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Urban Studies

Recommended resources for getting started with research in Urban Studies

Workshop Materials

Special Collections & Archives 

Resources beyond Vassar

Vassar Specific Resources New York & Consortial Resources Open Access Resources 

Interlibrary Loan (ILL): Books, articles, film, dissertations and other resources not available at Vassar. ILLiad is our ILL platform.

WorldCat: The "world's catalog"; a great resource for locating books. This link for WorldCat is specific to Vassar and easily allows for ILL. Experiment with sort options.

Purchase Request Form: Complete for books/ebooks, films and more, especially if you plan to heavily rely on the item and would like to borrow the resource for a longer period of time, if you think the item would be a good addition to the collection, or is not obtainable through ILL.

NY Library catalogs: Every college student in NY, regardless of your home state, can apply for a New York Public Library (NYPL) card. This allows you to access NYPL online resources and request to view items in person.

Center for Research Libraries (CRL): A large research collection that includes an international newspaper archive. Request items through ILL/ILLiad.

SHARES: Consortium of libraries to provide expedited ILL, special collections access, and easy in-person use of member collections. 

HathiTrust: A great and free online repository for older materials, especially those within the public domain. 

Internet Archive: A surprisingly good source for ebooks from the 1950's - early 2000's, radio shows/podcasts and other miscellaneous resources. Access may require free account creation. 

Institutional repositories (may be retrieved via Google or Google Scholar)

  • Like Vassar's Digital Library, you may find resources housed in college and university institutional repositories that contain the scholarly output/publications of that community. 

Grey Literature via Google (for exp. reports from research centers, organizations, IGO/NGO, Gov documents etc.)

Literature Synthesis Grids

Synthesis grids are organizational tools for recording the main concepts of your sources and can help with connecting your sources to one another.

Catalogue & Database Accounts

Vassar Library Search and many of our databases platforms (Ebsco, ProQuest, etc.) allow users to create free accounts where you can save searches and items from results lists. These accounts are created individually and not linked to Vassar Libraries. 

Citation Tools

  • Zotero: a free easy-to-use citation management tool to help you collect, store, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Zotero can format in-text citations and generate references lists using your preferred citation style. Find more information about Zoter, citing and style guides on Citing & Managing Sources. 
  • Zbib: A quick cite tool from Zotero to generate a citation from a URL, DOI, article/book title, or manually; no sign-in or account needed.

Task Tools

  • Trello: Trello is a free project management software. You can use it for setting deadlines, keeping track of tasks and more. See Organizing the research process using Trello to get started. There are free and paid versions; I use the free version almost daily. 
  • Google Keep: Somewhat similar to Trello, Google Keep is best used for visualizing tasks and creating checklists. 
  1. Don't try to keep it all in your head.
    1. Diagram your topic/ research question (Kristin Luker's Bedraggled Daisy) 
    2. Document your research process; consider using a synthesis grid or a research log/journal to plan out your current tasks and next steps.
    3. Annotate your references documents. If possible, work this into your search process and note why the source is relevant and how you might use it, as you save them. If using Zotero, you can use its built-in annotation tools. 
  2. When saving sources, look for permalinks or DOIs
  3. Create accounts with the database platforms you are using regularly to save searches and results.
  4. Use a citation manager. Zotero is a great and free option. 

Two-Minute Thesis: video series produced by the Haverford College Libraries. Haverford senior thesis writers discuss (briefly) their theses, the research process, and share the ups and downs of their thesis writing experience.

Haverford College Writing Center Thesis Resources: Logistical and emotional guidance, from how to create a writing schedule to managing thesis anxiety; advice from students reflecting on their thesis experience. 

Managing Moments of Uncertainty & Anxiety as a Writer: As you get deeper into your project, you may experience a moment when everything seems to run together into a hopeless muddle. That usually happens when you accumulate notes faster than you can sort them. Such moments can be stressful, but they can also be a sign that you are on the verge of a new insight or discovery (p. 94). Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research, Fifth Edition, University of Chicago Press, 2024.

▪  Give yourself adequate time. When planning any project, most people underestimate how long it will take. The same is true for writing. So make your best estimate, then double it.

▪  Divide large and abstract tasks into smaller and more concrete ones. If the prospect of “writing a paper” feels daunting, break it down to more manageable tasks: make a storyboard, draft a provisional introduction, summarize and respond to a source, edit your sentences for clarity, and so on.

▪  Focus on your writing’s strengths, not its weaknesses. 

▪  Don’t go it alone. Whenever you can, share your writing with others. You will benefit from their responses, and just talking it through will stimulate your thinking.

▪  Adopt reasonable standards. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you feel that you must make every sentence or paragraph perfect before you move to the next one, you risk paralysis. It helps if you write informally along the way. In any event, know that every researcher compromises on perfection to get the job done.

▪  Recognize when you are stuck, and then do something different. You can take a break (of twenty minutes, or a day or two, or months or years, depending on your project and the time you have) to let your unconscious mind work on the problem. 

▪  Accept that you are not your paper. 

▪  Finally, visit a writing center (p.188-191.) 

Literature Reviews

A literature review may refer to part of a paper/article or a stand-alone publication that discusses the state of knowledge in a specific area, (as well as the act of searching and locating research literature.)

"...one of the first steps in planning a research project is to do a literature review: that is, to trawl through all the available information sources to track down the latest knowledge, and to assess it for relevance, quality, controversy and gaps. 

The review can be used to show where you have gained inspiration to develop your ideas...it should also demonstrate you have a good understanding of the current conceptual frameworks in your subject, and that you can take a stance in placing your work within these."

A successful literature review will present:

    History of developments in research related to your topic:
    1. trace the background to current thinking
    2. what are the themes, issues, or sub-topics scholars have focused on?
  2. Research theory & philosophy:
    1. establish the intellectual context(s) of your related question(s)  
  3. Latest research and developments in order to:
    1. inform and practice
    2. discuss conflicting arguments
    3. detect the gap(s) in knowledge
  4. Research methods:
    1. explore research techniques that have been used, particularly those of relevance to your project
    2. what are the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques?
  5. Your research question/ hypothesis: 
    1. how has the existing research led to/ informed the development of your research project?

Adapted from Walliman, Nicholas. 2018. Research Methods : the Basics. Second edition. Abingdon, Oxon.

What Makes a Successful Literature Review?

  1. Search terms: Formulate appropriate search terms as the basis for your literature searches.
  2. Database search tools: Use database search tools to identify relevant journal articles and related materials.
  3. Key publications: Identify a series of key publications in your area and use these as the bases for citation reference searches.
  4. Additional search tools: Use search tools to identify pieces of interest, in particular grey literature, relevant to you (e.g. Google Scholar.)
  5. Scanning: Scan abstracts of articles, reviews of books, executive summaries of government reports, and other summaries of published work to determine if you need to read the piece in full.
  6. Reading: Read the pieces you have identified and make notes from them. A synthesis grid may be useful for note taking and for facilitating writing the review.
  7. Thematic organization: Use these notes as the basis of a thematic organization of your literature review.
    • Note, a chronological or methodological organization may align better with your research question.
  8. Writing the review: Write the review, based on your organizational framework, in such a way that you can construct one or more interesting research questions which you will address in your investigation.

From Byrne, D. (2017). What makes a successful literature review?. Project Planner. 10.4135/9781526408518.

You will likely go through the search process a number of times, performing different searches with different keyword combinations, to address the different components of your literature review. 

Systematic Searching Handsearching
#1 Identify your question. Identify the key concepts and related terms. Tip:  You may want to re-phrase your question. Background reading can help you identify related terms and further define or narrow your topic.  Explore reference lists to locate other articles, books, or authors who have written on the same topic. 
#2 Find an appropriate search tool. Consider your subject matter, discipline of study, type of information needed (e.g. peer reviewed articles) Locate cited by literature to view more recent similar or adjacent research.

#3 Start with a simple search based on your key concepts. Tip: You may also have to look at literature that refers to one (not all) aspects of your research question.

 Browse the table of contents of relevant journals and special issues.

#4 Use specific search strategies.

  • Use AND to join dissimilar terms.
  • Use OR to join synonyms or related terms.
  • Truncate words with * to pick up variations of that word. 
  • Use "quotation marks" for phrase searching. 
  • Use database limiters e.g. limit to scholarly journals. 
  • Consider searching in a specific field e.g. title (article title) or source (journal title.)
 Locate an expert in the field and browse their publications.  
#5 Search and skim results. Look for the language and terms that researchers use and that the database assigns to articles; identify and search or refine your results using subject headings.  
#6 Switch up your searches.  Use promising new terminology.  Your search may become more sophisticated.  

A literature review is organized around ideas and discusses how sources relate to one another around these ideas; a literature review is not a series of source summaries. 1

Be it your first or 20th review, visit the Vassar Writing Center for support.

Scoping Your Review 2,3
Take time to scope your topic; you will want a narrow enough topic so that the amount of literature can be digested into a review, however you will also need enough literature to place your work into the conversation started by the existing research.

As you read, consider what themes emerge across sources, note consensus, debate, tension or patterns. You will not go into depth regarding every theme, but focus on the major ones central to your work.

Structuring & Organizing Your Review 2

  1. Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
  2. Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see UNC Tools & Tricks for details re: selecting organizational structure.)
  3. Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Synthesis 1
The goal of the review is to synthesize, to make observations about groups of studies. Synthesis may sound like:

  • Much of the literature on [topic x] focuses on [major themes].
  • In recent years, researchers have begun investigating [facets a, b, and c] of [topic x].
  • The studies in this review of [topic x] confirm / suggest / call into question / support [idea / practice / finding / method / theory / guideline y].
  • In the reviewed studies [variable x] was generally associated with higher / lower rates of [outcome y].
  • A limitation of some / most / all of these studies is [y].

Resources
1 Literature Review Overview, JMU Writing Center: literature review structure and examples of source synthesis.
2 Literature Review Tips & Tools, UNC Writing Center: how to get started, focus your question/topic, fantastic guidance for organizing and composing your review.
3 Literature Review, JMU Writing Center: series of questions to potentially address in your review re: project's significance, coverage, state of knowledge, and methods. 
Writing a literature review. Charles Darwin University: source for the graphic above; excellent guidance for everything literature review related.

Use the following evaluation criteria to evaluate your work.

Evaluating Introductions & Literature Reviews

☑ Does the researcher identify a specific problem area?
☑ Does the researcher establish the importance of the problem area?
☑ Are any underlying theories adequately described?
☑ Did the researcher cite sources for "actual statements of facts"?
☑ Has the researcher noted gaps in the literature? 
☑ Does a clear picture emerge of what previous research has accomplished and which questions remain unsolved? 

A Closer Look at Literature Reviews

☑ Does the researcher move from topic to topic instead of from citation to citation?
☑ Does the literature review critically engage with sources instead of summarize?
☑ Has the researcher avoided citing a large number of sources for a single point?
☑ Has the researcher avoided overuse of direct quotations? 
☑ Is current research cited?
☑ Has the researcher distinguished between opinions and research findings? 
☑ Has the researcher interpreted results in light of the inherent limits of empirical research? 
☑ Has the researcher cited both converging and contradictory research findings?

Checklist modified from Pyrczak, F., & Tcherni-Buzzeo, M. (2019). Evaluating research in academic journals : a practical guide to realistic evaluation. (Seventh edition.). Routledge.