The spookiest month of the year is here, and with the month of October comes crisp fall air, pumpkin spice flavored foods, and midterm papers and projects. While we hope you\u2019re enjoying all things fall, we’d like to remind you that we’re here to help you with all things research. Just take a look at some of the intriguing topics we helped our patrons find information on lately.<\/p>\n
As evident from this varied list, there\u2019s no topic too spooky for us to tackle at the Research Help Desk!<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an in-depth look at a research question we helped one of our patrons find scholarly information about recently through our instance messaging service.<\/p>\n
Question<\/strong>: I\u2019m looking for resources, mainly research articles, to help with a presentation in my environmental science class. The topic is surrounding green building. The point of the class is looking at possible ways to reduce the impacts of global warming. Any tips?<\/p>\n Answer:<\/strong> The best place to start is our Research Guides<\/a>, and more specifically our Environmental Science & Studies Research Guide<\/a> where you can find a list of databases under the \u201cArticles\u201d link. The biggest and most useful database for your topic would be Environment Complete<\/a>, but you can actually search across that database and several others at the same time.<\/p>\n Choosing the right keyword is important when searching a database. One phrase that you could use that resonates very well with the language the database uses is \u201csustainable buildings.\u201d I\u2019d also recommend limiting your publication dates to just a few years (e.g. since 2013), because there\u2019s been a lot of change in this area in the last few decades.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an enormous amount of literature on this topic, so you will need to narrow your search even more. One way would be to think of an additional aspect you\u2019re interested in such as type of building (e.g. offices, commercial, retail, educational, etc.). Another aspect might be the energy efficiency of the buildings or you could look at physics and energy transfer characteristics of the building materials (e.g. solar heating, insulation, materials, glass).<\/p>\n Another hot topic for green\/sustainable buildings is \u201cgreen roofs.\u201d This link shows you search results for green roofs: http:\/\/bit.ly\/2NSa7YR<\/a> I limited the results to the past five years and scholarly journal publications. The key is to experiment with your keywords and use other key terms that express the aspects of your main topic that you\u2019re interested in the most.<\/p>\n Just as we enjoyed helping this patron, we would love to help with any research needs you may have as well. You don\u2019t even have to visit us in person to get research help. Through our Ask a Librarian service,<\/a> you can call, text, email, or chat with us about your research needs. You can also make one-on-one appointments with our research librarians to get in depth research help on your topic. How spooktakular is that? Thanks for reading and happy fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The spookiest month of the year is here, and with the month of October comes crisp fall air, pumpkin spice flavored foods, and midterm papers and projects. While we hope you\u2019re enjoying all things fall, we’d like to remind you that we’re here to help you with all things research. Just take a look at <\/p>\n