Terra, the Sustainability Pavilion. Photo: Diego F. Parra
This research guide offers strategies and links for locating resources for programs under The Graduate Center of Planning and the Environment. It highlights key databases, academic journals, and books essential for exploring topics such as urban planning, environmental impact assessments, and sustainability practices. By providing search tips and recommended keywords, this guide aims to assist students and researchers in efficiently navigating the research resources available from the library.
Research Topic
A research topic is a specific subject or area of interest that a researcher chooses to investigate in order to answer questions, explore issues, or develop new insights. It serves as a starting point for a research project, guiding the methodology, data collection, and analysis. A good topic should be clear, focused, and relevant to the subject.
Keywords
Once you have an idea about your research topic, you will need to develop some keywords to start your research. One way to develop some keywords is to concept map your topic to explore the different areas you may want to go with the topic.
General Topic: Urban and Community Planning
As an example, you can use any of the words here as keywords that can get your research started by going searching books, articles, or journals from the links on the left.
Combining Keywords
Once you have your keywords, the way you combine them using advanced search engines in databases, you can combine them with boolean operators. These will help you narrow your search (AND), broaden your search (OR), or exclude keywords in your search (NOT).
