Political Science

Don't neglect books when doing research in Political Science. Check the OSU Libraries Online Catalog first. More books can be found in the Summit Catalog, where you can request books from libraries in the Orbis Cascade Alliance to be sent to OSU for you to check out.

Keyword searching is possible, or you can search by author, title, call number, or ISBN if you have it.

Subject searching, however, is the most effective search. OSU uses the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Some examples of LC subject headings for political science are:

Elections                               

Federal goverment

International relations

Political parties

Public opinion polls

Social movements

Sometimes browsing a shelf can lead to some promising resources. OSU uses the Library of Congress classification system to organize and arrange materials in the library. Most political science materials fall into the "J" call number range and are located on the 5th floor of The Valley Library. More specific groupings of materials include:

• LexisNexis Academic
  Comprehensive index to newspaper and magazine articles, radio and TV news program transcripts, legal material and other reference sources. Primarily focused on news, business and legal topics.
  Includes full-text.
  
  Concurrent Users: unlimited
  
• LexisNexis Congressional
  From Congressional Information Service (CIS) offers access to a variety of information by and about the United States Congress.
  Index of congressional publications: 1789-present
  
  Concurrent Users: unlimited
  Coverage Dates: 1789 - present
• Academic Search Premier
  Academic Search Premier provides full text for nearly 4,600 scholarly publications, including full text for more than 3,500 peer-reviewed journals. Coverage spans virtually every area of academic study and offers information dating as far back as 1975. This database is updated daily on EBSCOhost.
  Full-text and abstract/index: 1975-present
  
  Concurrent Users: unlimited
  Coverage Dates: 1975 - present
• America: History and Life
  America: History & Life is the definitive index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to present, this database is the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.
  Coverage Dates: 1964
• Social Science Citation Index (ISI Web of Science)
  The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) provides access to current and retrospective bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references found in over 1,700 of the world\'s leading scholarly social sciences journals covering more than 50 disciplines. Coverage is from 1970-present.
  Coverage Dates: 1970
• Sociological Abstracts
  Index to articles from journals in sociology, social work and other social sciences.
  Abstracts and index: 1963-present
  Coverage Dates: 1963 - present
• Homeland Security Digital Library
  The HSDL collection provides quick access to important U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies. The resources are reviewed and selected by a team of homeland security researchers and organized in a unique homeland security taxonomy. HSDL content includes state-of-the-art multi-media offerings and other valuable assets identified by CHDS master\'s degree participants and instructors.
  

Many journals these days are electronic, or are included in full-text databases. The OSU Libraries Catalog links to these as well as to print resources.

If you are searching for articles about a subject, we recommended that you use a database to do your article searching. This allows you to search many titles at one time (and search print journal contents at the same time).

Another access point to our e-journals is the e-journals list from the main library page. Use this if 1) you have the citation to a specific article in a specific journal; 2) you wish to electronically browse a journal's contents; 3) you wish to verify that OSU has the journal online. 

When searching in catalogs and databases:

• Be creative in the words you use; if one doesn't work, try something else
• Begin with keywords, and use the subjects found in the articles that come up to find more information
• Use quotation marks around phrases
• Use catalog and database features to limit by date, language, type of article, etc.