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.
Search by keywords and small phrases.
Maximize your keyword searches with Boolean searching:
AND
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aquifer AND drought | all words must appear in the result list |
OR
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streamflow OR stream measurement
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either word may appear in the results.
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NOT
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San Marcos NOT California
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must have San Marcos, but excludes items with California
Note: some databases use "and not" rather than "not"
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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.