Information about environmental science is often complex and spread disparately across the internet, making access time consuming and expensive, research by the British Library has found.
To tackle this problem, the library’s environmental sciences team has launched Envia, an online resource linking to reports, papers and datasets within the British Library’s collection and elsewhere on the internet.
“As a library we’re aware that we’re not a hotbed for environmental science,” says Johanna Kieniewicz, research and engagement manager for environmental sciences at the library. “We thought, ‘how can we serve the community in a relevant way?’ Through providing access to digital information that is otherwise a bit tricky to get one’s hands on.”
Discussions with academics, government agencies, non-government organisations and companies showed that issues ranged from difficulty in finding reports, particularly for those new to the field, to filtering out irrelevant material. Users said the main barriers to access were time and money. They also told the library that government reports, PhD theses and conference proceedings were the hardest documents to locate.
Because environmental science is such a large field, Kieniewicz says the team decided to initially focus on information about flooding, a subject chosen based on the priorities of the cross-council Living With Environmental Change programme.
“Even though flooding might seem quite specific, it’s still a broad topic,” says Natalie Bevan, content expert for environmental sciences at the library. “Trying to gather data from different sources and making it all accessible in a way that made sense was a difficult task to begin with.”
Envia, which has been live for about a month, has around 1,000 records so far. These have been built up from reports and data from LWEC’s
22 partners, including the seven research councils and government bodies such as the Met Office and Natural England.
David Macdonald, a hydrogeologist at the British Geological Survey, says the resource could be a “useful means to highlight what [other data] is available” but that there needs to be more information included for him to use it regularly.
Increasing the scope of the information is the next stage, says Bevan. Eventually she plans to include journal articles and NGO and charity reports, after which the challenge will be choosing the next research area to cover.
The team is asking for feedback from potential users via an online survey.