GEOG 495 - Capstone Seminar in Geography

This guide provides information about databases and journals to aid students enrolled in GEOG 495 locate relevant research materials.

Library Research Guide

Websites for Research in Kansas

Kansas State University Libraries

Prairie Studies Initiative
The Prairie Studies Initiative aims to strengthen dialogue and inspire creative scholarship among those engaged in understanding the natural ecosystems, history, culture, and livelihoods of the prairie, and to employ the arts to make this research meaningful to a wide public.

Kansas State University Archives and Special Collections

University Archives
includes publications such as campus directories, course catalogs, yearbooks, and Kansas State Research and Extension Archived Publications, especially reports on Kansas agriculture. Other collections include photographs, documentation of events, and records from numerous campus units that include presidential records dating from the 1870s to the present.
Kansas Life and Culture
Kansas history, westward expansion, agriculture, and rural life are integral to K-State’s identity. Preserved within the Kansas Life and Culture collections are documents, papers, and institutional archives of importance to the region’s economy and culture. Topical areas of strength include “Bleeding Kansas”, settlement of Kansas, ranching, general agriculture, Santa Fe Trail, political history, railroads, military history, Prohibition, and the development of Kansas State University. The following subcategories further define this topical area.
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Agriculture and rural life: Records of ranches, farms, milling companies, beef cattle industry, and allied agricultural businesses. Far-Mar-Co and Farmland records are the largest quantity of materials in this area. Also collected are personal papers and collections that uniquely document Great Plains rural history including settlement, homesteading, pioneer communities, and railroads.

Grain science and milling: Records of milling companies and allied businesses involved in crop production, breeding and genetics, crop protection, harvesting, transportation, post-harvest handling and storage, technical manuals printed prior to 1850, and early U.S. milling periodicals/journals, books, and other printed materials that detail the history of the grain industry in the state (1830–present).

Chapman Center for Rural Studies

Kansas Lost Town Project
A research initiative of the Chapman Center for Rural Studies, the Lost Town Project is a digital archive of rural town and site studies conducted by undergraduate researchers at Kansas State University since 2010. Students working in selected research-based classes may submit their town study for inclusion in the archive.

University of Kansas Library

Kansas Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1883-1922
Digitized by Kansas University Libraries, these large-scale plans of cities and towns in Kansas detail not only street names and location of buildings, but also include the construction materials and function of buildings, property boundaries, railroads, wells, etc.
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Each map set begins with an index sheet showing which areas are depicted by a specific sheet in the set. The colored areas on the index sheet are paired with a number, that represents the number of the sheet in the set where that area is described.
https://lib.ku.edu/sanborn-maps
Maps & Cartogrpahy
Maps from the University of Kansas Libraries Map Collection, primarily USGS topographical maps of the central plains region.

University of Kansas Libraries' Kansas Collection

Kansas Collection
The bulk of the Collection's holdings cover the Kansas Territorial period (1854-1861) to the present. Materials beyond Kansas include documentation from the contiguous states and the Great Plains generally. Regional representation of agricultural, political and social movements, economic development, and overland trail migration expand both the time frame and types of materials available.
African American Experience
The African American experience in Kansas and the region is a major area of focus in the Kansas Collection, with the legacy of African American individuals, families, businesses, churches, and schools documented through substantial collections of correspondence, photographs, organizational, educational and business records, books, pamphlets, and newspapers.