The Greatest Show on Earth

No - we are not talking about the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The title of today's blog refers to the book by Richard Dawkins in which he presents his case in favour of evolution. The opposing side in this debate are the Creationists who will also be putting in an appearance in Christchurch this week where the author will be speaking. This came to my attention on the Stuff.co.nz book webpage and I thought was a great opportunity to show how the resources of the library could be used to explore arguments both for and against.

First stop are the library shelves. Do a subject search for Evolution and find a whole range of books, audio books and DVD's. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is, of course, where it all started but with the growth in readable non-fiction, there is sure to be something else that you can get to grips with if this classic tome isn't appealing. Even Bill Bryson get's in on the act with The Short History of Nearly Everything.

To explore the alternative viewpoint of Creationism you can search under the Bible and evolution or under Creation. Once again these range from the simple (The answers book : the 20 most-asked questions about creation, evolution & the Book of Genesis answer) to the more in depth discussion.

One of the other options for exploring this debate is our electronic resources (e-resources) page on our website. To use this website you need your library card and a PIN number (if you don't know if you have this just give your local library a quick call and they can check this for you). There is an excellent resource on this page called the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (Gale) which "Provides fact and opinion about today's controversial topics. It contains thousands of articles, statistics, and essays." Fulltext available articles are available to research and download.

It always helps in any debate to have all the information you can. That's one of the things Rodney Libraries can help you with. If you can't find it by yourself, just come in and ask.