University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

PoliSci 198

This guide is designed to help you find resources for your Power and Policy Simulation Paper I: Political Biography/ History. It will also aid in finding resources for your simulation papers II & III.

There are a number of ways to get in touch with our reference desk staff if you have questions in the course of your research. For an overview of these contact options, please see the Research Assistance Page.

For information on how to set up your citations, please see the Cofrin Library's citation information page.

To find books:

• Cofrin Library Catalog
  If you are searching for a book and you discover that Cofrin Library does not own it, you can request it through InterLibrary Loan (also called ILL or ILLiad), a service for students to get books and journal articles for other libraries. If you are unfamiliar with using InterLibrary Loan, stop by the reference desk for assistance.


• Worldcat
  Use the mega-catalog, Worldcat, to find books from other libraries. WorldCat will allow you to search over 15,000 libraries worldwide. Although the Cofrin Library may not own an item that you find in WorldCat, you can submit an interLibrary loan request from right inside the database. It can take from 7-10 days for the item to arrive so it is important that you start your research early to give yourself an opportunity to get the best resources for you research.

To find peer review journal articles:

• Academic Search Complete from EbscoHost - Description : Gain access to information from a wide range of academic areas including literature and language.
  Coverage: varies from title to title, but approximately 1990 to the present.
  
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  Description: WPSA provides citations, abstracts and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, public administration, and public policy.
  Coverage: 1975 -
  
• Project Muse
  Description: Project Muse provides worldwide, networked, subscription access to the full text of the Press's 40+ scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics.
  Coverage: 1995 -
  
• JSTOR
  Description: JSTOR is unique because the contains complete backfiles of core scholarly journals in PDF full text format. Many journals reach back to the 1800s.
  Coverage: varies from title to title, but approximately from the 1800s to 2000.
  
• Social Sciences Full Text
  Description: Indexes and abstracts over 400 English language periodicals. Topics include anthropology, area studies, community health and medical care, criminal justice and criminology, economics, family studies, geography, gerontology, international relations, law, minority studies, planning and public administration, policy sciences, political science, psychiatry, psychology, social work and public welfare, sociology, urban studies, women's studies, and related subjects.
  Coverage: 1983 -

To Find Newspaper articles:

• Lexis Nexis Academic
  description : Academic Universe provides access to nearly 5,000 publication on a wide range of news, business, legal, and reference information.
  Coverage: 1990-
  

Determining a scholarly source:

There are a number of ways to determine if a source is scholarly, below are a couple of the key ways:

• Scholarly sources ALWAYS cite their sources in either footnotes or bibliographies
• Scholarly sources have articles written by people in the field with which the journal is concerned.
• Scholarly sources use language that assumes a certain level of scholarly background.
• Scholarly sources often contain graphs and charts, but few pictures.
• Click here to watch a tutorial on identifying a scholarly article:

  http://uwgb.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=523deef4c38c4e968386983a31b2cf35

Evaluating your sources:

No matter what type of source you are using, be it a book, article, or web site, you should look at 5 key points:

• Authority - What are the author's credentials?
• Accuracy - Compared to other sources does it seem to be giving correct information?
• Objectivity - Is there a bias or an agenda by the author?
• Currency - Is the source current enough for your needs?
• Coverage - Does the source go enough in-depth for your needs?