Selecting and Evaluating Environmental Information Resources in Public Libraries

The Chicago Public Library's interest in the environmental sciences dates from March 1971 when it was announced that Montgomery Ward and Company was giving the library $25,000 to establish a special environmental sciences collection. This collection is to serve as a memorial to Aaron Montgomery Ward who played an instrumental role in the early efforts leading to the preservation of Chicago's lakefront. Chicago thus became the third large public library to formally establish a special collection dealing with the environmental sciences. Previously, the Denver and Minneapolis public libraries had embarked upon programs to develop special environment collections emphasizing, respectively, wildlife and conservation. In order to avoid duplicating the efforts of the Denver and Minneapolis libraries, the Chicago Public Library has chosen to concentrate on five specific areas of the environmental sciences: ecology; environmental health; the legal aspects of environmental problems; the causes, effects, and control of pollution; and problems of the urban environment. The Ward funds are being received at the rate of $5,000 per year over a five-year period and are being supplemented as far as possible by regular library funds. Although all of the material obtained so far for this collection has been printed, it is expected that audiovisual and other nonprint materials will eventually be included and play an important role in providing environmental information to the users of the Chicago Public Library. The reading levels provided by this collection range from introductory works for the beginning student and layman to advanced treatises for researchers with a special knowledge of and interest in the environmental sciences.published or submitted for publicatio