Research Guides: Urban Planning &amp; Development: Home

Best Bets to Start Your Research

Start your research with these databases or explore the guide for more in-depth information. Contact your librarian (right) with any questions or for a personalized introduction to the library!

SLUth - Search Plus This link opens in a new window
Use this "mega" database to search Business Source Premier, Lexis-Nexis Academic, Web of Science & more! This database is especially good for interdisciplinary topics.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window
1972 - Present. Indexes over 1,600 journals in economic, political, and social issues, public administration, law, business, urban affairs and political science.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
1995 - Present. Includes Social Sciences, Science and Arts & Humanities Citation Indexes. Including citation searching.
Google Scholar @ SLU This link opens in a new window
Searches resources such as abstracts, journal articles, and reprints from many publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and other sources in a wide variety of disciplines. Good for looking up citations, very current research & interdisciplinary topics.
To see the Find It @ SLU link when searching Google Scholar off-campus:
- Sign in to Google Scholar Settings-Library Links
- Search for “Saint Louis University”
- Select “Find It @ SLU”
- Save
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
1790-present. The tool provides easy mapping and report creation functions for U.S. Census data and American Community Survey data on population and housing, as well as statistics on religion.
PolicyMap This link opens in a new window
Online data and mapping tool for obtaining geographic data from authoritative sources like the Census, BLS, CDC, and dozens of other federal agencies and private data providers. It has thousands of indicators on demographics, the economy, housing, lending, quality of life, education, health, and more. Data is available at the neighborhood census block group in many cases, up to a national level, depending on the data.

Managing Your Citations

Before you start your research choose a citation manager that works best for you! It will help you keep citations to all your articles, sources and data in one place making things much easier when it's time to write your papers. EndNote Desktop software is available for free through ITS, and the more streamlined EndNote Basic is available for free on the web.

EndNote Online
Considering EndNote but not ready for the time commitment of setting up & learning a new software? This free online resource allows you to easily save citations from a variety of databases and link back to the full-text. You can also use the cite while you write feature and import your citations into the EndNote software if you decide you need a more powerful citation manager.
EndNote download
Download EndNote for Mac or Windows from SLU ITS - free for SLU affiliates. This desktop software includes more advanced features than the free web version.
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To learn about EndNote, go to EndNote tips, by Donghua Tao, Ph.D.
Zotero
A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your sources. Browser plug-ins make this tool especially useful if you research includes a lot of government reports and other materials available on the open web. Can also import citations from library databases.
Citation Management Comparison Chart
This you might want to try a tool other than EndNote? This chart from UCSD compares features in EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero.

Government Web Search Engines

Google is great, but it includes EVERYTHING. Try the search engines below to search only for government information.

Search USA.gov
Search USA.gov searches .gov, .mil, .us and selected other domains that include official local, regional, state and federal government agencies as well as quasi governmental agencies such as the Smithsonian.
Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine
If you're looking for international information, this custom Google search engine searches across 100s of IGO websites. IGOs searched included in this search are: World Bank, United Nations, Arab Monetary Fund, African Development Bank Group, IMF, Organization of American States, World Trade Organization, European Union, World Tourism Organization and many more.

The Library is Everywhere!

Use your MySLU Login and password to access Library resources (journal articles, data, eBooks) from work, home or anywhere! Full off-campus access instructions.

Urban Planning & Development

Your Librarian

UPD & the Library

Best Bets to Start Your Research

Managing Your Citations

Government Web Search Engines

The Library is Everywhere!