Welcome to EcoLibrary! Students in my classes and workshops – ranging from college age to kindergarten – learn best when we use a lot of photographs and other rich teaching materials. EcoLibrary will enable students and teachers to freely use materials that have been proven to be useful in helping students learn about ecology, conservation biology, and the environment. EcoLibrary currently contains several hundred annotated photographs that illustrate key concepts in these fields, and as the site grows we will add maps, sounds, panoramas, and interactive exercises.
All EcoLibrary materials may be downloaded and used for free, as long as they are used for non-commercial, educational purposes (click here for terms of use). If you would like to use EcoLibrary materials in a product that will be sold or in a manner that will generate income, please contact us. Please leave the copyright information in place when using EcoLibrary products.
Please contact us about the ways in which EcoLibrary is working well for you and to offer any suggestions for improvement.
Best wishes,
Dan L. PerlmanFounder, EcoLibrary
Using EcoLibrary
Visitors to EcoLibrary can search for materials in several ways. Once you find useful items, you can follow hot links to similar materials.
Search methods:
- Search full text descriptions
- Textbook-linked search
- Browse visually
- Download linked lesson materials
Getting EcoLibrary materials:
Email yourself individual items or linked groups of items, with accompanying supporting information.
Why use EcoLibrary instead of a major search engine?
We provide:
- Full-size, attractive images that fill the screen in PowerPoint ™ or Acrobat ™ presentations
- Scientifically accurate identifications and accompanying descriptions
- Groupings of materials that give more depth and breadth than a single image
- Suggestions on how to use materials in the classroom
- Multiple methods for finding materials on EcoLibrary
- Links among related items, so that useful materials lead to further items
Goals and philosophy
I have been fortunate to visit a number of fascinating places and to learn about these places from generous experts. My students have benefited from my experiences — and EcoLibrary allows me to share these lessons with other students and teachers. I hope that EcoLibrary helps people around the world better understand the planet on which we live and inspires them to move beyond computer-based systems to learn about the ecology and organisms of their own neighborhoods and regions. Our goals are to:
- Provide engaging and effective learning materials
- Provide accurate and useful information
- Suggest linkages among materials to facilitate learning
- Make materials on the site easy to find
- Offer our materials for free educational use
The EcoLibrary philosophy:
- People learn in many different ways and good visual materials engage learners of all ages.
- Teachers and students should have several ways to easily find the materials they need.
- Every useful item you find should lead to others that are also useful.
We want to help you find useful materials to teach and learn about the Earth and its ecology — and to help you find further materials easily.
The new EcoLibrary and thanks to our original home
If you have used EcoLibrary in the past you will notice that it now has a very different user interface. Professor Tim Hickey of the Computer Science Department at Brandeis University and his student Limo Sadalla have done a tremendous amount of work in creating the new EcoLibrary, and I greatly appreciate their efforts. I would also like to express my deep thanks to Professor John Pickering of the University of Georgia, who hosted an earlier version of EcoLibrary on his Discover Life website.
