which humans may be damaging the environment, and the consequences of that damage.

Environment times is a UK based website collecting together the latest environmental news articles and environmental prosecutions.

Earth times the electronic version of the Earth Times, a leading independent, international and non-partisan newspaper focusing on the environment and sustainable development.

Environmental news network is an online news service that aims to create environmental awareness on critical issues. The site provides a daily news service with features and special reports.

Air pollution: SciDev.Net The Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) is a non-profit organisation which provides authoritative information on developments in science and technology for the developing world. This section of the SciDev.net provides a collection of news, articles, opinions, analyses and background information on air pollution and its effects on climate, agriculture and human health.