Your Political Science Subject Specialist Librarian
Tools for Organizing Your Research and Citing Sources
Citation manager are apps that allow you to gather together your sources and their information in one place, and create citations in lots of different styles, such as APA, MLA and Chicago, to put into your papers and projects.
Zotero is a good tool if you always use your own computer to do research.
RefWorks is a good tool if you tend to work from a lot of different computers, and need something that is accessible online from anywhere.
Types of Sources
Popular sources, like newspapers, magazines and blogs or wikipedia pages, are not appropriate sources of information for your final project. This handout helps explain the differences between popular, trade and scholarly sources.
- Popular, Trade, or Scholarly? [Handout]A guide to the differences in audience, content and purpose of Popular, Trade and Scholarly publications.
Books
Books can be a good place to find discussions of theory. Here are some titles that might help.
Searching Library Databases
- Power SearchingLearn to use connectors, wildcards, and other special commands to power search in Google, Google Scholar, and library databases.
When you are searching for an article, book, book chapter or other information on your topic, it is important to use keywords. These are the most important words and phrases in your research question, research statement, or thesis statement.
The search in a database (or any search engine) does not answer questions. It matches the words you have specified in the search box. Unlike search engines like Google, the database search runs minimal algorithms on your specified search--it matches the words first. Removing unnecessary words from your search improves your results.
Recommended Databases for Searching
Summon is a way to search almost all of the library's full-text online and print resources simultaneously. When you get your results, select the "Add Results Beyond Your Library's Collection" to expand to resources your can order through Interlibrary Loan, a free service provided by the library system.
Searching Disciplinary and Specialized Databases
Sometimes you can locate resources more easily using disciplinary or specialized databases. Their collections are much more focused.
Here are some databases you might consider.
- Worldwide Political Science Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThe database provides access to citations and abstracts of journal articles appearing in political science journals.
- CRS reports This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides the public with access to research products produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) for the United States Congress. By law, CRS works exclusively for Congress, providing timely, objective, and authoritative research and analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of political party affiliation. CRS is a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress.
- Legal Source (WSU Affiliates) This link opens in a new windowAccess articles from scholarly law journals.
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowSociology is the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society and the study of social problems.
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowInformation related to psychology. If you are looking for attitudes, understanding, or anything related to how people think or feel, this might be a good resource to search.
- Communication and Mass Media Complete This link opens in a new windowInformation related to communication and mass media. This might be a good resource if you are exploring political advertising, media use in politics, etc.
Polling data, surveys, research
- Roper iPoll This link opens in a new windowA data source for US public opinion questions and answers from polls on important issues facing the country. Coverage from 1935 to present. The Polling results include academic, commercial and media (news) survey organizations.
- Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research This link opens in a new windowICPSR provides access to data from social science research. You can also find articles published on the collected research.
Using Google Scholar
Google Scholar can be a great tool to:
Find articles when you have a citation (search for the article title)
Use the Cited by and Related Articles to find similar articles
Use the " under the citation to copy/paste a citation in MLA, APA or Chicago style.