| GEOGRAPHY 101 Physical Geography
Research Sources |
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Research Assignment -
here you'll find the actual assignment so that you can paste to and from it, if you like.
Sample Project
Please submit your project using www.turnitin.com.
Books - the GCC library has a good
collection of regional physical geography texts (i.e. The Physical Geography of South
America). Search for "physical geography" in the catalog and read the
titles of the first thirty or forty results. These books may be in the reference section.
You'll have to take good notes (including complete citations) in the library. Also note
that you'll have to find maps and references to your specific region in these texts.
- Lonely
Planet Guide Books - guide books to just about everywhere
- Moon Handbook Travel Guides -
another very good guidebook series
- Physical Geography Textbooks -
including Introduction to Physical Geography by Tom Mcknight (the text for my
course) and many others.
- U.S. Army Country
Studies - Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S.
Department of the Army between 1986 and 1998. Many are in the GCC library.
- GCC Library Physical Geography Resource Page
Magazines
- National Geographic Magazine -
almost every place on earth has been covered more than once by this magazine. Use their
index to find which issues and then get them at the library. Very good way to get the
basic information on your place. They have a great search engine that will find everything
they've published back to 1888!
National Geographic Explore Search Engine: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/publications/explore.html
Newspapers - there are regional travel, science,
and environmental articles in most newspapers on a regular basis. The trick is to sort
through the hundreds of articles to find those that are most informative.
Scholarly Journals - use the
Proquest search engine on the library's web page. You can limit your search, if you wish,
to specific journals.
- Progress in Physical Geography
- The Geographical Journal
- Geographical Review
- Journal of Geography in Higher
Education
- Professional Geographer
- Annals of the Association of
American Geographers
- Geography
- Southeastern Geographer
- Canadian Geographer
Maps - use maps of the region or
world to determine climate, vegetation, topography, rivers, mountains, etc. They can
be photocopied from Atlases in the library or found on the Internet or in books.
- Perry-Castaņeda
Library Map Collection, University of Texas - incredible map library.
- For finding topographic maps: do an image
search that includes "map", "topographic", and/or
"reflief" + place name (for example try an image search for "california
relief map" and california reflief map)
- For finding general purpose maps: image
search with "map" or "general purpose map" or "maps"
- Google Earth - free
printable satellite images (earth.google.com)
Useful Internet and Database Search Terms
- place various combinations of these terms into search engines along with your place name
to find Internet resources. If you place quotations around a phrase it will ONLY find that
exact phrase. If there are no quotes, it will find documents with any combination of the
terms in the phrase.
- For finding books on physical geography: text
search for "physical geography", "geomorphology",
"geography", "vegetation", "geography", "rivers",
"mountains", "travel", "weather", "climate", +
place name
- Official government websites exist for virtually every country
on earth.
- Wikipedia.org -
entries on just about every place, often with Internet links to more information, images,
or maps.
- Nationmaster.com
- lots of info on every country in the world, including highest and lowest spots,
climate type and much more.
- CIA World Factbook - the CIA's
info on every country on earth; this is the stuff they can tell you and not have to kill
you. ;-)