Environmental Engineering Students Use Mostly Web Sites in Their Bibliographies

For many years I have taught library skills to a class of Environmental Engineering students.  This course is required of all civil engineering majors.  I give my standard lecture on the organization of the scientific and technical literature and then discuss in detail the technical databases such as Scopus that would provide articles that they could use for their papers.  Here are the topics for this semester:

1. Nuclear Power Plants:

• What are the different types of nuclear power plants?

• What are the health/environmental concerns?

• What are the ways to address the health/environmental concerns? 

2. Tetrachloroethylene in Groundwater: 

• What is Tetrachloroethylene and how does it get into the groundwater?

• Why is it an environmental and health concern?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

3. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) 

• What are PAHs?

• What are the human health/environmental concerns?

• What are the ways to address the concerns?

4. Formaldehyde in Building Materials:

• What is Formaldehyde?

• Why is it an environmental and health concern in building materials?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

5. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System: 

• What is it/what does it do?

• What are the potential environmental concerns associated with the pipeline? 

• What are the ways to address the environmental/health concerns? 

6. Light Pollution:

• What is light pollution and what causes it?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

7. Mercury in Fish:  

• What is the source of Mercury?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation? 

8.  The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill:

• What was it?

• What were the environmental/health concerns?

• How was the situation addressed?

9. The Bhopal, India Disaster:

• What was it?

• What were the environmental and health concerns?

• What laws, regulations, or safety practices were developed after the disaster?

10. The Hurricane Katrina Disaster:

• When/where did the hurricane strike?

• What environmental/health concerns resulted from the hurricane?

• What are the ways to prevent similar environmental/health concerns in the future?

11. Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE) in Consumer Products:

• What is the source of PBDE?

• What are the environmental/health concerns?

• What are the ways to address the situation?

Anyway, the lecture was given in the third week of the semester, yet students always wait until the last minute to do the assignment. But is disappointing to see that two thirds of the references cited are from web sites. They just love to Google away to find information. At least the web sites were from reputable sources. But I feel badly when so much time and effort is devoted to teaching how to search the databases and students don't seem to pay attention.