Geography Pathfinder
Library research guide from the Meyer Library Reference & Government Information Department

Find Articles and Basic Reference Information
Magazine and journal indexes and other reference databases.

Online Indexes to Articles
Academic Search Premier
Academic Search Premier, designed specifically for academic institutions, is the world's largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary full text database containing full text for more than 4,650 publications, including more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications. In addition to the full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for all 8,183 journals in the collection. This scholarly collection offers information in nearly every area of academic study including: computer sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, ethnic studies, and many more. Academic Search Premier is an enormous collection of the most valuable peer-reviewed full text journals, offering critical information from many sources unique to this database. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles. The majority of full text titles are available in native (searchable) PDF, or scanned-in-color.

AccessScience
The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, a classic reference encyclopedia for the sciences, makes up the core of AccessScience. AccessScience provides the finest collection of science reference materials, online and fully searchable. In addition to the latest edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, AcessScience includes Research Updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks, thousands of illustrations, and the latest Science News headlines, access to 110,000+ definitions from The McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, biographies of scientists, bibliographies containing more than 28,000 literature citations, links to evaluated related web sites, and much more.

AGRICOLA (5 user limit)
Compiled by the National Agricultural Library of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), AGRICOLA covers materials relating to all aspects of agriculture, forestry, and animal science. The database includes records of books, journals and other serials, audiovisual and other materials from over 5000 sources and contains in excess of 3,600,000 records from 1970 to the present. It is updated monthly.

ArticleFirst (Available at the Meyer Library reference desk).
This database is produced by the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) and is located on FirstSearch. It gives citations to articles from the contents pages of journals. Coverage is from 1990 to present and includes articles from over 16, 000 general topic sources, including business, humanities, medicine, popular culture, science, social science, and technology. Each record describes the source for one article from a journal or magazine and provides a list of libraries that have the journal title.

Current Geographical Publications (CGP)
Published by the American Geographical Society (AGS), Current Geographical Publications is a bibliography (citations only) of additions to the collections of the American Geographical Society Library. This includes references to books, periodical articles, pamphlets, government documents, maps, and atlases. The references are arranged in accordance with the classification scheme used by the AGS Library Research Catalog. The four sections in each issue are: Topical, Regional, Maps/Atlases, and Selected Books. Online coverage is 1985 – present. Meyer Library has Current Geographical Publications in print back to volume 61, 1968.

Discovering Collection (3 user limit)
The Discovering Collection, a Gale Research Group publication, is a comprehensive database to retrieve in-depth reference content for the core curriculum areas of literature, history, geography, science and social studies. Included in this full-text database are 25 reference databases/titles, 16,000 biographies, over 13,000 photographs, illustrations, images, audio and video files, over 16,500 Timeline Events, 3,200 plot summaries, 13,000 criticisms, and 18,000 essays and overviews.

ECO - Electronic Collections Online (Available at the Meyer Library reference desk).
The OCLC Electronic Collections Online (ECO) database is a collection of scholarly journals, with over 5,400 sources. It includes bibliographic information for all journals, and lets you view abstracts and full-text articles from journals to which Missouri State subscribes. ECO is multi-disciplinary in its subject areas, and coverage extends from 1995 to present.

eHRAF World Cultures
The eHRAF Collection of Ethnography is a cross-cultural database for disciplines with an interest in cultural diversity. eHRAF contains over 350,000 pages of information on all aspects of cultural and social life with diverse topics ranging from religious beliefs, bringing up children, causes and cures of diseases, to economic and political behavior. Cultures included are mostly immigrant groups, Native North Americans, and other ethnic groups from around the world. The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF) is an internationally recognized organization in the field of cross-cultural anthropology. These materials are relevant to the various social science disciplines as well as the humanities and health sciences. The mission of HRAF is to encourage and facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human behavior, society, and culture. Founded in 1949 at Yale University, HRAF is a financially autonomous research agency of Yale.

GEOBASE (Available at the Meyer Library reference desk).
Coverage of over 1,060,000 records includes journals, books, monographs, conference proceedings, and reports. Citations and abstracts to sources covering cartography, hydrology, climatology, meteorology, energy, paleontology, environment, petrology, geochemistry, photogrammetry, geomorphology, sedimentology, geophysics, & volcanology. Online Version of GEOBASE is available ONLY to current Missouri State University students and faculty at the Meyer Library Reference Desk with assistance from librarian.

GeoRef
The GeoRef database, established by the American Geological Institute in 1966, provides access to the geoscience literature of the world. GeoRef is the most comprehensive database in the geosciences and continues to grow by more than 60,000 references a year. The database contains over 2.6 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses. Subjects covered include, but are not limited to, crystallography, hydrogeology, economic geology, hydrology, environmental geology, marine geology, engineering geology, mineralogy, geochemistry, oceanography, geophysics, and paleontology. Coverage is from 1785 to present for North America, and 1933 to present for international.

Hospitality & Tourism Complete
Hospitality & Tourism Complete covers scholarly research and industry news relating to all areas of hospitality and tourism. This collection contains more than 500,000 records, with coverage dating as far back as 1965. Over 400 trade publications, magazines and academic journals are indexed, and there is full text coverage for more than 250 publications, including periodicals, company & country reports, and books. Subject areas covered include the culinary arts, demographics & statistics, development & investment, food & beverage management, hospitality law, hotel management & administrative practices, leisure & business travel, market trends, technology and more.

JSTOR
Our JSTOR database offers two multidisciplinary collections: 1) Arts & Sciences I-IV is an umbrella journal collection containing four sub-units, but which is searched as one collection. Its contents are: 119 core journals in economics, history, political science, and sociology, mathematics, and statistics; 124 journals in archaeology, classics, and Latin American, African, Slavic, and Middle Eastern Studies; 150 journals in language, literature, theatre, music, art, and architecture; and, 112 journals in education, management, marketing, political science, and public administration; 2) Biological Sciences, which is a collection of 98 journals in science fields such as conservation, plant sciences, cell biology and zoology. One of the distinct characteristics of JSTOR is that its coverage is "rolling", i.e., all of the journals provide full text of articles beginning with volume 1 of each title up to about the past three to five years. The Libraries have individual subscriptions to about 80% of these titles to provide coverage of current issues of most of the journals.

LexisNexis Academic – See the 'Reference' Academic Search Form which provides Country Profiles.
LexisNexis Academic is an interdisciplinary, full-text database of several thousand news, business, legal, and biographical sources. The "news" section includes over 350 newspapers, 300 magazines and journals, 600 newsletters, wire services, transcripts of broadcasts, and nearly 300 college/university papers. "Business" sources include business and financial news, U.S. and international company financial information from government or private sources, market research, industry reports, and actual SEC filings. "Legal" includes primary source materials such as case law, statutes, and regulations, including Shepard's citations for all U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1789, as well as all federal and state courts. It also includes law review articles from over 500 publications, and patents from 1971 forward. "People" includes biographical information for persons, both alive and deceased. In addition to news, business, legal and biographical information, LexisNexis Academic provides access to medical information, including medical news and medical & health journals. Abstracts from medical journals dating to 1966 are provided in the National Library of Medicine's Medline database. Country information on over 190 countries, with business and political risk analysis, as well as the World Almanac are other selected resources found in this database.

MasterFILE Premier
"Designed specifically for public libraries, MasterFILE Premier provides full text for more than 1,750 general periodicals covering general reference, business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more. In addition to the full text, this database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,400 titles. This database features: 5,000 full text Magill Book Reviews, nearly 500 full text reference books including the World Almanac & Book of Facts; full text from 86,019 biographies, 105,787 full text primary source documents, American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition and an Image Collection of 293,480 photos, maps and flags."

Military & Government Collection
This is EBSCOHOST’s full-text database containing current news pertaining to all branches of the military and non-military areas, including areas of engineering, public affairs, public policy, international affairs and much more. The database covers a collection of military titles, trade publications and newsweeklies providing cover-to-cover full text for nearly 300 journals and periodicals. The database also includes full text for 245 pamphlets and offers indexing and abstracts for over 400 titles. Many full text titles are available in native (searchable) PDF, or scanned-in-color. The Military & Government Collection database includes coverage from 1975 to the present.

Oxford Reference Online (5 user limit)
Oxford Reference Online contains over 1.3 million entries, including definitions, facts, figures, people, places, sayings, and dates from over 170 of Oxford University Press's central English and bilingual dictionaries, usage, quotations, and subject reference books. These are all combined in this online service to create one integrated and searchable e-reference book collection. Subjects covered include art and architecture, bilingual dictionaries, biological sciences, classics, computing, earth and environmental sciences, economics and business, English dictionaries and thesauri, English language reference, food and drink, history, law, literature, medicine, military history, mythology and folklore, names and places, performing arts, physical sciences and mathematics, politics and social sciences, quotations, religion and philosophy, and science. A complete list of subjects and books covered by Oxford Reference Online is available.

ProceedingsFirst (Available at the Meyer Library reference desk).
Proceedings is an OCLC index of worldwide conference proceedings. The database covers every published congress, symposium, conference, exposition, workshop and meeting received by The British Library Document Supply Centre and contains in each record a list of the papers presented at each conference. The Proceedings database contains over 169,000 records and includes coverage from 1993 to the present.

Project Muse
Project Muse provides access to 383 searchable full text journals in a broad range of disciplines, particularly in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and has significant strengths in literature, history, political science and sociology. Retrospective full text access typically ranges back to 2000.

ScienceDirect eJournal Collection
Part of the ejournal collections from MSU Libraries, ScienceDirect provides full-text access from 1999-present to about 240 journals published by Elsevier Science which are subscribed to by MSU Libraries, along with complementary access to another 80 titles with limited coverage. The majority of journal titles are from the natural and applied science areas of biology, botany, medicine, chemistry, mathematics, computer sciences, etc. but social science titles such as from business, psychology, library science, economics, and history are also part of the collection. From the ScienceDirect home page as a licensed user through MSU Libraries you can: browse the table of contents of over 2,600 journals, search across all information available in the database, view abstracts of over 3 million articles, and view the full-text of articles in those journals subscribed to by MSU Libraries. For a complete list of ScienceDirect journals titles subscribed to by MSU, go to the ScienceDirect page and check "full-text available".

Scitation
Scitation is a database/platform for researching physics as well as chemistry, materials science, and engineering. It contains the SPIN database (Searchable Physics Information Notices) which includes citations and abstracts to articles from 80 scientific journals published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and its member societies since 1975, as well as selected articles from other scientific journals, totaling over 1.5 million article citations. Scitation allows you to search for articles only in SPIN, or only in Scitation, or in both. MSU students, faculty, and staff have full text access to the AIP material to which we subscribe.

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Online Reference Databases (e-Reference Books)
Columbia Gazetteer of the World
Columbia Gazetteer of the World is a geographical dictionary of places and locations published by Columbia University Press. Its entries include information on demography, physical geography, political boundaries, industry, trade, and service activities. The length of the articles varies from brief notations to essay length articles. Coverage reflects developments of the past half century. The Columbia Gazetteer can be searched by Type of Place, Name Search, and Word Search.

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Print Indexes in the Meyer Library Reference Collection
The title links here will show you the SWAN library catalog record which gives the Meyer Library holdings of the print title.

Current geographical publications
MSU Meyer Ref G 116 .Z1 C87
Lists additions to the research catalogue of the American Geographical Society collection.

PAIS international in print (title varies).
MSU Meyer Ref JX71.Z1 P83x
Covering global public policy and social issues. Citations and abstracts to periodical articles, books, hearings, reports, gray literature, government publications, Internet resources, and other publications from 120 countries. Strong emphasis on public affairs and planning and how geography can be effected. Annually it contains more than 450,000 references to journal articles, books, government documents, research reports, conference reports, grey literature, internet documents, etc. originally published in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Materials cited by PAIS are of use to legislators, government officials, business and financial community, policy researchers and students researching public policy worldwide.

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General/All Purpose Indexes & Full Text Databases:
The following indexes and databases do not provide the in-depth coverage for studying Geography as the indexes above. They do cover a variety of subjects and topics across multiple disciplines and provide good general indexing of magazines, newspapers, and core academic journals. In addition they provide full text articles from many of the sources cited.

EBSCOhost. Enter EBSCOhost Web and select the appropriate database for your research.
FirstSearch. Either jump to the database you need to search, or under Databases on the menu bar to the left click “List All” and select the appropriate database for your research.
LexisNexis Academic. Full-text newspapers! Also includes business, legal research, and reference areas.
Oxford Reference Online. An e-reference book collection of over 175 of Oxford University Press’s central English and bilingual dictionaries, usage, quotations, and subject reference books.
CQ Researcher, FACTS.com, SIRS Researcher, JSTOR, Project Muse

Selected Journals in the Library
The title links will take you to TDNet which is the Libraries' tool for locating journals regardless of their format—electronic, print, or microform. Once in TDNet, click on the links to locate journals online, or click on the check box to locate journals in print and microform. This is NOT a complete list of all relevant journals in the Missouri State University Libraries’ collection for this field. If you are looking for a particular title, then use TDNet as your starting point.

Demography

Focus

Geographical Magazine (Formerly: Royal Geographical Society Magazine)

Geographical Journal

Geographical Review

Geography: Journal of the Geographical Association

Journal of Geography

National Geographic

Professional Geographer: the Journal of the Association of American Geographers

Southeastern Geographer

World Affairs

World Politics

World Today

Recent Books in the Meyer Library Collection
The title links will take you into SWAN, the Missouri State Libraries catalog, to view publishing information and complete citation. The citation record will also display the Library of Congress call number used to arrange many of the books in this subject area. You can use the call number to browse the shelf for similar materials.

Benhart, John E. Appalachian aspirations : the geography of urbanization and development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley, 1865-1900. Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, c2007.
MSU Meyer General HC107.A135 B46 2007

Beyond the metropolis : urban geography as if small cities mattered / edited by Benjamin Ofori-Amoah. Lanham, MD :University Press of America, 2007.
MSU Meyer General GF125 .B49 2007

Dancing with giants : China, India, and the global economy / edited by L. Alan Winters and Shahid Yusuf. Washington, DC : World Bank : Institute of Policy Studies, c2007.
MSU Meyer General HF1604 .D36 2007

DeFronzo, James. Revolutions and revolutionary movements. Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, c2007.
MSU Meyer General HM876 .D44 2007

Dickens, Peter.  Society & nature : changing our environment, changing ourselves.  Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2004.
MSU Meyer General HM856 .D53 2004

Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems / edited by Dustin J. Penn & Iver Mysterud; foreword by E.O. Wilson. New Brunswick, N.J. : Aldine Transaction, c2007.
MSU Meyer General   GN281 .E897 2007

Gore, Albert.  An inconvenient truth : the planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it. Emmaus, Pa. : Rodale Press, c2006.
MSU Meyer General   QC981.8.G56 G67 2006

Jacobs, Gera. Play, projects, and preschool standards : nurturing children's sense of wonder and joy in learning. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Corwin Press, c2007.
MSU Meyer General LB1139.35.A37 J36 2007 

Johnson, Michael L. Hunger for the wild : America's obsession with the untamed West. Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, c2007.
MSU Meyer General F591 .J617 2007

Marchadour, Alain.  The land, the Bible, and history : toward the land that I will show you. New York : Fordham University Press, 2007.
MSU Meyer General BS635.3 .M37 2007

Oxford Bible atlas. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2007.
MSU Meyer General BS630 .O96 2007

The politics of public space / edited by Setha Low and Neil Smith. New York : Routledge, 2006.
MSU Meyer General HT153 .P654 2006 

Population, land use, and environment : research directions / Panel on New Research on Population and the Environment, Barbara Entwisle and Paul C. Stern, editors; Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Center for Economics, Governance, and International Studies, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C. : National Academies Press, c2005.
MSU Meyer General   HB849.415 .P67 2005

Romm, Joseph J.  Hell and high water : global warming - the solution and the politics - and what we should do. New York, NY : William Morrow, c2007.
MSU Meyer General QC981.8.G56 R66 2007

Shades of the planet : American literature as world literature / edited by Wai Chee Dimock and Lawrence Buell. Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2007.
MSU Meyer General PS157 .S53 2007

Stutz, Frederick P. The world economy : resources, location, trade, and development. Upper Saddle River, NJ : Pearson Education Inc., c2007.
MSU Meyer General HC59 .S8635 2007

Reference Books at Meyer Library
The title links will take you into SWAN, the Missouri State Libraries catalog, to view publishing information and obtain the Library of Congress call number used by Meyer Library to arrange reference materials. Reference materials are non-circulating items.

Africa South of the Sahara
MSU Meyer Ref DT 351.A37

America's top-rated cities : a statistical handbook
MSU Meyer Ref HT123.A669 2004

America’s top-rated smaller cities
MSU Meyer Ref HT123.A6692 2002-2003

Cambridge encyclopedia of Africa
MSU Meyer Ref DT 3 .C35

Cambridge encyclopedia of China
MSU Meyer Ref DS 705 .C35

Cambridge encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
MSU Meyer Ref DS 334.9 .C36

Cambridge encyclopedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union
MSU Meyer Ref DK 14 .C35

Cambridge history of Africa
MSU Meyer Ref DT 20 .C28

Cities of the United States
MSU Meyer Ref HT123.5 .C49677

CQ’s state fact finder 2004
MSU Meyer Ref HN60.C68 2004

Dictionary of human geography
MSU Meyer Ref GF 4 .D52 2000

Encyclopedia of American Indian contributions to the world
MSU Meyer Ref E 54.5.K46 2002

Encyclopedia of buddhism
MSU Meyer Ref PQ128.E62 2004

Encyclopedia of cultural anthropology
MSU Meyer Ref GN 307 .E52 1996

Encyclopedia of earthquakes and volcanoes
MSU Meyer Ref QE521 .R58 2001

Encyclopedia of environmental studies
MSU Meyer Ref TD9.A84 2001

Encyclopedia of global environmental change
MSU Meyer Ref GE 149 .E443 2002

Encyclopedia of islam and the muslim world
MSU Meyer Ref BP40.E525 2004

Encyclopedia of religion and war
MSU Meyer Ref BL80.3.E53 2004

Encyclopedia of twentieth-century African history
MSU Meyer Ref DT29.E53 2003

Encyclopedia of world cultures
MSU Meyer Ref GN 307 .E53 1991

Europa world yearbook
MSU Meyer Ref Desk JN 1 .E85

Historical dictionary of mesopotamia
MSU Meyer Ref DS70.82.L45 2003

Illustrated book of world rankings
MSU Meyer Ref HA155.K87 2001

Monthly bulletin of statistics
MSU Meyer Gov Docs UN ST/ESA/STAT/SER.Q/

Political handbook of the world
MSU Meyer Ref Desk. JF 37 .P6

Religions of the world : a comprehensive encyclopedia of beliefs and practices
MSU Meyer Ref BL80.3.R45 2002

Statistical yearbook
MSU Meyer Gov Docs Ref UN

World atlas
MSU Meyer Ref Desk G1021.H2665 2003

Worldmark encyclopedia of cultures and daily life
MSU Meyer Ref GN 333 .W67 1998

Worldmark encyclopedia of the nations
MSU Meyer Ref G 63 .W67 2001

Worldmark encyclopedia of the states
MSU Meyer Ref E 156 .W67 1995

Government Sources & Publications
Key government departments and agencies and publications in the Meyer Library Government Documents Department.

DocLinks - directory of national, state, local, and international government web sites from the Reference and Government Department at Missouri State University Libraries.
http://library.missouristate.edu/reference/govinfo.htm

USA.gov - the United States government's official web portal.
http://www.usa.gov

GPO Access
GPO Access disseminates official information from all three branches of the U.S. Government. It indexes government publications and offers core documents of U.S. democracy (Constitution, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address, etc.) along with a variety of other Federal-wide resources.

U.S. Geological Survey
http://www.usgs.gov

Geography & Map Division of the Library of Congress
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/

U.S. Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/geo/www

U.S. Department of State
http://www.state.gov

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
http://www.cia.gov

United Nations
http://www.un.org

Missouri Geological Survey and Resource Assessment Division
http://www.dnr.mo.gov/geology/Earthquakes.htm

Publications:
CIA world factbook
MSU Meyer  Gov. Docs PREX 3.15 or online at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook

Country studies/area handbook series
MSU Meyer  Gov. Docs D101.22: 550- or online at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/

Background notes ( U.S. Dept. of State)
MSU Meyer  Gov. Docs S1.123: or online at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/

Earth manual, pts. 1-2. 1990
MSU Meyer Gov Docs US I 27.19/2:EA 7/990/pts. 1-2

Associations
Organizations of experts, policy makers, and researchers.

General Directory
Scholarly Societies Project from the University of Waterloo Library
http://www.scholarly-societies.org/

American Geographical Society
http://www.amergeog.org

Association of Geographic Information
http://www.agi.org.uk

Association of American Geographers
http://www.aag.org

National Geographic Society
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Society for the History of Discoveries
http://www.sochistdisc.org

Web Sites
Selected web directories to sources and a variety of information on the Internet.

Columbia Earthscape
http://earthscape.org/

EnviroLink: The online enviromental community
http://envirolink.org/

FAO Statistical Databases
http://faostat.fao.org/

Geography Learning
http://www.geographic.org

Globastat
http://www.globastat.com

Meyer Library Maps Collection
http://library.missouristate.edu/meyer/maps/

Nationmaster.com
http://www.nationmaster.com

Missouri State University Department of Geography, Geology, and Planning
http://geosciences.missouristate.edu/

compiled by Edward DeLong | Meyer Library
Missouri State University Libraries | Updated: June 2007