You can use an Article Database to find journal, magazine, and newspaper articles on your topic. 

Databases recommended for GEOG 451 include...

GeoBase

Academic Search Premier

SAGE Premier Collection

JSTOR

Los Angeles Times, 1881-1988 (Historical)

Los Angeles Times, 1985-present (Current)

Historical Statistics of the United States

To open any of these databases, open the list of Geography databases, and scroll through the list until you find one of interest. Click on the link for that database, input your myCSULA authentication (if you're working off-campus), and then begin an Advanced Search! 

• Use a database that indexes peer-reviewed journals, such as Social Sciences Full Text.
   
• On the Search screen in any database, click the option (if offered) to limit results to "Scholarly/Peer-Reviewed Journals."
  
  
• Scan the abstract of any article to identify words typically used in original research, such as "methods," "survey," "data," "results," "findings" or "conclusions." If the abstract includes some combination of these terms, there's a good chance that it is of scholarly or peer-reviewed nature.
  
  
• Still unsure if the article comes from a peer-reviewed journal?  Identify the name of the journal in which the article was originally published, and find the publication's home site on the Internet.  Look for information "About" the journal and its editorial standards.  If the journal says that submissions are reviewed by an editorial panel of the author's peers, then it's a peer-reviewed journal!

• Use the "Advanced Search" option within an online database.
  
  
• Identify and brainstorm the key words and concepts relevant to your search--usually noun concepts and their synonyms.
  Example: If you're researching "suburban" regions, related terms may be "suburbs", "suburbia", or "rural".
  
  
• Use Boolean operators to link key words for searching. 
  To narrow a search to an exact topic, link major concepts with the Boolean operator "AND."
  Example: If searching for books on the colonialism associated with a particular nation, search for...
  
  • "colonies" AND "Spain"
  • "colonies" AND "France"
  • "colonies" AND "Britain"
  
  To expand a search to retrieve more results, link synonyms or related concepts with the Boolean operator "OR."
  Remember to enclosed the ORed terms within parentheses (so that the search engine logic works properly).
  Example: If searching for books on urban growth, search for...
  
  • ("urban" OR "municipal" OR "metropolitan") AND ("growth" OR "development" OR "planning")

• Use truncation to search for all variations of a key word. 
  

Example: If searching for books on the making of maps, search for "cartograph*", typing an asterisk or star symbol (*) at the end of the root "cartograph".  This will find books that mention "cartography", any "cartographer", and "cartographers" at large.