Geography Graduate Student Guide

• The CAT
  Look for books, government documents, and more in the University Libraries' collection. Also, use The CAT to determine what journals the Libraries subscribe to in both print and electronic formats.

• If an item you need is not owned by Penn State you may want to search and see if it is available at another library. Please allow at least 2 weeks for material to arrive.

  • WorldCat (OCLC)
    Holdings from more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. You may request directly from WorldCat if the University Libraries does not own an item.

  • CIC University Libraries (Big Ten)
    Search all the library catalogs of the Big Ten

  • E-ZBorrow
    Pennsylvania Academic Libraries (PALCI)

The University Libraries own thousands of journals in both print and electronic format. Search The CAT (above) to see if we own a particular title. The following are links to lists of many of the e-journals we own. You may want to search other social sciences categories, as well.

E-Journal Lists

• Geography

• Poltical Science

Key databases

• GeoBase
  Geography, geology, ecology

• Human Population and Natural Resource Management
  Demography

• Sociological Abstracts
  Premier database in sociology

• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  Primary database for political science

• EconLit
  Economics

• Peace Research Abstracts
  The only database to focus on peace and conflict issues.

• Online Geographical Bibliography
  books, pamphlets, articles received in the America Geographical Society Library since 1985

Citation Tracking

Find out where an article you are reading has been cited by other scholars.

• Social Sciences Citation Index
  part of the Web of Science (along with Science Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index)

U.S. Statistics

• Census Bureau
  • American Factfinder

• Social Sciences Statistics and Data

International Statistics

• UN Comtrade

• World Development Indicators (WDI)

• Global Development Finance (GDF)

• International Financial Statistics

• MBS Online (UN Monthly Bulletin of Statistics)

• UN Common Database (UNStats)

• LexisNexis Statistical

• LatinoBarometro
  Latin American Polling Data

Data Sets

• ICPSR (InterUniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research)
  depository of large, downloadable data sets

• iPoll (Roper)
  Downloadable polling data. National and International

• LatinoBarometro
  Latin American Polling Data. Data that is downloaded can be manipulated further and has subnational information.

• CIAO (International Affairs)

• Congressional Research Service Reports

• OxResearch (Oxford Analytica)

• PolicyFile (Public Policy Research and Analysis)

• SourceOECD (economic policy)

• Praeger Security International Online

• World Bank E-Library

Penn State Theses and Dissertations

• The CAT
  Use the "Advanced Search" page. From the drop-down menu for "material type" choose type [Master thesis, dissertation, honors thesis]

Other Institutions

• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
  Indexes theses and dissertations from universities around the world. Those from the CIC (Big 10+) are full-text online from about 1994 on.

The Libraries collect extensively in Pennsylvania, US, and International government information. The print and microfiche collections contain over 500,000 items. This is supplemented by a number of online full-text resources.

To locate material

• Search The CAT
  Many of the resources, especially those received since 1986, are listed in The CAT.

• For other US documents, use the Social Sciences Guide to Government Documents

• For International and Foreign Information, use the International Affairs Research Guide

• ASK at the Social Sciences Library Reference Desk (2^nd Floor Paterno Library)
  Many materials can be located only through specialized print indexes. Please ask for help.

The Libraries have access to hundreds of news sources from around the nation and around the world.

• Use the News and Microforms Library's Guide to Newspapers as a starting point