Tutorial for URSP 661 – City and Regional Management

The University of Maryland Libraries have many resources that will help with research for your thesis. If you need additional information, please e-mail Patti Cossard or speak with a Reference Librarian at either the Art or Architecture Library's Reference Desk.

Because of licensing agreements, access to bibliographic databases and electronic journals is restricted to UM faculty, staff, and students. These may be accessed from off campus; consult Remote access for further information. For a complete list of electronic resources available to University of Maryland faculty, staff, and students, as well as information about the full range of library materials and services, consult the UM Libraries' home page.

learning outcomes

• use techniques to manage selected citation information (e.g., EndNote)
• use other library and/or national/international catalogs such as WorldCat to search for additional sources
• select an index appropriate for the topic
• match information source and search approach to information need
• identify faculty, librarians, and other persons or agencies who can be approached for advice and information on a project

OUTLINE

• Getting you started
• Bibliographic Management
• Methods, Policy, Theory: Books
• Indices
• Context: Journals
• Economic, Planning, & Statistical Data
• Finding Master Plans

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The University of Maryland offers a number of tools to get you what you need to be successful in your program.

Getting Started

• Libraries homepage: the beginning
• Guides to Informations Resources: when you need a starting point for subject specific research
• Research Port: libraries portal to electronic resources
• Interlibrary Loan: when we don't own a resource you need
• Using the Find It button: when you want to see if the library owns a resource

Bibliographic Management

Bibliographic citation managers help researchers keep track of their references for research papers, theses, dissertations, journal articles, publication lists, course reserve lists, or any other writing needs. The software also facilitates the downloading of citations directly from the Web, online databases, and online library catalogs. Using bibliographic citation managers helps researchers create bibliographies or lists of references and easily format them in a wide variety of styles.

EndNote^Web

EndNote^Web is a web-based service for managing and citing references in papers and creating bibliographies. It can be used in conjunction with EndNote and the ISI Web of Knowledge^SM research platform. Please note that access to EndNote^Web is only available to University of Maryland faculty, staff, and students.

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Useful Keywords: sustainability; economic development; smart growth; new urbanism; sprawl; community participation in strategies for urban development; poverty; neighborhood revitalization; demographics; housing stock characteristics; neighborhood quality; place--economic conditions; e.g., Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- Economic conditions; Redevelopment, Urban -- United States -- Pennsylvania

Methods, Policy, Theory: Books

• Library Catalog
• WorldcatUM
• Google Books

Indices

• EconLit is a reliable source of citations and abstracts to economic research in over 400 books, journals, dissertations, and working papers.
• LexisNexis Academic: Full-text database that offers a wide range of news, political, legal, business, and reference information in full-text format. Primary source of newspaper articles, including those from the Washington Post and the New York Times. Federal code, regulations, and case law, plus state codes and case law are also included.

Context: Journals

• Journal of the American Planning Association
• Housing Policy Debate
• Urban Affairs Review
• Planning Commissioners Journal

Economic, Planning, & Statistical Data: Government Agency Data

• American Factfinder: Population, Housing, Economic, and Geographic data from the Census Bureau. Also includes maps, statistics, fact sheets and other publications.
• FEDSTATS: This site, run by the Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy, lists detailed information and provides links to more than 100 different federal statistical agencies. You can search for statistical information several different ways: via a search engine, by lists of data generating agencies or by their data, via a "reference shelf," by geographical and map searches, and by a list of data extraction engines. The site also lists contacts at the various agencies, and you can both list and search for press releases from some of the sites (which happen to include most of the major economic ones).
• STAT-USA: [n.b.: Available at the Information and Research Services Desk in McKeldin Library.] This site, run by the Department of Commerce, specializes in timely reporting of federal government statistics. Thus, rather than going to Census, BLS, the Fed, and the BEA for different series and reports, you can go to this single site. Retrieving most of the data requires payment -- which can be avoided if used at the McKeldin Information and Research Services Desk. While most (nearly all?) of the data can be found elsewhere on the Internet, some users might prefer the ability to go to a single well-organized site. For those interested in the most recent statistics, a particularly useful section is the "Newsstand" -- it has recent data, and it is where individual reports can be purchased. The "State of the Nation" contains the data. Besides daily and "hot" releases, its major headings are:
  • General Economic Indicators
  • Housing and Construction
  • Employment
  • Manufacturing and Industry
  • Monetary Statistics
  • Economic Policy
• OFFSTATS database provides access to free statistics from official sources on the web. Some specialized databases are only available to the University of Auckland staff and students. Web links are arranged by country, region or subject. The database can be searched by a single category, or a combination of categories. Examples of content:
  • United States Census Bureau. Subjects index.
  • County Business Patterns
  • National Association of Home Builders. NAHB market index, construction statistics.
• Resources For Economists/AEA Web (American Economic Association) - Data. This site is a gateway to a wide variety of online data repositories. Examples of content:
  • City Databook. This site pulls information from many sources to produce detailed data on individual U.S. cities. They also offer lists of the top 100 in various categories: median income, age, renters, college students, etc.
  • County and City Databooks: This service takes data from the BLS's 1988, 1994 and 2000 County and City Databooks, and converts the data to a particularly easy to use format. The data available is extensive and varied; there are more than 200 variables, and they can be output in a variety of formats.
• State of the Cities Data Systems (SOCDS): This site specializes on data about cities and metropolitan areas. Some of the data is available at other sites, but here it is in a particularly useful interface. From the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Censuses it includes data on total population, housing and home ownership, race/ethnicity & immigrants, educational attainment, poverty and income, families with own children, and household rent for cities and Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The entire dataset can be downloaded, or one can select different data for different areas for viewing. They also have "Current Employment Statistics" ("employed residents, the size of the labor force, and the unemployment rate during a selected month in two selected years between 1990 and 1999"). Finally, it offers "Special City Extracts from County Business Patterns," which has data from the Census' "Standard Statistical Establishment List (SSEL)."
• Other Resources: use google to search for professional planning organization, e.g., American Planning Association, look for the resource/research page.

Finding Master Plans

• Economics Search Engine (ESE): especially good for searching for master plans. ESE uses Google to search the contents of more than 23,000 economics web sites. They come from RFE, home pages reported by economists in RePec Author Services, and EDIRC. A Google Custom Search Engine searches these pages. As this technology is still in beta testing, the results might not be ideal. In particular, Google uses an approximation algorithm to search these sites.
• Google: Search for the local governing body, then look for the "planning office".
• Wikipedia: Search for the local governing body, check for links out to official site.