Electronic Green Journal

Environmental Science is a high-enrollment, freshman-level course in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of North Texas. Dr. Ruthanne Thompson, one of the Environmental Science professors, asked the library liaison for the Biological Sciences Department to create reading lists to support student debates on evolution and global warming in the course. This paper describes the guidelines established for selecting the readings and the sources that yielded the most suitable readings for the debates. Besides impacting the science education of a large number of college students, the librarian saw an opportunity to introduce a green collaborative approach to the professor. The paper elucidates how the librarian and her graduate assistant used the bibliographic management software RefWorks and its collaborative feature RefShare to collect, organize and share the readings with each other and the professor without printing out any materials. The final reading lists are included as an appendix.