Two books on energy and sustainability issues that University of Maine at Presque Isle President Don Zillman helped to write are taking on new life online and have even helped add to the global conversation surrounding the United Nations Climate Change Conference underway this week in Copenhagen.

President Zillman recently was asked to contribute a blog posting on the Oxford University Press website in relation to the upcoming summit in Copenhagen. The Countdown to Copenhagen post appeared on Dec. 3 and revisited predictions Zillman and his co-editors made in Beyond the Carbon Economy: Energy Law in Transition [Oxford University Press 2008]. Zillman co-edited the book with Catherine Redgwell, Yinka O. Omorogbe, and Lila K. Barrera-Hernandez.

The post he wrote for Oxford University Press also discussed how the predictions in the book hold up two years since its publication. President Zillman’s blog post can be viewed at http://blog.oup.com/2009/12/copenhagen-zillman/.

In another online realm, President Zillman’s book Energy Security: Managing Risk in a Dynamic Legal and Regulatory Environment, [Oxford University Press 2004] which he co-edited with Barry Barton, Catherine Redgwell and Anita Ronne, was recently selected for inclusion in Oxford Scholarship Online.

Oxford Scholarship Online is a cross-searchable electronic library of key Oxford academic titles. The full text of the book will be included, starting in 2010, in the law module of the electronic library. References to Energy Security in online library catalogues, in journals and in bibliographic databases are linked to OSO, which will allow users to click and view free abstracts or view the full text if the library has a subscription to OSO.

“It’s wonderful that these books are being made available to a wider audience through online sources and it is exciting to see Beyond the Carbon Economy add to the conversation of the proceedings happening now in Copenhagen,” President Zillman said. “The book discusses multiple aspects of the global energy situation and suggests directions in which the post-carbon world should be moving. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the UN Climate Change Conference in terms transitioning beyond a carbon-based economy.”