Landscape Architecture: Recommended Resources
This Research Guide supports the Landscape Architecture program at Virginia Tech which guides students as they address some of the most important challenges of our time: climate change; healthy living and empathetic design; urbanization; re-imagining water, food, energy and transportation; green infrastructure; remediation of spoiled and disturbed sites; and preserving critical natural resources.
Below is a list of library databases that can aid in landscape architecture research. An exhaustive list of library databases can be found here.
AGRICOLA from ProQuest
AGRICOLA indexes citations for journal articles, books, proceedings, theses, patents, translations, audiovisual materials, computer software, and technical reports pertaining to all aspects of agriculture, life sciences, nutrition, and environmental science. This database provides selective worldwide coverage of primary information sources in agriculture and related fields. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1970-present.
AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access) serves as the catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library, as well as a primary public source for world-wide access to agricultural information. The database covers materials in all formats and periods, including printed works from as far back as the 15th century.
Art & Architecture Complete from EBSCOhost
Art & Architecture Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and some full text from journals, magazines, trade publications, and books covering all aspects of art and architecture. It also includes a large image collection. 1901-present.
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals from EBSCOhost
Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles in architecture and design from American and international scholarly and trade journals, popular magazines, and publications of professional organizations. In addition, this database also provides citation records for architects' obituaries. Full text, when available, is in PDF and HTML. 1800s-present.
BuildingGreen includes online versions of GreenSpec, "Environmental Building News", a database of green products (product descriptions and articles about the products), and a database of more than 160 high-performance building case studies (all in HTML). This information is searchable and cross-referenced by CSI MasterFormat division, LEED credit, or green building topic. 1992-present.
Building Types Online
Building Types Online provides information on buildings and structures around the world. Maps, architectural drawings, photos, and bibliographies are included.
Birkhäuser Building Types Online is a resource for the study and practice of architectural design. It is based on the publisher's high international standing in professional architecture books, on the knowledge of the authors and editors who are leading experts in their fields, as well as on the technical quality of the illustrations. The database offers highly flexible and detailed search and browse access to the contents of the Birkhäuser program on building types. All content was written and selected by internationally renowned authors in architectural design.
Environmental Science Index from ProQuest
Environmental Science Index indexes citations, abstracts, and some full text from journals, conference papers and proceedings, special reports from international agencies, non-governmental organizations, universities, associations and private corporations, books, government studies and newsletters. It covers agricultural and biological science, social science, and technological aspects of the environment. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1975-present.
Environmental Impact: CABI
Environment Impact indexes citations and full text of journal articles, conference proceedings, government reports, books, and other publications on climate change and human impact on the environment. 1910-present.
Environment Complete from EBSCOhost
Environment Complete indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles from journals, conference proceedings, and books on the agricultural, biological, social science, and technological aspects of the environment. Full text available in HTML and PDF. The database allows limiting to peer-reviewed journals. 1888-present.
Environment Complete contains more than 1,957,000 records from more than 1,700 domestic and international titles going back to the 1940s (including 1,125 active core titles) as well as more than 120 monographs. The database also contains full text for more than 680 journals, including many of the most used journals in the discipline, such as Environment (back to 1975), Ecologist, Conservation Biology, etc. Additionally, Environment Complete provides full text for 120 monographs, such as Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (3 volumes), Advances in Water Treatment & Environmental Management, etc.
Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Literature Index from EBSCOhost
Garden, Landscape, and Horticulture Index indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text journal articles, conference proceedings, reviews, books, and recipes.Full text available in PDF and HTML. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources.
Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Index covers a wide range of serial titles including general gardening titles of national, international, and regional interest, and titles devoted to specialty gardens and plant groups. Indexed and abstracted are more than 500 core titles, the majority of which are published in English. Coverage for many titles extends back further than a decade. Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Index brings together articles about plants and gardens into a single source, and it includes titles that are not available in any other index.
GeoRef from ProQuest
GeoRef indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses in the geological sciences. It also includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1669-present (North America coverage); 1933-present (Worldwide coverage).
The GeoRef database includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. Masters' theses and doctoral dissertations from US and Canadian universities are also covered.
To maintain the database, GeoRef editor/indexers regularly scan more than 3,500 journals in 40 languages as well as new books, maps, and reports. They record the bibliographic data for each document and assign index terms to describe it. Each month between 4,000 and 7,000 new references are added to the database.
ProQuest Deep Indexing: Earth Sciences supplements GeoRef with access to deep indexing for tables, figures, graphs, charts and other illustrations from the scholarly research and technical literature for selected records. Records from the database appear with searches of GeoRef to provide an additional path for discovery.
GreenFILE from EBSCOhost
GreenFILE indexes citations, abstracts, and full-text articles, books, case studies, conference papers, speeches and interviews, letters, and reports covering all aspects of human impact to the environment including agricultural, architectural, engineering, education, and the social sciences. Full text is available in HTML and PDF. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1913-present.
Sustainability Science Abstracts from ProQuest
Sustainability Science Abstracts indexes abstracts and citations from journal articles, conference proceedings, books, patents, reports, theses, and dissertations in the fields of sustainable development, human population and demography, natural resource management, and conservation of natural resources. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1995-present.
Human Population Dynamics
Population - Environment Relations
Population Statistics and Policy
Sustainable Living and Consumption
Environmental Awareness and Education
Environmental Law, Conventions, & Policy
Sustainable Resource Base: Atmosphere; Land; Water and Biodiversity
Economic Drivers
Sustainable Development and Production
Sustainable Transportation/Mobility
ULI Development Case Studies
ULI Development Case Studies provides full-text case studies describing the development process of building projects (in HTML). Studies include general descriptions, contact information for the development team, the building site's background and history, special features of the project, what did and did not work on the project, key facts and figures, and photos of the site or floor plans. 1981-present.
VTechWorks houses dissertations and these from Virginia Tech students. All other links are to external dissertations and theses.
VTechWorks is Virginia Tech's institutional repository. It contains born-digital and scanned publications of Virginia Tech faculty and students, like dissertations, plus documents like Virginia state publication. Most are available in full text (PDF and other formats) and have no restrictions on access.
Virginia Tech's open access institutional repository, publicizes and preserves the scholarly work of Virginia Tech faculty, students, and staff: journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more. Most content is recent, published within the last 15 years, but there is also a great deal of older and historical content. The full text of all documents is available, often in PDF format, and all entries are indexed by search engines such as Google Scholar and Discovery Search. Any member of the Virginia Tech community can upload material to VTechWorks.
Research in VTechWorks is widely disseminated, free to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.
Research in VTechWorks is easily discovered, since it is indexed in Google Scholar, WorldCat, the Virginia Tech website, and the Library's Discovery.
Research in VTechWorks has increased impact: many studies show that openly accessible research is more frequently cited by journalists and scholars than research published in journals and books that must be paid for.
Research in VTechWorks has a persistent, stable link ("handle") that won't change even when current servers are replaced, which makes it more reliable for others to cite and to share on social media.
Research in VTechWorks will be preserved by the University Libraries for decades or even centuries, unlike research posted on a personal web page or published by a company that might go out of business.
Research in VTechWorks is preserved even if a researcher leaves Virginia Tech, but it can always be posted or published elsewhere, since Virginia Tech does not claim any unnecessary or additional rights to the material.
Open Access Theses and Dissertations
Open Access Theses and Dissertations is an index of over 1.5 million electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). To the extent possible, the index is limited to records of graduate-level theses that are freely available online.
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
Includes more than 2.7 million citations to dissertations and theses from around the world along with more than 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. More than 70,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added yearly. Use ILLiad to request non-full-text theses or dissertations. 1637-present, full-text dissertations 1997-present.
The Course of Landscape Architecture
Starting from the dual inclination to clear land for cultivation and to enclose space for protection--the forest clearing and the walled garden--there emerges a vital and multifaceted narrative that describes our cultural relationship to, and dependence on, the landscape.
Guido Hager: on Landscape Architecture
Guido Hager has designed about 60 gardens, parks, squares, streets and promenades. Featuring more than 300 illustrations, this publication offers a close look at the cultural meaning of the garden in general.
Responsive Landscapes
This is the first book to rationalize interactive architecture and responsive technologies through the lens of contemporary landscape architectural theory.
Landscape As Urbanism
Driven in part by environmental concerns, landscape has recently emerged as a model and medium for the city, with some theorists arguing that landscape architects are the urbanists of our age.
Ecological Urbanism
The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. Ecological urbanism approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach.
Sarah Stanley
Art & Architecture Library
Cowgill Hall, 100A
Art & Architecture Library Website
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