1. Facts and Background Materials
2. Finding Newspaper Articles
3. Finding Books
4. Statistics
5. Finding Journal Articles
6. Selected Web Resources

Facts and Background Materials

• CQ Political Reference Suite -- ELECTRONIC
  Provides access to seven first-rate political reference tools, providing information such as profiles of members of congress, Supreme Court case summaries, legislative history, election statistics, primary source documents, and much more.
•  Encyclopedia Britannica — ELECTRONIC
  The world’s premiere encyclopedia is at your fingertips online! Contains tens of thousands of high quality articles providing useful background information, as well as illustrations, maps, flags, and pictures.
• Europa World Online -- ELECTRONIC
  Covers political and economic information for over 250 countries and territories, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
• International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences — PRINT, ELECTRONIC
  REF H41 .I58 2001
  Thousands of high quality scholarly articles including ones on political science, political philosophy, and political scientists, as well as on related disciplines such as sociology, psychology, law, and public policy.
• Oxford Reference Online — ELECTRONIC
  Provides online access to hundreds of dictionaries, handbooks, and other reference materials. Search the entire database, narrow your search by subject category, or explore individual reference tools. Categories of particular interest to history students are: History, Law, Politics & Social Sciences, and Military History.
• Sage Research Methods Online — ELECTRONIC
  SRMO is a powerful research methods tool, linking SAGE’s renowned research methods content with sophisticated search tools to help researcher answer their research methods questions like never before. The site contains 504 book titles, including the entire QASS (aka Little Green Book) series, 6 dictionaries, 4 encyclopedias and a Major Work containing journal articles. They also have a visual Methods Map tool and playlist functionality called SRMO Lists.

Finding Books

• Searching the catalog for books on political science:
• Try a keyword search: socialism and Europe anarchism
• Try a subject search: United States - Politics and Government France - foreign relations
• Browse the 2nd floor stacks:
• D, E, F -- History J -- Political Science U, V -- Military and Naval Science

Finding Articles

• Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) -- ELECTRONIC
  Comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. Publishes a wide range of full text scholarship from 1991 onward that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs.
• CQ Public Affairs Collection -- ELECTRONIC
  Provides access to in-depth reporting on vital issues, statistical and historical analyses, historic documents and primary source materials, as well as a directory of key government, nonprofit, and private organizations in major policy areas
• CQ Researcher -- ELECTRONIC
  Searchable repository of original in-depth analyses of current controversial issues with complete summaries, pros and cons, bibliographies, and more.
• CQ Weekly -- ELECTRONIC
  Reports weekly on all activities of the U.S. Congress. Includes analysis of current topics of interest and a searchable archives of all materials and floor votes going back to 1983.
• Social Sciences Citation Index (World of Knowledge) — ELECTRONIC
  Indexes journal literature in the social sciences, with significant coverage of sociology.
• PAIS International -- ELECTRONIC
  Covers global public policy and social issues. Provides access to citations and links to some full text for scholarly journals, books, conference proceedings, government documents, book chapters, hearings and statistical directories.
• Urban Studies & Planning — ELECTRONIC
  A Sage full-text journal collection of 12 journals in planning, policy, and urban affairs.
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts -- ELECTRONIC
  Provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration/policy. Coverage from 1975 to current.

Finding Newspaper Articles

• Electronic Newspapers — ELECTRONIC
  Drexel University Libraries page providing links to various electronic news sources; most are more recent rather than deeply “historical.”
• Free Library of Philadelphia – Central Branch
  1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
  (between 19th and 20th on the B. Franklin Parkway)
  215-686-5322
  Houses an excellent collection of historical newspapers on microfilm, including a large number of local and regional newspapers.
• Lexis-Nexis Academic — ELECTRONIC
  Searchable full text database of international, national, state, and local newpapers. Coverage goes back only to the early 1980s in most cases.
• New York Times (Current) (1980-Present) — ELECTRONIC
  Full text of the New York Times from 1980 to present (no images). Also includes full text of the New York Times Magazine and the New York Time Book Review from 1997 to present.
• New York Times (Historical) (1851-2003)– ELECTRONIC
  Complete full text of the New York Times back issues now available online! Search by topic or browse through an issue. Full page images available, along with the ability to look at a particular issue page by page. Print out or e-mail individual article “clippings.”
• Philadelphia Inquirer (via Newsbank) — ELECTRONIC
  Full-text of the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper from 1980-present. Updated daily.

Statistics and Opinion Data

• American National Election Studies -- WWW
  The ANES "produces high quality data on voting, public opinion, and political participation to serve the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, policy makers and journalists." Includess data sets and documentation in the "Data Center" as well as full text reports and publications in the "Reference Library."
• Historical Statistics of the United States— ELECTRONIC
  The standard source for quantitative facts about American history and life from the U.S. Census Bureau. Includes statistical data from 1619 to 2003, covering topics such as economics, government, demographics, religion, climate and more.   Data is downloadable and customizable.
• ICPSR — WWW
  ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data files for use with statistical software, such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata. Drexel is not a member institution of ICPSR, but many useful data sets are available for download to non-members.
• iPoll — ELECTRONIC
  Full text, searchable results from US nationwide public opinion polls. Organized at the question-level, and includes nearly a half million questions asked on national public opinion surveys since 1935 to the present.
• SimplyMap — ELECTRONIC
  A web-based mapping application that lets users create professional-quality thematic maps and reports using United States demographic, business, and marketing data. Data sources include the U.S. Census and Census projections.  Now able to plot point data. Free registration required.
• Statistical Abstract of the United States — PRINT, ELECTRONIC
  Hagerty Reference Desk HA202 .U51x 2008
  Authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Sources of data include the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations. Data has been collected since 1878.
• Statistical Resources on the Web– WWW
  A guide to various sources of statistical information (mostly governmental) available on the web. Produced by the University of Michigan’s Documents Center.
• U.S. Census Bureau — WWW
  Provides links to the most recent decennial census information and other data collected by the Bureau.  The American Factfinder section provides easy access to demographic data for particular communities.  The Data Access Tools section offers complete Census data sets to download and links to web-based and desktop tools for analysis and mapping.

Selected Web Resources

This list includes only a small fraction of useful web resources for this field. More web sites, which have undergone the same selection process, as available in my Pinboard tags on the right-hand side of this research guide.

• American Political Science Association (APSA) -- WWW
  Professional organization founded in 1903 for the study of political science; has more than 15,000 members in over 80 countries.
• Avalon Project at Yale Law School -- WWW
  Full text documents in law, history, and diplomacy from the earliest times to the 21st century.
• DMOZ Open Directory Project: Political Science -- WWW
  Hundreds of quality web links on one of the largest human-classified web gateway, from Mozilla open source.
• International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) -- WWW
  An international, intergovernmental organization focused on promoting democracies and electoral participation. Includes information on women's political participation, voter turn-out, and electoral system design. Currently has 24 member nations, not including the United States.
• SOSIG: Politics -- WWW
  Links to reviewed websites in various categories related to political science. From the UK-based Social Science Information Gateway.
• Thomas -- WWW
  Online legislative information from the Library of Congress. Search for current bills by phrase, number, or sponsor. Also links to information from previous congresses and the Congressional Record.
• Ultimate Political Science Links -- WWW
  Convenient groupings of political science-related websites. Categories include major associations, resource links, journals and publications, on-line political news, and humor.
• Voice of the Shuttle: Politics and Government -- WWW
  Links to high-quality web resources on political science and government. Includes theory and philosophy of political science; U.S. federal and state, and international resources. Links are unfortunately not always maintained.