Skip to Main Content

Political Science

Where to Search

Use the Libraries' Research Databases to find articles on your topic. 

Political Science databases are a great place to start your research and offer full-text articles, meaning that the actual article is available in the database. Depending on your topic, you may find databases from related disciplines helpful as well. 

Databases contain proprietary content from a variety of scholarly journals, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, and more.

How to Search

Search by keywords and small phrases.

Maximize your keyword searches with Boolean searching:

 

AND
aquifer AND drought all words must appear in the result list
OR 
streamflow OR stream measurement
either word may appear in the results.
NOT 
San Marcos NOT California
must have San Marcos, but excludes items with California

Note:  some databases use "and not" rather than "not"

Use "quotation marks" to search for phrases. 


Consider truncation. The asterisk (*) symbol is used most often.
 

Typing in legislat* will give results containing: legislate, legislature, legislative, etc.

Try using the database’s subject or descriptor terms. Those are listed in the database’s thesaurus, or they may be listed near the article abstract. These can be useful for learning the preferred vocabulary of a discipline.