Geography (EEGS): GC 205

Evaluating Internet Resources: Your topics will undoubtedly have concerned interest groups and organizations with their own web presence wanting to convince you one way or another on the subject.  Give the groups a very critical look; be skeptical.  In most cases these websites will link to other resources, and so on.

GreyNet International
Grey Literature: "Information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." This authoritative web resource points you in the direction of publications, mainly in the sciences, from so-called "Grey Literature". 

Google Advanced Search.  Have a bit more control for your search terms. 

General Federal Government Document Resources

USA.gov. Official search engine for the Federal Government (but also includes state, local, and tribal governments as well). Includes all domain names associated with the government besides .gov and.mil.  This is a very good first place to search.

Catalog of Government Publications from the Government Publishing Office.  Many online publications directly available from this resource; updated daily.

Search across up to over 70 government agencies with MetaLib.    
Collections include Environment, Science & Technology, Agriculture, Recreation, Travel & Transportation, and Business & Economy.  You can also narrow your search to specific resources within each topic.

Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.  These reports (CRS Reports) provide a background for upcoming/proposed legislation or a current topic of interest.  There is no one, single source for them.  The Dudley Knox Library has a webpage listing where these reports are found.  Many are now increasingly available in the Catalog of Government Publications.

The Federal Register. 
Contains notices, proposed rules, final rules, and Presidential documents. In the case of many proposed and finalized rules, a lengthy background of the topic is provided.

National Centers for Environmental Information    
NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly the National Climate Data Center) is the world's largest active archive of weather data.

NOAA Central Library   
Links to digitized materials (NOAA publications, ebooks, etc).  And their individual collections (found on the blue bar across the page).  NMU may or may not have access to the ebooks they offer up in a search--let me (Bruce Sarjeant) know if you'd like a copy.  

WorldWideScience    
Developed and maintained by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), this multilingual resource is a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals.

List of statistical sources from NMU's Government Documents webpage.

Michigan & Upper Peninsula Resources

NMU's Government Documents webpage and Local & Regional webpage.  Also, Portals to the Past: A Bibliographical and Resource Guide to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a pdf book by Dr. Russell Magnaghi, has an extensive collection of citations.

USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center Michigan page. 

MSU Extension.  And nationally, extension.org. Extension services have provided non-formal education and learning activities to people throughout the country — to farmers and other residents of rural communities as well as to people living in urban areas.  They emphasize taking the knowledge gained through research and education and bringing it directly to the people to create positive changes.  A surprising number of topics can be found at these links.

Woody Invasives.  Woody Invasives of the Great Lakes (WIGL) Collaborative.

Specific Federal Agencies

USGS Publications Warehouse.  Searchable index of materials dating back to 1880. Many are full-text. The website contains additional links to USGS resources.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

National Technical Reports Library.

Treesearch. U.S. Forest Service research database. Includes many non-agency and peer-reviewed publications that pertain to managing forests--water, air, animals, insects, trails, etc.

National Park Service Data Store.  Their "Quick Search"--begin typing in the name of the park you are interested in.

The National Agriculture Library combines the old AGRICOLA and PubAg (among other resources) into one search tool.

Also from the USDA is the National Forest Service Library.

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Environmental Protection Agency.

U.S. Census Bureau. And Michigan-specific numbers/data from the State Data Center.

Digital collections from the Library of Congress.

NASA's "For Educators" page.

Data.gov: Federal, State, and Local geographic data. More links can be found on the GIS Resources page.

See Bruce about needing maps and atlases that cannot be checked out during our 2024-2026 renovation, but don't see him at the last minute.

Encyclopedia of geography terms, themes, and concepts. Hanks & Stadler. G63 .H38 2011

National Academies Press Earth Sciences online books.  Click on "browse by subtopic".

Dictionary of Geography, Susan Mayhew. (online)

Geography today: An Encyclopedia of Concepts, Issues, and Technology.  Ian Muehlenhaus. (online)

What is Geography? Alistair Bonnet.  (online)

A Dictionary of Environment and Conservation. Parks and Allaby. (online).

Atlases can be found in the G1000 call number: in the map collection, and the circulating collection. 

Encyclopedia of Landforms, vols 1-3. GB 406 .N35 2003

Issues of national importance that have appeared in the news might have been covered in detail in CQ Researcher at one time or another.

Zotero.  See NMU's page for steps to download the program.

What citation style does your professor want you to use?.  Chicago? APA? MLA? Zotero can help you with these (they have over 10,500 different ones(?!), over 60 specific to "geography").   As neat as Zotero is, always check your end results against the proper, authoritative citation style guide and edit appropriately.

Citing a map? The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives has posted a guide Best Practices in Citation of Cartographic Materials.

NMU's Writing Center. It's yours. Use it.

Communicating in geography and the environmental sciences, 3rd.ed. G70 H35 2006.

Evaluating research in academic journals: a practical guide to realistic evaluation, 4th ed. H 62 .P97 2008

Writing literature reviews: a guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences. H 61.8 .G3 1999

Geography, history, and concepts: a student's guide. Holt-Jensen, Arlid. G70 .H613 1999

Integrating Stakeholders and Users into the Geography Discipline's Research Process.  A publication from the USGS.  To sum up: remember who you are writing with, for and to.

Annotated Bibliography Examples

Writing an Annotated Bibliography (University of Guelph) and some examples: 

• Climate Ready Great Lakes: An Annotated Bibliography. (from NOAA)
• Core List for an Environmental Reference Collection (from the EPA).
• Fire–Climate Interactions in the Southwest: Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography (USDA).
• An annotated bibliography of scientific literature, records, and management plans pertaining to the recovery and conservation of the Kirtland’s Warbler (USDA).
• Annotated bibliography of scientific research on Taeniatherum caput-medusae published from January 2010 to January 2022. (USGS)

It’s up to you, but you might want to use Zotero if you don’t already.  This app is a big help in organizing citations and creating a bibliography.  I will be going over using this in class.  Follow steps 1-5 (at least) from the link above.

No one source or database will have everything.  These geography resources on this guide are a place to start.

For your topics:

• Think about what other names you can search with; other terms, other phrases.  General brainstorming with AI might help.
• What do you already know about the topic? 
• Don’t use your entire thesis topic in your search (if it’s a really long one)—take parts of it and search with those: add more terms to narrow your results.  Start with bits and pieces and build from there.  Less is more.
• You will discover new search terms as you search: start using those as well.
• Back out of your topic to a higher level.  Instead of something Marquette-specific or Michigan-specific, look at the same topic without any geographic limiter. 
• How about other disciplines for your topic?  Biology?  Education?  Agriculture?  Wildlife Studies?  Look in those databases.
• What entity would care about your topic? Government office/agency?  Professional organization?  At what level—international, national, regional, state, local?  Go to their website(s) and search.  What about business or industry—is your topic something they are interested in?  
  • What kind of results do you get from a www search?  These organizations will show up.
  • Search the local library catalog.
  • Search the websites of the local governments.
• Found an older (but relevant) publication?  Check who might have cited is since.
  • Google scholar and ProQuest Central can do this. 
• Found a great source?  What resources did they cite that you could use? 
• Do you know someone in the field—have a connection?  Talk to them.
• Does your topic even have a firm answer right now, or is the subject continually evolving as more studies are made? 
  • What is the current conversation about the topic? 
  • Who are the people studying it? 
  • Where are they working/Who do they work for?
• Does the topic have a “for and against” aspect?  How might that affect your search results? 
  • Is there a lot at stake?  Are entities throwing a lot of money at this?  Are there marginalized or under-represented voices?

A short list of places to start looking—all your topics, for the most part, can be searched for in these resources:

• OneSearch (includes books in NMU’s catalog).  Includes results beyond the library’s online collection.
• Library catalogs by themselves—
  • NMU
  • Peter White (for some local and regional topics--can also search most UP libraries)
  • MelCat (for local/Michigan/Great Lakes topics)
  • Especially WorldCat.  There is our subscription version and a free version.  Both can have different results.
• A lot of your information, if past classes are an example, will be found from government sources, federal and state and local.  USA.gov is where to start looking for those (google, too, but check the source).  USA.gov searches all levels of government (federal, state, tribal, military, local).  You will see agencies and departments that cover your topics bubble to the surface there--go, then, to those agencies and departments themselves.
• Broad databases in addition to OneSearch: Google Scholar, and ProQuest Central.
• And to a narrower extent, subject databases (in biology, agriculture, business, etc).  Go straight to a specific database and forget OneSearch.

What has google delivered to you?  Look carefully at the source of your newfound web resources—go back up the chain to the original source?  Don’t just look at the first few pages of hits—dig deep.  News stories—look for names (people, companies, groups, locations, etc). 

• What have you found via social media?  Who (or what) is posting?  What are they posting about?  Is it anything worthwhile or just another repeat of something?  Go back up the chain to what they are talking about, the real source, and read it.

And what about AI?  AI generated/sourced...anything.  It’s going to be hard to detect.  Be very skeptical.  But it’s the neat, new thing we’re being sold, isn’t it….

• What are you prompting AI for?  
• How are you going to ask for what you want? 
• Are you plugging in your thesis statement? 
• Aren't you just asking for the answer you want to get? 
• Do you believe the results to be true? 
• Was anything cited?  If so, are you going to verify these citations?
• What is your AI source drawing from—something current or a few years old?

ChatGPT “is like an uncle that turns up at holiday gatherings, has a few drinks and then starts talking confidently about sh*t he doesn’t know about”.  Be better than your drunk uncle.  Listen politely if you think you have to.  Verify.  Do your own research.

Tips for OneSearch and Proquest Central:

1. There is a lot of post-search fiddling around with your results using these resources.
2. You may want to limit your results to peer review (also take note of the other limits you can select).
3. You may want to limit to “journal article” (although peer review usually means it’s a journal article)
   1. Perhaps you want to look in other content types beyond books or articles.
4. You might want to change the sort to date rather than relevance.
5. Less is more, as has been written here.  Search with a few terms then add one more.  And so on.
6. Neither of these should ever be your only source.
7. Go to another database under a specific subject.

Association of American Geographers. Publisher of the Annals of the AAG and The Professional Geographer.

American Geographical Society. Publisher of The Geographical Review.

The Canadian Association of Geographers. Publisher of The Canadian Geographer

The Geographical Association (UK). Publisher of Geography (G73 .A15).

CataList: The Official Catalog of LISTSERV Lists (yes, LISTSERVs are still a thing).  Sign up for one or more in your field.  As for blogs, Antipode (a Radical Geography Community) has a list of them, and a list of "Geographers that blog (relatively frequently)" from Sam Kinsley--dates from 2016.  From Feedspot, the Top 60 Geography Blogs & Websites in 2024. 

Perhaps you've found a researcher in your field that has one or has a social networking presence: follow them.

Sign up for publisher alerts through your favorite social networking program, from within a database or directly from the publisher.