Defining a Project

I think that one can start anywhere and create an interesting Project in the realms of Human Geography. Some modest examples, from a visit to the New Books shelves in Leyburn, on 23 December 2003, when I found these:
TITLE        Imaging the Andes : shifting margins of a marginal world / Ton 
               Salman & Annelies Zoomers, editors.
IMPRINT      Amsterdam : Aksant, 2003.
CONTENTS     Straying Andean ways: reflecting on Andean-ness in a globalizing 
               world / Annelies Zoomers & Ton Salman -- Andean transversality:
               identity between fixation and flow / Anke van Dam & Ton
               Salman -- Debates about lo andino in twentieth-century Peru / 
               Isabel Yépez del Castillo -- Cultural difference and the 
               evocation of otherness: reflections on the (mis)use of the 
               culture concept in Andean studies / Pieter de Vries & Monique 
               Nuijten -- The 'collapse' of the Peruvian ayllu / Arij
               Ouweneel.
               Social scientists as social activists: a short history of the 
               recent evolution of lo andino in Peru and Bolivia / Nico van 
               Niekerk -- Water, community, and identity: the politics of 
               cultural and agricultural production in the Andes / Paul H. 
               Gelles & Rutgerd Boelens -- Water, gender, and 'Andeanity': 
               conflict or harmony? / Rutgerd Boelens & Margreet Zwarteveen --
               Indian justice in the Andes: re-rooting or re-routing? / Willem
               Assies -- The Andean melodrama and how it reflects on Bolivian 
               education / Marten Brienen.
               Between higher education and lo andino in the central Peruvian 
               Andes, 1960-2000 / Ninna Nyber Sřrensen & Finn Stepputat -- 
               Andean ethnicity today: four Aymara narratives from Bolivia / 
               Xavier Albó -- New recipes for living better with Pachamama / 
               Susan Paulson -- Andean predicaments: cultural reinvention and 
               identity creation / Karsten Paerregaard.
               The presence of Aymara traditions in urban youth culture: tales 
               about the multiculture of El Alto, Bolivia / Germán Guaygua, 
               Máximo Quisbert & Angela Riveros -- Crisis? Whose crisis?: 
               conflicting views on the crisis in the artisan economy of 
               Otavalo, Ecuador / Jeroen Windmeijer.
CALL NO.     F2230.1.E84 I513 2003.

AUTHOR       McLaren, Deborah, 1959-
TITLE        Rethinking tourism and ecotravel / Deborah McLaren.
IMPRINT      Bloomfield, Conn. : Kumarian Press, 2003.
CALL NO.     G156.5.E26 M46 2003.

AUTHOR       Bernard, Jane, 1961-
TITLE        American Route 66 : home on the road / photographs and text by 
               Jane Bernard and Polly Brown ; with a foreword by Michael 
               Wallis.
IMPRINT      Santa Fe : Museum of New Mexico Press, c2003.
CALL NO.     F595.3 .B47 2003.
Now, I don't know a lot about any of these, but I could get interested in each one, if I was to spend an hour or two reading each of these onramps. Reading would lead me to other searches, using various tools, and over a few hours I'd have built up a pile of things to investigate further. What I chiefly need to succeed in this project-making enterprise is an efficient and effective means to keep track of what I find and what I think. That's what a log file is for.