Blog Action Day 2009

Blog Action Day inspired me to dust off the old blog and begin posting. According to www.blogactionday.org this is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. How fun! This year the topic is climate change.

So my question became how does the issue of climate change relate to the school library media center? I could discuss how we strive to be good stewards of our resources, limiting print materials when electronic while suffice, recycling old paper, etc. Doesn't sound very progressive. Instead, I'll share how research went this week with a class that was researching climate change. No, this isn't a set-up. They were already scheduled for research days BEFORE I found the topic!

First, the issue gave me a chance to introduce the class to a new database from Gale: Global Issues in Context. This amazing database gathers Gale print reference material, topic overview essays, news, podcasts, magazine articles, etc. from around the world, providing a global viewpoint of topics (exactly what Blog action day is supposed to do!). For instance, if you are researching H1N1 the topic portal provides podcasts from Great Britain, video and images from China and Mexico, news article from Africa and Egypt, as well as statistical data and encyclopedia articles on influenza. I can think of no topic more globally connected than the issue of climate change, so off we went.

After a brief introduction to the resources students were off and running. The teacher required that each question needed to be answered using 3 different resources (triangulating data is an important research concept, especially when web searching). It was great to see the students enganged in the information seeking process as well as the discusion that followed.

One student was particularly interested to note that the statistical information provided on the geocraft website (www.geocraft.com/WVfossils/greenhouse_data.html) raises the question of how much of the "greenhouse effect" is caused by human activity. Statistical, the debate is weather water vapor is used in the calculating the equation. IF it is NOT used, than the human contribution is significant. If water vapor is used in the analysis, human contribution is negligable. My only concern as an information specialist is that the data provided on the website is from 1998-early 2000's.

I'm sure that this will help fuel the climate change debate!