Library Databases for Books and Articles about Natural Resource Economics
[Scroll down to find subsections: Fisheries and PEI and Economics of Anne of Green Gables]
Econlit, which is included within the OneSearch (Full) super-database is your primary general-purpose economics database.
Others that may be of use to you are:
- CAB Abstracts. The "veterinary" database, but it actually also has a lot of content relating to forestry, agriculture, fisheries, and even tourism (thinking of ecotourism in relation to your course). It is included in the OneSearch (Full) database/discovery service.
- Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Collection (EAAS) This is on the Proquest platform and hence NOT part of OneSearch.
- Gale In Context: Environmental Studies The Gale databases are not in OneSearch, and tend to have a lower undergraduate focus. They include many different kinds of publications, including scholarly journals but also trade magazines, newspapers, and more. It has a nice "browse issues of interest" feature to help students who are having trouble choosing a topic area for an assignment like a term paper.
- Gale OneFile: Environmental Studies and Policy This has some overlap with the In Context database, but has more scholarly sources and a bit less of the non-scholarly content. It has a "topic finder" feature that helps you explore related topics when starting with a keyword or two.
- GreenFile, which is an EBSCO database and included in OneSearch
- GeoRef, also in OneSearch, our biggest geology database that includes a lot of information about "economic geology," which seems to have a lot to do with the economics of natural resources
- Academic Video Online, which is worth checking for good ad-free documentaries on a wide range of topics
Fisheries and PEI
The following annotated bibliography was compiled by librarian Simon Lloyd. Feel free to make a one-on-one appointment with him for help that is more specific to your PEI-related topic:
The concept of "natural resources" has a mixed history on Prince Edward Island: there's been only very limited activity in terms of drilling or mining (although the extensive use of mussel mud through the 1800s and early 1900s was arguably an exception), so most attention has focussed on fisheries and forestry. There has been some encouragement in recent decades to think of the soil as a natural resource, but since pretty well all of PEI's land has been thoroughly worked-over (especially for farming) at one time or another, that's a bit tricky, conceptually. And, of course, there is some movement towards considering fresh water and the wind as natural resources, and the latter is already being "harvested".
One of the most ambitious attempts to take a holistic view of Prince Edward Island's "natural capital assets" and ecosystem is Douglas Deacon's 2011 MA (Island Studies) thesis, A Small Island Perspective to Natural Capital: Focus on Prince Edward Island, which is freely available online: https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/MR94051.pdf
However, Deacon's discussion of fisheries in particular is not particularly extensive.
However, Deacon's discussion of fisheries in particular is not particularly extensive.
The only attempt to provide a book-length historical overview of PEI's fisheries is Kennedy Wells' 1986 The fishery of Prince Edward Island. The Library has print copies of this book -- https://islandpines.roblib.upei.ca/eg/opac/record/124016.
And, Chapter 9, "Lines in the Water: Time and Place in a Fishery," in the 2016 book Time and a place : an environmental history of Prince Edward Island provides a historical overview of the Island's fishery that is both scholarly and engaging. https://islandpines.roblib.upei.ca/eg/opac/record/1481915
And, Chapter 9, "Lines in the Water: Time and Place in a Fishery," in the 2016 book Time and a place : an environmental history of Prince Edward Island provides a historical overview of the Island's fishery that is both scholarly and engaging. https://islandpines.roblib.upei.ca/eg/opac/record/1481915
For more up-to-date information on the fishery, the Province publishes annual Fishery Statistics -- https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/information/fisheries-and-communities/fishery-statistics
The relevant sections of the Province's Annual Statistical Review should also be helpful in this regard:
The fisheries' portfolio has moved between innumerable PEI Government departments over the years -- since 2019, the responsibility has resided with the Department of Fisheries and Communities, which has not issued an annual report yet (as of Dec 2022), but annual reports for several preceding years from the former Department of Agriculture and Fisheries are available online:
- https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/sites/default/files/publications/af_2018_2019_annual_report_0.pdf
- https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/sites/default/files/publications/af_2017_2018_annual_report.pdf
- https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/sites/default/files/publications/af_2016-2017_annual_report.pdf
Older print issues of both of the above statistical publications are in the PEI Collection, as well as a backfile of PEI Government departmental annual reports.
For historical information on PEI natural resources, the classic text in the field is Andrew Clark Hill's 1959 Three centuries and the island a historical geography of settlement and agriculture in Prince Edward Island, Canada. You will find numerous fisheries' references in the index: https://islandpines.roblib.upei.ca/eg/opac/record/1985639
Economics of Anne of Green Gables
Some specific works that touch on economics/social status issues in Anne of Green Gables:
- Belisle, D. (2011). Virtue and Vice: Consumer Culture in English Canadian Fiction Before 1940. International Journal of Canadian Studies / Revue internationale d’études canadiennes, (43), 165–186.
- Cormier, E. C. (2010). "Have all of our women the vagrant heart?": Anne of Green Gables and Rural Womanhood in Flux. The Lion and the Unicorn, 34(2), 200-213.
- Scarth, K. (2020). From Anne of Green Gables to Anne of the Suburbs: Lucy Maud Montgomery reimagines home in Anne of the Island. Women’s Writing, 27(2), 150–164.
- Daniel Samson. (2008). The Spirit of Industry and Improvement : Liberal Government and Rural-Industrial Society, Nova Scotia, 1790-1862. McGill-Queen’s University Press. The link is directly to the chapter that refers to Anne in an economic context, although the book overall is about Nova Scotia, not PEI, but it places the economics of the Anne story in a more regional context
- The opening page of Gillian Thomas' 1975 article, "The Decline of Anne: Matron vs. Child" has a good comment on Anne Shirley's social status in Anne of Green Gables, as compared to the later "Anne" novels.
- The appendices for The Annotated Anne of Green Gables offer essays on a range of topics that give social context for the novel, including home economics and child welfare legislation.
- For a fairly detailed -- if somewhat idealized -- overview of life (especially agricultural life) on PEI in the late 1800s, the Provincial Government-published, Prince Edward Island: Garden Province of Canada (1899) may be of interest. There is a detailed chapter on agriculture
- Statistical data from the late 1800s can be challenging to access and analyze -- the Dominion Bureau of Statistics' Canada Year Book does offer a wealth of information, much of it broken down by Province, but the online format is page-by-page, and not very user-friendly.
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