PLAN 247: Solving Urban Problems: Research Tools
Selected Resources & Article Databases
- Library E-ResourcesAccess article databases (such as EconLit, GEOBASE, and PAIS), specialized planning collections (ICUD, NTL, and ULI Development Case Studies), and guides to conducting research in all areas of planning.
- Smart Cities Dive (formerly Sustainable Cities Collective)Smart Cities Dive is an editorially independent, moderated community for leaders of major metropolitan areas, urban planning and sustainability professionals. We look to aggregate content and provide resources for all who work in or are interested in urban planning, sustainable development and urban economics.
- Environment CompleteJournals on topics including agriculture, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, urban planning, and more.
- Google Think Tank Search EngineSearches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.
- PAIS IndexA bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. Includes full-text articles.
Interdisciplinary Article Databases
- Articles PlusIndex to hundreds of millions electronic resources, including journal and newspaper articles, e-books, dissertations, and media in campus library collections.
- Google ScholarEnables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
- ScopusA large citation and abstracting database providing comprehensive coverage of the peer-reviewed journal and conference literature, with links to full-text where available through the library; includes scientific, technical, medical, social science and arts and humanities disciplines and indexes over 20,500 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers including over 340 book series. Like Web of Science, Scopus allows researchers to perform citation searches to see how many times a work has been cited, by whom, and to rank searches by times cited, for the period 1996 -present, as well as its curated index of over 375 scientific web pages and over 24 million patents.
UNC Catalog Search
Suggested catalog subjects: Cities and Towns | Urban Policy | Immigrants -- Social Conditions | Sociology, Urban | Urban Policy -- United States | Urban Problems
Save time searching!
When searching the preceding databases, use these tips for better results:
- Use wildcard characters: If searching for economic conditions, type the word econ* with an asterisk. That will return economies, economic, economist and any other word that starts with [e c o n].
- Use quotes: When searching for two words, quotes will search for the words when they're next to each other. Thomas Jefferson will return articles with Thomas Payne and Jefferson Starship. But when "Thomas Jefferson" is searched, only those articles with his name will be returned.
Use Google's Advanced Search to limit by date, language and more
or
Use Operators in Google Searches
Some favorite operators to remember:
Use quotes to search for a phrase in Google
Exclude a word by adding a dash (-) before it
Search for similar words by adding a tilde (~) before a word (located in the top left of your keyboard)
Limit to specific sites or domains using "site:"
For example: [urban policy site:edu]
will search for urban policy only on sites ending with .edu
General search tips:
Choose effective keywords- what words are likely to appear in the results your want? What other words might be used?
To search for text on a page:
press the Ctrl and the F keys at the same time (PC) or press the command and F keys at the same time (Mac)
