Sunday Evening Reads...On Monday!
A Few Resources For Your Own Research
“The Environment & Society Portal is a gateway to open access resources on the human-environment relationship.”
Most of us need to do research, at least occasionally, and today we usually just “Google it”. That can work, depending on what you enter into the search engine and how you evaluate the hundreds of thousands of results that pop up on your screen.
In my day we went to the library, perused catalogues of hand written or typed index cards and received assistance from a kindly, always knowledgeable librarian. And over half a century later, you can still receive that kind of personal help with your research at your local library—for free!
The pandemic and its shutdowns, though, left all of us stranded in front of our computers, desperate to uncover a bit of trustworthy “how to” advice or do a deeper dive into our topics of interest.
For today’s post (now Monday Evening Reads —I took a detour for the Oscars last night), I thought I’d put together a few sources to help you conduct and evaluate your research.
— First up, I highly recommend a newsletter written by a reference librarian and fellow Substack writer, Audrey Hood, who writes The Civic Librarian at theciviclibrarian.substack.com. Ms. Hood describes herself as “…passionate about connecting people with resources that facilitate civic curiosity and engagement.”
I think the information she provides in her newsletter is vital to connect us with our government, to understand what it offers us, and in turn, what we can do to contribute more fully to our country and fellow citizens. And I use it regularly for my own research. If you want to learn about the vast amount of information provided by our very own government and how to access it, look no further than The Civic Librarian!
Although you will find this information in The Civic Librarian as well, I want to highlight two government sources in particular that I have found helpful:
—This is a specific page of the government website, usa.gov that allows you to easily search for “Commonly Requested U.S. Laws and Regulations”. If you want to read about, say, environmental laws, you can simply click on the “Environmental Laws and Regulations” link and up pops every environmental law we’v got.
— The Freedom of Information Act webpage is another important starting point for research. This page explains how to make a request from any government agency to receive copies of the records it is required to keep.
And here’s a link to the Freedom of Information Act statute itself, so you can attempt to understand (it ain’t easy), which documents are public and that you may review, and those that are specifically excluded from disclosure to the public. The general rule is that most everything that is an official “record” of a government agency is considered public, unless otherwise specifically excluded under the statute. A typical exclusion, for example, is an attorney-client privileged document.
— Another important government resource is a link to all of the benefits you might qualify to receive from the government, like cash assistance, SNAP benefits (food stamps), Medicaid and Medicare and disaster assistance, among others.
— And finally for this evening, here is a concise explanation of how to properly evaluate the research you discover. Do you want to feel comfortable that a source you are using for information is reliable? The University of California at Berkley has a a step by step strategy for you.
https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-resources
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these resources and others you may use to do your research. What have you “Googled” lately? And you can feel free to ask me any questions on properly evaluating sources—I’m happy to help!
Let ‘er rip in the Comment Section below.
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A little late to the game, but thank you so much for the shoutout, Joan! I am so glad that the resources I provide support your research. Government information is a part of our everyday lives, for sure!
You are quite correct that the ability to do research is important so that one can come to an understanding of what is going on in order to make up ones mind as to how to proceed. But the problem occurs when that process is restricted by gatekeepers that truncate the access to information so that all information that one might need is not available. This is an issue that has come to the fore on the internet. A venue that was designed to provide access to all sorts of information is now being restricted by those who make that information possible because they have determined that only certain information is deemed to be trustworthy. They are effectively censoring research. And you bring up the FOIA act! The notion here is that what is determined at the governmental level should be accessible to all. But I can tell you that a high-level state government official with whom I had exactly this conversation told me directly something to the effect that “do you think that I am stupid enough to put in to writing what is really going on so that anyone can see it”. Research is necessary; but it can only be valuable if there are absolutely no restrictions on the information that one can access. And censorship, of any kind, is destructive of what you want to call “research.” And what I would call the freedom to speak and to think.