LibGuides: SSCI 355: Regional Economic Development: Key Resources

Recommended Databases

Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete is a multidisciplinary database offering full-text access to thousands of peer-reviewed journals, magazines, newspapers, and other publications across a wide range of academic disciplines, including social science, humanities, computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and more. A good place to begin researching a topic.
Business Source Ultimate
Business Source Ultimate is IIT's largest business database, offering full-text access to thousands of scholarly journals, trade publications, and industry reports on a wide range of business-related topics including management, economics, finance, accounting, and marketing. Includes company profiles, case studies, SWOT analyses, and market research reports. An invaluable resource for researchers seeking current and historical business information.
ProQuest SciTech Collection
ProQuest SciTech Collection provides access to scientific and technical literature across various disciplines. It offers full-text articles, abstracts, and citations from journals, conference proceedings, and technical reports in fields such as engineering, computer science, physics, and environmental science.

The SciTech Premium Collection includes the Natural Science Collection and the Technology Collection and provides full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications, and more.

For those researchers who need to conduct comprehensive literature reviews, this database includes specialized, editorial-controlled A&I resources for discovery of relevant scholarly research and technical literature critical to the discipline.
JSTOR
JSTOR offers access to a large collection of academic journals, books, images, and primary sources across multiple disciplines. It provides researchers, students, and scholars with full-text access to archival and current content from various fields including humanities, social sciences, and sciences, making it a crucial resource for literature reviews and historical research.

Search Tips

The guide below has additional images and explanations, but briefly, remember:

Combine keywords using AND, OR, and NOT in the search bars to begin your search.
Use filters like Date, Source Type, or Peer Reviewed to refine your search and find sources that fit your requirements.
Review your results and adjust your keywords to find different articles based on your results.
Save sources that might be useful by copying the citation or permalink, downloading the article, or emailing it to yourself.

Finding Journals and Articles: Important Search Tips
This guide from Galvin Library will cover some of the key things to keep in mind while searching in the library search tool.

Recommended Data Sources

In general, when looking for data, ask yourself who would be interested in this information? A government agency? A nonprofit? A private company? Then try to discover what agencies, companies, or organizations fall under that category, and see if any of them have publicly available data.

U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Census Bureau serves America as the leading source of quality data about American people, business and economy.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
City of Chicago Data Portal
This open data portal provides access to government data on a municipal level for the City of Chicago - data covered includes building and business permits, crime data, and education and health related information for Chicago.
United Nations Data
Portal for United Nations data - contains statistics and data for countries around the world.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a popular way to search for scholarly articles, reports, books, and more. Make sure to connect your Google Scholar account directly to your library account to streamline your access to articles.

Search directly below, or click the link to search in the Google Scholar interface.

Google Scholar
Use Google Scholar to search for academic articles in a variety of disciplines. Make sure to link your Google Scholar to your IIT account in order to see when you have immediate access.

Set Up Google Scholar

Screenshot of Google Scholar homepage with arrow pointing to the button to open the right side menu

Open the sidebar menu by clicking on the three lines in the upper left corner

Screenshot with arrow indicating where to find the "Settings" option from the right sidebar

Click on "Settings" from the right sidebar menu

Screenshot of Google Scholar indicating where to find the link to "Library Links"

Navigate to your "Library Links" page

Select "Library Links" from the right sidebar menu, and search "Illinois Institute of Technology" in the search bar in the middle of the page.

Screenshot of Google Scholar showing the appropriate boxes checked

Add Illinois Tech's library links

Check the boxes next to "Illinois Institute of Technology - Find Full Text -> IIT" and "ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY - MAIN CAMPUS - ProQuest Fulltext" and hit "Save"

Search for articles

Now when you search for articles, you should see "Find Full Text -> IIT" to the right of some of your results. Click on it to be redirected to the Illinois Tech catalog to access the article.