About the Environmental and Energy Resources Library

About eERL

www.eerl.org

The electronic Environmental and Energy Resources Library (EERL) is a project of the Advanced Technology Environmental and Energy Center (ATEEC) at Eastern Iowa Community Colleges. The library is a multi-faceted clearinghouse of valuable electronic resources. EERL is supported in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

Active since 1999, ATEEC has been a collaboration of Eastern Iowa Community Colleges (EICC), the Davenport Public Library (DPL), the Partnership for Environmental Technology Education (PETE), and MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment (LFEE). EICC, DPL, and private librarians bring the skills to properly catalogue the resources recommended by the collaborators and reviewed/vetted by EERL's handpicked team of environmental and energy educators and practitioners.

This electronic library collects STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) resources tied to environmental and energy technology resource information—from classroom-ready materials to regulatory information and global environmental and energy issues. Some of the areas include: air quality, emergency preparedness and response, energy, natural resources management, safety and health, and sustainability. Vocational areas are covered also, from agriculture, automotive, and green building to manufacturing technology.

EERL's team of expert community college educators and practitioners evaluate and recommend valid, up-to-date content. EERL's carefully chosen resources are incorporated into the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) database regularly, offering another way to access EERL and many other NSDL libraries. See NSDL's site: http://nsdl.org.

Thanks to the EERL Selection Team, for their participation in the maintenance and expansion of this NSDL portal digital library. If you would like to help with the process, contact ATEEC at ateec@eicc.edu.

Community College Role in Digital Libraries

EERL is a product of a community college-based NSF center, ATEEC. As the only community college digital library portal in NSDL, EERL becomes a tool to extract vital information for students and educators. EERL serves to link research on STEM resources tied to environmental and energy technology content and make it available to high school and middle school as well to its niche of community college education. EERL is working with the Gender Diversity and Technology Institute to make its resources available to middle school students with a focus on engaging girls in STEM education.

Community colleges enroll 10.4 million students annually in college transfer and workforce preparation credit and noncredit programs. 44% of all undergraduates are attending community colleges with 58% of those students being women, 46% African Americans, 55% Hispanic, 46% Asian, and 55% Native American undergraduate students attend community colleges.

Who uses EERL?

Educators

• Clearinghouse of environmental and energy resource information— from classroom-ready materials to regulatory information and global environmental issues
• Reliable resources for the classroom, reviewed/vetted by expert educators and practitioners
• Searchable bibliographic information, expertly crafted and organized by librarians to help educators quickly find the right resources for their needs
• Provides a place to submit the excellent resources identified by educators
• Promotes sharing of information
• Teacher's Guide to assist in finding ideas to customize for classes without starting from scratch

EERL for Students

• Reliable resources reviewed and recommended by expert educators and practitioners in environmental technology
• Quick location of resources using keyword or advanced search or browse
• Easy to locate regulatory information online—cut down on research time
• Career information, from locating internships and potential employers to how-to's for job search
• Links to organizations, associations, and contacts in different fields
• Good place to contribute resources to be reviewed and potentially to become part of EERL
• Contains hot topics and emerging trends, like green building, sustainability, renewable energy, etc.
• Tools available to refine the search process

EERL for Practitioners

• Advanced search techniques to find resources quickly and easily
• Links to associations and organizations to keep in touch with colleagues and emerging trends in the field
• Links to keep up with the job market and opportunities in many fields
• Easy to research regulations and receive update messages on new aspects to regulations
• Interactive e-Reference service
• Resource rating and a “Recommender” function to review other users' evaluations
• Technical forums to share and discuss timely topics