LibGuides: SSCI 355: Regional Economic Development: Key Resources

Recommended Databases

Academic Search Complete
Contains more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, the majority being peer-reviewed journals. It also provides an index to additional journals, books, reports, and conference proceedings. It covers a wide range of topics and is a good place to start researching a topic.
Business Source Complete
This is IIT's largest business-subject database. It provides full-text coverage of more than 2,200 scholarly business, management and economics journals. More than 10,150 substantial company profiles from MarketLine are also included, as well as case studies, SWOT analyses, Market research reports.
ProQuest SciTech Collection
This huge database is "the ultimate science and technology research solution, combining full text journals with detailed indexing of global literature on natural sciences, engineering and technology. Areas covered include materials science, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, biology, aquatic sciences, environmental science, computer science and earth sciences in addition to many more."

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 (Journal STORage) is an archive of important scholarly journals in a variety of subject related to the humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences. JSTOR is not the place to search for the most current research, but overall is an excellent multidisciplinary database containing articles from many essential peer-reviewed sources.

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

Click on "Settings" from the right sidebar menu

Screenshot of Google Scholar indicating where to find the link to

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.