Most of us enjoy daydreaming about how we’ll spend our summer vacations, but the most crucial aspect of a successful vacation might be the next step: doing the exploratory legwork. Abraham Lincoln once said that if given eight hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first six hours sharpening the axe - and summer vacations are no different. Researching your potential vacation destinations beforehand can prevent you from driving 30 hours only to find out that the adventure-filled Walley World is closed for repairs.
Fortunately for your summer, the library is here to help. Our encyclopedia and handbook databases, for example, are often excellent sources for informative overviews that contain just the right amount of information to quickly explore your options. In the library, you’ll find informative summer-related industry overviews like travel and tourism and outdoor recreation, but also find great pointers on specific summer activities like canoeing and kayaking, scuba diving, and deep sea fishing. And if your family has already decided on your destination, you’ll find international resources on Bora Bora or Tokyo, or domestic destinations like Philadelphia or Orlando.
Once you have chosen a particular location or type of adventure, doing a few pointed searches from our homepage’s multi-database search box - or from news-friendly databases like ProQuest and Gale - can further inform you of delightful attractions and tour-worthy locales that weren’t listed on your vacation brochures. Such research also serves a more practical purpose, as broader issues and events might have small, unforeseen impacts on your vacation experience. For example, you may come across a transportation policy change that could impact your dinner reservation, a regional conference that could impact parking for your hotel, or a lesser-known festival that would be great to add to your itinerary.
Read on for a few examples of how library resources could provide unanticipated insight into your next vacation.
Eye-Watering Ecotours: Welcome to the Jungle Rainforest
If you come across the library’s ecotourism overview in your research, you might well be inspired by the phrase “visiting exotic locations to enjoy unspoiled landscapes, view unusual wildlife, and participate in recreational adventures”. Reading about how rainforest tourism can benefit native people might lead you to imagine the pitter-patter of rain on your family’s cabin in Ecuador, Brazil, or Peru. In this case, you might want to explore this rainforest overview, or learn the differences between coniferous and deciduous forests so that you can explain those on the flight.
Speaking of rain, you’ll also be glad to know that the skin-melting visions that the phrase “acid rain” conjured during your childhood are simply not true: while it’s not necessarily a good thing, it also won’t usually smolder skin on contact. From here, you can focus on the more delightful topics like capybaras, blue macaws, and other native forms of wildlife you might come across in your travels. In fact, many researchers are even willing to show you their own wildlife clips - like Dutch biologist Dr. Freek Vonk. Of his own recording, Dr. Vonk explains that “you can see in the video the biggest anaconda I have ever seen, as thick as a car tire, 26 feet long and weighing over 440 pounds - with a head as big as my head."
So could this be a super-rare, worst-case scenario? Well, according to Dr. Jesus River of the Spanish Institute for Oceanography in Madrid, maybe not. “I have been studying anacondas for 32 years,” he says, adding that the current research “begs the question of how many other species there are that we do not know about.”
While the concept of myriad unknown anaconda species is certainly compelling, it might present unique challenges for wildlife preservation. According to Australian zoologist Dr. Grahame Webb, even the conservation flux of known anacondas presents a bit of a quagmire. "To conserve predators, you've got to rebuild their population,” he explains. “If you're successful at doing that, they then start eating people again, and everyone wants to get rid of them."
The Antarctic Cruise: Sailing the Bergy Bits
Perhaps those muggy temperatures have you reconsidering the rainforest ecotour. But what if the idea that your summer vacation could double as an educational experience is just still too alluring? That travel and tourism research starter does highlight cruises as another option for exploring exotic destinations, and overviews on Arctic and Antarctic regions may provide cool ideas for adventures on ice. From giant blue glaciers to vast penguin enclaves, Antarctic cruises integrate environmental education into spectacular and unique experiences for your family.
If you come across the Antarctic icebergs research starter, you might start to worry about bergs the size of Rhode Island. But you’ll soon find peace of mind in discovering that it’s not really the mile-long icebergs that worry ship captains. Icebergs that are car-sized (called “growlers”) or house-sized (called “bergy bits”) are the most concerning. Though one bergy bit might weigh 10,000 tons, growlers and bergy bits can still be very hard to spot and often don’t show up on radar. "These are the ones that give us heartburn," explains Lawrence Meisner, a retired Canadian Coast Guard captain. "They get lost as they bob up and down in the swell and you can't see the darn things."
At this point, you might be thinking that such concerns might be more confined to flimsier work ships, or maybe those overconfident “icebreaker” tanker ships that Netflix is so fond of. And yet in 2007, the MS Explorer was carrying 154 passengers in “mild weather” when an iceberg tore a hole into its hull at 1:20 am. Passengers waited in lifeboats in the freezing waters for four hours in the middle of the night before being rescued by a Norwegian cruise ship (though not the same 318-passenger Norwegian cruise ship that hit an iceberg the next month).
In fact, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, the MS Explorer had a certified double hull with a high ice class rating prior to this incident. "I'm totally shocked and surprised," said captain Leif Skog, who captained the MS Explorer a few decades prior. "She was just outstanding in her design, perfect for ice navigation." Even so, the MS Explorer eventually sank completely into the ocean, disappearing beneath dark, icy waves as the rescued passengers sailed away.
Sunset Dinners: The Relaxing Beach Getaway
If your urge for an Antarctic summer has cooled a bit, keep in mind that your family probably won’t mind a less-exotic destination; in fact, your younger ones are probably still clamoring for another Disney World or Six Flags. But what if your vacation was a little more relaxing than educational, a little more “pina colada” than water flask? Enter the beach vacation: seagull days, breezy nights, and equal opportunities for the active and the sedentary. Let your loved ones watch scuba and snorkeling videos while you explore broad overviews like this oceans page, or the more shore-specific pages like coast and beach and coral reefs.
Browsing news and magazine articles can be especially helpful, as many inspire imagery of sunburns and sandy toes. Initially, you might find the recent reports of shark attacks doubling in one year’s time concerning. But shark researchers explain that a shark’s intention is not necessarily malevolent; for the most part, a body wading in the water simply looks a bit like a seal. In fact, for many great white attacks, “the first bite is often more of an exploratory nibble than a full-force chomp.”
For a glass-half-full person, the word nibble might have an almost gentle connotation. But ascertaining a shark's temperament beforehand isn't always possible, if we are to believe University of Newcastle ecologist Dr. Vincent Raoult. "There is always this perception that you will see the animal before it wants to bite you," says Dr. Raoult, "which I don't think happens very often."
Perhaps the larger sharks’ size might usually keep them in the deeper parts of the ocean? Not so fast, according to Atlantic White Shark Conservancy biologist Dr. Megan Winton, who says, “You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that there are all these sharks hunting for seals right off the beach.” After all, North Carolina sharks have attacked people in as little as five feet of water. Younger great whites were spotted a mere four feet away from the shore in California, while in Massachusetts, a 10-foot great white “swam right up to shore”.
As you can see, the library databases can be a valuable tool in your summer vacation planning. From topical overviews and country profiles to the latest news and research relevant to a specific region or activity, the library is your one-stop shop for all things summer and recreation - even if your ultimate decision does keep this year’s adventures a bit closer to home.
Traci Avet is a librarian who has worked in libraries for over twenty years, and has had the pleasure of experiencing vast card catalogs and due-date card stamping.