Senior Geography Projects in the Gosford Area:
How to choose your topic and where to start your research.

Compiled by the
Local Studies Librarian, Gosford City Library,
November 2004.

Introduction

Every year high school students undertake Senior Geography Projects (SGP) on their local area. This brief guide may assist you in choosing a topic, and help direct you to sources.

Selecting a topic

In your local area, you will find numerous geographical features that could potentially provide inspiration for a Senior Geography Project. Before choosing a topic, there are several factors that you should consider:

Ensure that there is a sufficiently large amount of published and other information available to support your chosen topic. In many cases students choose a very specific geographical feature or issue, and there simply is not the information available to support a major assignment.

In the Gosford Local Government Area, the types of geography topics for which there is a reasonable level of information available include:

• Coastal lagoon water quality
• Coastal Beach erosion and related issues
• Flood studies of major Creeks
• Wetlands
• Bush regeneration
• Major building projects, including: Erina Fair extensions; Central Coast Advocate Stadium (formerly Grahame Park Stadium); Supershuttle Ferry proposals etc.

Reports on other topics may be available, but please check as early as possible with the Library.

Where will I find information for my assignment?

Gosford City Library Local Studies Collection is the area's key resource collection for local geography and history projects.

Gosford Branch hours are currently:

• 9.30am-5pm Monday to Friday
• 9.30am-2pm Saturday
• 12.00pm-4pm Sunday

Information Services staff can be contacted on 4304 7500 during office hours. Students should plan a visit, and ideally make an appointment. Resources cannot be sent via email.

The Library Catalogue can be searched from this website. Local Studies Collection resources are identified by an LS prefix. Local Studies Resources can only be used at Gosford Library.

Gosford City Council's website has a growing range of reports suitable as a starting point for Senior Geography assignments at our local geography and environment page.

Gosford City Council departments and officers may have information of interest to you, but please call and make an appointment. The ability of Council departments to assist with your enquiry will differ dramatically depending on staffing levels, physical space, and other factors. Consider when choosing a topic whether the information you seek is likely to be available in public documents. Some information is not generally available to the public for privacy, safety or legal reasons.

Government departments such as the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA), Conservation and Land Management (CALM) and National Parks and Wildlife (NPWS) may also have information if your topic relates to their areas of responsibility.

What should I expect?

Be prepared to look at a very wide and fragmented range of resources in order to gather the information you need.

It is extremely rare to find one or two books that answer all your questions. The type of research report you are being asked to compile is based on research, and the assignment is designed to make you seek the answers.

Published sources, of the type often available at the Local Studies Reference Collection at Gosford Library, may include engineers reports, management reports, maps, plans, Environmental Impact Statements, photographs, pamphlets, newspapers, clippings files etc.

Allow plenty of time to undertake your research. Visit the Library as quickly as you can to begin gathering information.

Talk to Information Services staff about your chosen topic. Ideally this should happen before you commit to a particular topic. If you have committed to a particular topic then please talk to the Library as soon as possible. Do not leave it until the day before the assignment is due. In some cases we cannot assist you, if the topic is too specific.

Be prepared to do your primary research work in Gosford Library, or spend a fair amount of money on photocopying information to take home. Be aware that copyright applies to library resources, and that this will affect how much of a resource you can legally copy.

Published resources on local topics are generally quite rare. For this reason, access to some resources will be very limited. The Local Studies Reference Collection keeps a comprehensive range of local resources, but owing to their rarity the resources are not for loan. Few lending copies of resources are available to take home from other sections of the Library.

When searching for information on your chosen topic, recognise that at least 98% of all resources you need to use are not written or created with students in mind. Virtually every piece of information you gather will need to be examined for relevance, interpreted in the light of what your question is, and incorporated into your final assignment. There is no easy way of doing these assignments.

Many documents have titles that do not reflect their contents. Some will use complex jargon. It is important to contact Information Services staff at Gosford Library to have the best chance of identifying key resources. Please note that Gosford Library collects resources only for the Gosford City Council area. For Wyong and Lake Macquarie resources, contact the Library in that local area.

Use your imagination and think laterally about where you might find information.

• For example, if you are studying the health of a local lagoon:
  Visit the lagoon and look for signs of pollution, stormwater run-off, rubbish etc.
• Take your own photographs that illustrate the points you wish to convey.
• Take your own water quality readings to compare with published sources.
• Look at historic maps and photographs to determine the way that pressures have increased/decreased on a waterway.
• Take a count of the numbers of boats/swimmers using the waterway on a particular day to determine typical use patterns.

If you cannot locate specific information on a given topic, then try to take a look at the issue from a broader perspective. Often detailed information is provided in studies with a much broader scope, such as in Management Plans for all local beaches, or for all coastal lagoons.

For example, I want to study the Beach erosion issues at Wamberal-Terrigal Beach.

At Gosford Library there are very specific clippings files regarding beach erosion at Wamberal. (Wamberal Beach erosion, LSVF)

There are also very specific reports such as the Wamberal EIS that provide erosion control strategies for Wamberal-Terrigal Beach. (see geography web links).

But there are also less obvious sources of information on this topic. An excellent general report is the Coastal Management Study and Coastal Management Plan: Gosford Open Coast Beaches.
This report is available through the local geography resources on Council's web page. It is also available in hardcopy at Gosford Branch Library.

The above report has a general management framework for all Gosford Open Coast Beaches, and detailed specific chapters and maps on each beach.

By taking a step back from very specific titles and thinking about our topic more generally, this report has come to our attention.

Other potential sources of information on this topic include historic photographs, land subdivision maps from the 1920s, etc.

We hope this information is useful to you.
Good luck with your project!

Some useful web resources

• Gosford Library Catalogue
• Local Studies Collection resources are identified by an LS prefix.
  Local Studies Resources can only be used at Gosford Library.
• Local Geography and Environment Resources
• Central Coast Community Environment Network