Everglades Digital Library

The Everglades Digital Library (EDL) is hosted by the Digital Collections Center at Florida International University (FIU) Libraries in Miami.
The EDL was established in 1996 to make information resources about the Everglades more accessible to researchers, educators, and decision makers in this region. Several scholarly organizations and government offices throughout south Florida house historical information about the Everglades, so the EDL works closely with these groups to bring these resources together.
The EDL is subdivided into three separate collections:

• Everglades Education Consortium;
• Everglades Online; and
• Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884 to 1934.
  

Additional special features include

• a selection of links to other historical, research, educational, and cultural sites, which contain photographic images or PDF files of the documents. One can browse the individual collections or browse by subject classification.
• The Advanced Search feature offers options to limit to resource type, language, audience, format, and education level.
• The Ask an Everglades Librarian link allows site visitors to pose additional questions via e-mail.
• Anyone can create an account from either the Browse or Search section on the site.
  • Once a user is logged in, however, it is no longer possible to access some of the resources that are linked from the original home page.
  • Visitors can post comments on the site, but this reviewer found this feature to be extremely problematic because every document she looked at contained myriad unrelated posts with questionable content or advertisements.

The information resources found in the Everglades Digital Library are very useful and valuable to both undergraduate and graduate students. The content would also be useful for educators and even K-12 students (but only if the posted comments were not readily accessible). Reviewed in 2010 April CHOICE [American Library Association]. Site visited Jan 2010.
Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates through researchers/faculty. -- C. S. McCoy, University of South Florida