Sustainability Program Introductory Research Guide

Environment at a Glance.  This is a library guide, a list of links, that George curates, and that he uses to teach from in advanced courses.  It's a great way to have lots of resources all on one screen.

The following are resources that you will want or need to become familiar with as you progress in your graduate studies. Browse these as you have time.

Through BorrowDirect Plus you can access other libraries that partner with Harvard in the BorrowDirect program. The BorrowDirect On-Site Borrowing page provides more information about access and borrowing privileges. 

WorldCat offers catalog records from over 72,000 libraries worldwide (but focuses largely on the U.S.). Search the WorldCat catalog to see if multiple libraries near you have what you are looking for. 

If you don't live near Harvard or BorrowDirect institutions, visit your local public library, especially since they can acquire materials for you through their Interlibrary Loan service.  If you don't happen to be registered for an Extension course in a given semester, there are a number of outstanding public libraries that offer online library cards to nonresidents for a small fee.  Some state libraries also offer packages of online library services to residents.  

Digital library collections and open access resources provide freely available information. Here are a few examples.

• Hathi Trust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. 
• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) connects people to the riches held within America's libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. 
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. 
• Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

Google Advanced Search lets you zero in on specific informaiton on the web, like countries, nonprofits, specific organizations, pdfs, languages, and more. 

Library databases are like search engines for specific subjects, or specific types of information. 

Harvard Library Guides are written by librarians to help people learn key ways to search in each subject or type of information.  So, if, say, you need to find out how to do ecology research, economics research, social science data, or another topic, find information in this selection of guides. 

Harvard Library's Liaisons are librarians who focus on specific subjects.  There is one for each Harvard College undergraduate concentration (major) at Harvard. Anyone can ask for help from them.  There are also specialists in the professional schools, listed on their own libraries' websites. 

Guides to government publications, including U.S. Government publications. 

How to find numeric social sciences data, like censuses and surveys. Contains contact info for Lamont Library's data librarian,.

Harvard Map Collection is one of the best in the world.  Online and paper maps, and geographic data, analysis, and visualization. 

Sage Research Methods contains many, many guides on how to do types of quantitative and qualitative analysis. If you go on to do a thesis, these can be great to help you choose a sound method or set of methods, something your advisors are bound to want to know. Things like regression, comparative analysis, participant research, structured interviews, Q method, and lots more.  

Interlibrary Loan: How to get books, articles, and so on if Harvard doesn't have them. In addition to Harvard's service, your local public library may do this for you as well.  This is handy if you need a book and can't come to Harvard's campus to pick it up.