Now that you've gotten your hands dirty, and have had firsthand experience searching out resources and information pertaining to urban sprawl and development, or perhaps the political and cultural climate of Colorado, here are some more advanced tips you can use to find exactly what you are looking for (assuming it is available and accessible over the Internet).

Search Tips

Given the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various information outlets, you will probably want to use them all. For example, you may want to search for a couple of books on the general history of growth and planning in the American West, or perhaps the local environmental impacts of rapid population growth. You would also certainly want to review recent news stories about the conflict from numerous perspectives, while also monitoring news stories as they appear in recent editions of both local and national newspapers and periodicals. You can start by simply typing a few key words into the simple text search on each magazine or periodical's website. For example, you might start by searching for information on "sprawl", "smart growth", "sustainable development", "new urbanism", "urban renewal", "gentrification", "Sierra Club", "transportation", or "PIRG (Public Interest Research Group)". This is likely to result in fairly lengthy lists of possible resources.

Assignment:

• Use a general search engine (like Google or Yahoo!) to search for more specific information about urban sprawl and economic development in Colorado. Find and list three Colorado cities or communities that are dealing with the effects of sprawl and development.
• Locate a newspaper or periodical website with search capabilities. Try to locate three articles pertaining to your conflict.

You will probably be initially overwhelmed with large numbers of "hits" that are completely unrelated to sprawl or development, specifically. For example, you might find a great deal of irrelevant information about economic development efforts in third world countries, or a new punk band called "The Sprawl." The simplest way to get around the problem is to find entries that are clearly on-topic and then click on the "similar pages" link located at the end of each Web page hit if you are using Google or Yahoo!. (You can scan the resulting lists, repeating the process again and again.) You can also look for "buzzwords" or formal keywords that describe your topic more accurately and uniquely. For example, you might find that virtually every article on the conflict makes some reference to either the Colorado Smart Growth Initiative, Governor Bill Owens, Boulder County Comprehensive Plan, or the responsible growth campaign.

In many cases, it will also be worth your while to use the advanced or power search features that most quality search systems make available. Here, for example, you can use "boolean" logic to search (growth OR sprawl OR Colorado OR development OR "strip malls") AND (conflict OR dispute). You may also be able to browse or search by key words. With Yahoo!, you could, for example, select Regional then U.S. States then Colorado. In CRInfo, you can do the same thing with a set of resources specific to conflict resolution.

As you find quality resources, you can save the Web links to those resources on your Internet "bookmarks" or "favorites" lists. You can also save or print useful resources, while ordering publications from online or neighborhood bookstores. You should also remember that the Internet is accessible worldwide. While there is considerable variation in Internet access,, there are often viable options for connecting to the Internet, even in remote, less "developed" regions of the world.

Language Matters

One key to making any search system work is an understanding of the vocabulary that people use to describe the information that you are looking for (you should expect to find significant numbers of people who use different words — or the same words in different ways — than you do). Thus, the first step is to figure out how to translate your vocabulary into the vocabulary used by others. You might find that sprawl is a problem that is facing multiple communities. Modifying your search terms to exclude information about states outside of Colorado may be one way to reduce the number of irrelevant "hits." Additionally, you may find all kinds of information about The Sprawl's recent tour dates or information about their fan club. You could use advanced search options from the site to all of the articles on sprawl excluding the keyword "music" (usually the search engines provide specific examples for how to exclude certain keywords from your search that are specific to that particular site's search capabilities).

Additionally, different people and countries may have different vocabularies to talk about growth. For example, activists may refer to the wider growth issue in terms of "urbanization" or "white flight" or environmental groups may discuss sprawl in terms of "resource rights" or "sustainable development." Failure to pay attention to these vocabulary differences can easily leave you with just one side of a multifaceted story.

Assignment: 

• From the main page of the search engine, see if you can find advanced search techniques to eliminate unwanted "hits" or otherwise fine-tune your search to find exactly what you are looking for.
• Find and list any special vocabulary that those working in or around the conflict use to describe the conflict parties or particular individuals or personalities associated with the conflict, campaigns or policies relevant to the conflict, or perhaps buzzwords or other key terms used to describe the conflict.

Overall Strategy

Probably the best place to start your background investigation would be with a search for "encyclopedia-type" information on growth. While you can get some of this information from traditional print sources, online searching is likely to be faster, easier, and more up-to-date. In addition to providing general background information on the conflict, this exercise will also identify a large fraction of the more detailed keywords that you might wish to search. For example, you can expect to find the names of key cities, political leaders, or notable geographic features that are used to describe the conflict (like river names and political boundaries such as counties) that may aid you in your search efforts.

Perhaps, once you have found information about growth and development in Colorado, you may wish to find out how other communities or even other countries are dealing with growth. To access how different regions interpret the conflicts over global trade, you might want to try the pre-organized menu items that many general search engines provide. For this conflict, a good place to begin would be the "Regional" keyword category on the front page of Yahoo!. This section is sure to provide an astonishing amount of information on any region of the country or world including, for example, lists of online newspapers, cultural information, links to government agencies, local e-mail directories, travel information, and information about communications and Internet access. You might then want to look at online newspapers representing a number of regions and counties within the area on which you are seeking information. You might want to start with newspapers published in your native language, and then move on to foreign language newspapers (see below) to fill in obvious information gaps. The key is to find news sources that are looking at the conflict from all perspectives.

You might then want to do a systematic search for organizations involved in collecting, organizing, and distributing information about urban growth. While this is unlikely to yield a complete list of such organizations, it is likely to identify a number of well-connected organizations (such as Sprawlwatch.org and Plannersweb.com), which can provide you with the information you need to start exploring the network of people working on the problem. E-mail, telephone calls, and faxes to contacts in these organizations are likely to yield information about the activities of each organization, along with suggestions for others who should be part of your contact tree.

Assignment:

• Try to find and list additional organizations that are actively involved in the conflict.
• Try to find similar conflict resolution efforts going on in other regions of the country or the world.
• Find the names and e-mail addresses of three people you may want to contact about your research questions.

Do you feel comfortable with your Web search skills? If not, return to those assignments you feel you still need work on by returning to Page 1 or Page 2. If you feel you are now an Internet search expert, you are ready to evaluate your results.