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The culminating project/thesis you are working on focuses on development and planning issues in different locales. Even though many of the topics are focused on Orange County, California, there are many topics that coalesce around other parts of Southern California, the LA Basin, San Diego County, Riverside County, some US federal interests and several foreign locations that each have yet different parameters. In addition to the primary data you will seek, find, interpret and use, you will also have the need for some secondary sources to help in identifying terms, context of socio-economic & political issues and historical chronology and future impacts.
This handout is broken down into the type of materials that you should know exist and how to identify and find them, access and use them and find related content as well. Increasingly, better digital access is made available and you will find much of the material available online. You will use a variety of resources from a large number of sources. The data sets and indexing come in different products and there often is a choice to be made about which method of access you prefer. My handout will only superficially cover government Information, as my colleague Brian Williams (brian.williams@uci.edu), Government Information Librarian will cover that. We will also encourage you to examine the resources in Special Collections and meet with our colleagues in that unit if you wish.
The UCI Libraries Website serves as a point of departure or gateway for your navigation and discovery. For online resources, click on "Find Online Resources" and please consult the Subject Guide for Urban Planning & Public Policy for additional information. Also, Subject Guides are available for US Government Information, Orange County, California, Data Sources, GIS, News and Newspapers, Engineering and many other subjects and topics.
There are many subject guides prepared by UCI Librarians that may be helpful to you. The Subject Guide for Planning, Policy and Design may be a source of departure and make sure that you use all the pull-down menu tabs. Others are noted under Subject and Course Guides. There are also guides for California, Orange County, Federal. and International sources of government information, as well as for News, GIS, Maps & Atlases, Images and Visual Literacy.
Increasingly many of our licensed library resources are available via mobile devices - this link will tell you what is available and on what platform.
