Sample Review Exercise

 

Topic:  Global Seed Bank

 

NOTE:  This is a fairly extensive documentation of my process in order to ensure that you had a good example to consult.  Also, because of the currency of this topic, the focus of this process was on electronic sources, although I did search the catalog for print material as well.  For those of you in ancient cultures, print works may yield important results, as your topics are less currency dependent.  This may also be true for the other clusters if you are exploring fundamental topics, such as gravity, and not topics that are brand new discoveries. 

 

If you have questions, please contact me. 

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Research Process

 

            To gain a general understanding of the topic, I began my research with general references sources, choosing the standard encyclopedia Britannica Online.  In searching “global seed bank” in this tool, I found the following article:  “International Seed Bank,” which was under the “Agricultural Policy” section of the Encyclopedia.  The bibliographic data for that article is "Agriculture and Food Supplies” from Encyclopædia Britannica. Year in Review 2006. Published in Encyclopædia Britannica Online, http://search.eb.com/eb/article-258113.  I conducted this search on November 5, 2007.  From reading this brief article, I began to consider an ‘angle’ for my topic.  I could choose a topic that is political, environment, historical, or biological. 

 

I found the following pieces of information in the article:

• The vault was begun in June, 2006 (I inferred the date from the fact that this article is part of the “Year in Review 2006”
• Svalbard International Seed Vault
• Spitsbergen, the main island of the Svalbard Islands, a Norwegian archipelago
• Endorsed by more than 100 countries
• Individual countries were to provide the seed samples to be preserved
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This article is factual and should be reliable, considering the source is an authorized encyclopedia.  Some sample questions might be:

• What is a global seed bank?
• Who maintains it?
• Where is it maintained?
• How do different countries participate?
• What differences exist from country to country in their approach to creating such a bank?
• What happens if the country is poverty-stricken, undergoing a war, or experiencing a natural disaster?
• What are the challenges of creating a global seed bank?
• What are the consequences of creating or not creating a global seed bank?
• What environmental challenges exist?  what happens if a species is challenged by natural pests or man-made pollution, even becomes extinct?

 

Seeking a slightly longer article on the subject, I then checked CQ Researcher to see if there was a report on this subject.  The phrase “global seed bank” brought up a variety of reports, none of which were relevant to my particular topic.  When I opened a report to check on why the results weren’t relevant, I saw that the phrase was not treated by the database in an adjacent manner and that “global,” “seed,” and “bank” were all searched as separate terms. 

 

Based on the clues from Britannica Online, I tried searching “international seed vault” and various combinations of that with “global seed bank.”  As the terms are not being treated as phrases, however, I retrieved a lot of irrelevant results.  I then tried just “seed bank” and “seed vault” to eliminate the extra adjectives.  While it reduced the number of results, it didn’t produce any results of use. 

 

I then considered using a print encyclopedia.  Having used Britannica Online and noting that the topic is current, I saw no value in looking at Encyclopedia Americana (published in 2002) or World Book (published in 2006), both of which have older information than 2006.  I did wonder, however, if the subject of seed gathering might be in a specialized Encyclopedia, so I conducted a search in the catalog.  I tried a Word search, entering the terms “agriculture” and “encyclop*” as I wanted to be sure to get results that included either the word “encyclopedia” or “encyclopǽdia.”  I also limited my search to the location “reference collection.”  The two results I retrieved were not useful, so I returned to the word search screen and removed the word “encyclop*” in order to search all reference collection items under “agriculture.”  The World Atlas of Agriculture, published in 1969, was too old, but I examined Food from the Opposing Viewpoints series, as it was published in 2006.  The content dealt with genetic modification, organic farming, hunger reduction, and other topics, but not the preservation of seeds or the global seed bank. 

 

I then decided to review newspaper articles to see if there was a) more factual data and b) some opinion about this topic.   I looked at ProQuest Newspapers, a very current database.  When I entered “global seed bank” in quotation marks and limited my results to 2005-2008, I got 5 relevant results.  The first two were factual, but the remainder offered some opinion as well.  Of particular interest was an article by John Mason entitled “Global seed bank deal takes shape” from the Financial Times’ USA edition, published in London (UK) on July 2, 2006, page 6.  The Financial Times is considered one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world, providing authority and reliability for this article.  A key topic was the intellectual property rights regime that lets companies protect new crop varieties they develop, which is why certain countries are withholding certain important crops, like soya, from the list of crops.  Delegates at the meeting of a commission of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation were concerned for the success of the project when the list is so small.  This could allow a topic such as the following:  A Description of the Intellectual Property Issues surrounding the preservation and protection of seeds for the future of the human race.

 

Another result mentioned Barbara Kingsolver’s book "A Fist in the Eye of God" which discusses global agribusiness. According to the article, “Kingsolver allows us to see the world's problems in a grain of genetically engineered ‘Magic Wheat’ and poses a series of hard questions about the consequences of narrowing global seed banks.”  This quote can be found in “Tucson’s wonder,” by Tom Beal in the Arizona Daily Star (Final edition), Tucson, Ariz., April 19, 2002, page E1, PURL:  http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=118081861&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=17850&RQT=309&VName=PQD/   After conducting an author search in the catalog under “Kingsolver, Barbara,” I determined that this book is not in our library, nor in LINK+, but I could order it from Interlibrary Loan.

 

I then searched Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, looking for more articles because this, too, is a current database, but contains more than newspapers.  I used the phrase “global search bank” again and also left the defaults of “Major U.S. and World Publications” and “Previous two years.”   I retrieved a number of articles, but one particularly important item was a lengthy article by John Seabrook called “Sowing for Apocalypse: the quest for a global seed bank.”  It appeared in the New Yorker’s Fact section “FACT: Annals of Agriculture” Page 60 Vol. 83 No. 25.  It also provided another clue in the name of “Cary Fowler,” a proponent and worker towards the global seed bank.  Again, the New Yorker is one of the more prestigious U.S. magazines, which gives authority to its content.

 

The question is whether I want to deal with the current politics, environment, etc. for this topic or go back and look at the historical roots.    

At this point, I chose to search for more in-depth articles.  I began with Academic Search Premier, entering “global seed bank” as a phrase in the first search box and retrieving one result with a relevant article, specifically an article by Fred Pearce entitled “Will Kew collect after lottery win?,” in New Scientist, 1/6/96, Vol. 149 Issue 2011, p9-11.  New Scientist is a magazine from Reed Elsevier, a reliable publisher from Holland.  What’s interesting about this article from a searching perspective is that the full text is available from Lexis-Nexis, from which I’ve just come.  This article deals with the economic aspects of the topic.  The Millennium Seed Bank is designed for wild plant seeds, rather than food.  Kew Gardens, in the United Kingdom, received a grant of £21M, which was described as insufficient, so this endeavor is an extremely expensive undertaking.  What resources will it take to achieve the goals of seed banks? 

 

As only one result emerged, I chose to re-try the search with just the phrase “seed bank.”  The resulting ten items are in a variety of disciplines, indicating the complex nature of the topic.  Micihael Carolan’s article “Saving Seeds, Saving Culture: A Case Study of a Heritage Seed Bank,” in Society and Natural Resources, volume 20, issue 2, Sept 2007, p. 739-750 gives more searching clues:   

• Seed Savers Exchange (SSE)
• Iowa
• the author & his affiliation (Colorado State, Dept. of Sociology)
• the fact that there are policies and value statements and other documents that might be helpful
• Society & Natural Resources (an organization)

 

I then conducted a search in GeoBase, a database for the environmental sciences, using “global seed bank” once again.  It revealed an article by M. W. Van Slaperen entitled “The Millennium Seed Bank: Building partnerships in arid regions for the conservation of wild species,” which was published in 2003 in the Journal of Arid Environments, 54, no.1 (01 MAY 2003) p. 195-201.  It tells more about the project at Kew Gardens, whose purpose is to save dry land plant species from extinction, including almost all of the UK’s native flowering plants.  This takes me far away from the concept of “Sowing for Apocalypse,” which deals with food supplies, but it is of great interest as it is a sort of modern day Darwinian project.

 

Finally, I checked regular Google, but the results basically took me to the same material.  The New Yorker article was referenced, but wouldn’t open from that starting point, and there were articles similar to the ones I retrieved from the databases – articles in the Guardian (a prestigious newspaper in the UK), MSNBC, and CBS News. 

 

From an evaluative perspective, however the web materials are equally valid to the database sources.  In fact, many of the sources that came to light in all the seraches confirmed each other.  Facts were repeated from source to source, with a new fact or two in each one.  The opinions were provided in quotes from scientists or as a result of strong jouirnalistic research vetted by an editor (e.g., "Sowing for Apocalypse," in the New Yorker).  With their inclusion in databases that are subject to editorial opinion, the reader can be confident in the information's validity and reliability. 

At this point, I decided that to move forward, I needed to formulate a final topic and set of questions for the subject.  The following two topics/questions emerged:

1. How do intellectual property rights issues help and hinder the development of a global seed bank?
2. What are the implications of global warming on the development of a successful global seed bank?

 

To research the first question, I would need to pursue legal sources, particularly sources related to international law and the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation.  This will take me back into Lexis-Nexis, not to search U.S. and world publications, but to search legal cases.  I would also go back and use some of the names of the corporations involved, as those are more likely to be involved in cases than the general descriptors.

 

To research the second question, I would need to pursue scientific sources, particularly in areas such as the environment, chemistry, and biology.  Further searching in GeoBase, probably with more specific terms about the types of seeds to preserve, whether flowering plants or food sources (like soya and potato), might yield suitable results.  In this case, the general descriptors might make more sense as search terms, although it is likely that specialized language relating to the plans would need to be researched as well.

 

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 [NOTE:  This next section is not part of your assignment, but it might be helpful if you were gathering information for a research paper.]

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 Turning Your Research Into an Outline for a Research Paper

 

At each step of your research process, you would use your questions, your research, and your ideas to create a working outline for your paper.  My colleague, Sarah Nielsen, of the English Department, took the information from the global seed bank research to broaden the topic to "seed saving."  As she researched the various tools, she discovered other ideas that she built into this working outline:

 

Sample Working Outline for Seed Saver Topic (for a paper of approx. 10-12 pages in length)

 

 

I. Introduction

            A. Background on Slavbard International Seed Vault (briefly: history, participants, purpose)

            B. Working thesis: Seed Saving is an important strategy for the maintenance of biodiversity in the world's food crops.

 

II. Body

            A. Seed saving: individual and other small scale efforts

            B. Seed saving: national and global efforts

            C. Purpose of seed saving: maintaining biodiversity

            D. Importance of bio diversity

                        1. Valuing conservation

                        2. Resisting disease

                        3. Dealing with natural disasters

                        4. Sharing control of the food supply

            E. Current threats to biodiversity

                        1. Global warming

                        2. Corporate farming

                        3. Case of Monsanto

            F. Global seed bank as key strategy for the maintenance of biodiversity

                        1. Other strategies

                        2. Power of global seed bank

 

As you can see, the outline is structured according to her ideas at the time, but is focused on the biodiversity "angle" of the topic.  Also, as she continued to research, she might discover that her "working thesis" would need to be changed.  In conversation, she also mentioned that items II A and II B on "seed saving" might need to be dropped down later in the paper. 

 

The process is iterative. You work on the outline as you research, which leads you to research other things which then influences your outline and, ultimately, your final paper.

 

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copyright Aline Soules 2007

under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/