Selected Electronic Reference Sources
- CQ Almanac Online Edition This link opens in a new windowCQ Almanac offers original narrative accounts of every major piece of legislation that lawmakers considered during a congressional session. Arranged thematically, the Almanac organizes, distills, and cross-indexes for permanent reference the full year in Congress and in national politics.
- CQ Guide to U.S. Elections (7th edition) This link opens in a new windowThe CQ Press Guide to U.S. Elections, Seventh Edition is a comprehensive, two-volume reference providing information on the U.S. electoral process, in-depth analysis on specific political eras and issues, and everything in between. Thoroughly revised and infused with new data, analysis, and discussion of issues relating to elections through 2015, the Guide will include chapters on: analysis of the campaigns for presidency, from the primaries through the general election; data on the candidates, winners/losers, and election returns; details on congressional and gubernatorial contests from the primaries through the general elections supplemented with vast historical data; coverage of campaign finance, as well as reapportionment and redistricting.
- CQ Congress and the Nation This link opens in a new windowComprehensive coverage of Congressional action from 1945 to 2008. Includes tables, charts, and graphs.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) This link opens in a new windowA collection of full text electronic reference books covering many subject areas. Can be searched by keyword, source, subject, image caption, full text, and audience. Individual books can be combined for cross-title searching.
- Sage Knowledge This link opens in a new windowCollection of full text reference sources including Congress and the Nation, Guide to U.S. Elections, Landmark Legislation, Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, and Vital Statistics on American Politics.
Finding Books
EDS searches across the library's catalog and many of its databases in a single search. This is the default search box (Search Everything) on the library home page. Because the results are so broad, learn to refine your results by using the toggle boxes on the left of the results screen. To narrow a search to book only, go to Location and check the appropriate boxes.
Search for books in the Milne Library Catalog.
Finding Scholarly Articles
Political Science Resources
- Political Science CompletePolitical Science Complete (PSC) provides full text for more than 520 journals, and indexing and abstracts for over 2,900 titles, (including top-ranked scholarly journals), many of which are unique to the product. The database also features over 340 full-text reference books and monographs, and over 36,000 full-text conference papers, including those of the International Political Science Association.
General Databases with Political Science Resources
- Academic OneFile This link opens in a new windowProvides over 54,000,000 articles, most full-text, from about 13,000 scholarly journals across most academic subject areas. Coverage is from 1980 to the present.
- Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new windowFull text for about 8,500 periodicals including over 7,300 peer-reviewed journals across most areas of academic study as well as indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 magazines and journals. Coverage is from 1887 to the present.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowProvides access to the full-text of several scholarly journals including 152 political science titles and 38 public policy and administration titles. The objective of JSTOR is to provide all issues back to Volume 1, Issue 1 for all journals. (Due to copyright restrictions, the most recent 3-5 years are unavailable.)
- Military & Government CollectionCurrent news pertaining to all branches. Provides full-text for about 300 journals and other periodicals.
- Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new windowProvides access to back files of over 550 complete full-image journals spanning 200 years in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
- Project MuseFull text of over 100 scholarly journals in fields including literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, political science, gender studies, and economics.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowProvides full text access to over 2200 Elsevier journals in the fields of science, psychology, medicine, technology and political science.
- Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson)This full-text resource provides access to a wide assortment of the most important English-language social science journals. Social Sciences Full Text includes full-text articles from hundreds of journals, covering the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences. Content Includes: Full-text articles from 360 journals Full-text content dating as far back as 1972. High-quality indexing for more than 750 periodicals, over 510 of which are peer-reviewed.
Other Resources
Heinonline (Available until 3/5/2018)
HeinOnline is a premier online database containing more than 150 million pages and 160,000 titles of legal history and government documents in a fully searchable, image-based format. HeinOnline bridges the gap in historical research by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,400 law-related periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of law journals, HeinOnline contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, classic treatises, international trade, foreign relations, U.S. Presidents, and much more.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (scholar's edition)Contains books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies documenting women’s reform activities and social movements from Colonial times to the present.
Finding a Copy of a Periodical Article
Locating the full text of the article in electronic form
If there is no PDF or HTML full text with the citation for an article in a database, click on Linked Full Text, if available. This link will either take you directly to the full text of the article or another database or website. See a librarian for help.
Finding an article in a specific periodical title
- Use the Journals tab on the top of the library home page.
- Enter the title of the journal or magazine, for example, American Journal of Political Science in the search box.
- Look for the journal title in the results list.
- Click on an appropriate database.
- Link to the correct issue of the periodical (note the year, issue and volume number of the article).
If an electronic text is available, click on the link provided. If the library subscribes to the periodical in print or microform, click on the link Print Journals in Milne Library to check for the periodical’s location and availability.
Requesting an article on Interlibrary Loan
If you find an article from a periodical that is not available at Milne Library, you can request the article through the link Request item on Interlibrary Loan on the record for the article needed or through the link on the bottom of the homepage of the library website. See a librarian for help.
Finding Book Reviews
- Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new windowCurrent book reviews and citations to reviews collected from a variety of published sources.
- Book Review Digest Retro 1903-1982 This link opens in a new windowExcerpts from and citations to book reviews.
- Choice Reviews This link opens in a new windowSource for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education.
The “Search Everything” feature of the Milne Library web site is also a good resource for locating book reviews.
How to evaluate information located on the World Wide Web
Virginia Tech University Libraries: Evaluating webpages for research
http://guides.lib.vt.edu/MUS-TA10042016/eval
University of North Carolina University Library’s Evaluating Websites: Checklist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMKuIlvj0WQ
Revised October 2, 2017