Political Science Research Guide
- Find Background Info
- Find Books and Films
- Find Articles
- Find Country Data
- Citing Sources
Find Background Info
Background sources, such as specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries, are an essential piece of the research process. They can help you:
- Gather information about your topic and understand the scope of the research.
- Locate reliable sources and clarify keywords.
- Pinpoint important authors, texts, ideas, and keywords about the research area. Knowing what the primary phrases and concepts are will help you a lot as you are searching library databases and online sources.
Credo Reference
Credo Reference is a multi-publisher collection of high quality reference titles covering everything from the arts to astronomy, law to literature, and science to Shakespeare. The collection currently contains over 162 titles taken from 36 different reference publishers and more titles are being added. Available titles also include a range of multimedia options including thousands of high quality diagrams, photographs, maps, and audio files. Credo includes several books on topics in political science.
Find Books and Films
Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research. They will help you to gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.
Find Books Using GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other materials available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:
Academic Videos Online (AVON)
AVON provides unlimited access to a comprehensive selection of videos curated for the educational experience.
Hathi Trust
Hathi Trust provides millions of digitized books from libraries around the world. Materials are made freely available to the extent permitted by the law.
WorldCat
WorldCat lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through Interlibrary Loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Interlibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials, and access journal articles that are owned by another library.
Explore Interlibrary Loan Materials
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster College students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require a current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the library you are interested in for details.
Find Articles
The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are those that are most useful for finding research published in the field of political science.
GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.
JSTOR
JSTOR is an interdisciplinary archive of full text articles from journals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It includes retrospective coverage of publications which means that a majority of the articles will be 1 to 5 years old. To search for anthropology or archeology articles, after entering your search terms, scroll down to “Journal Filter” and select anthropology or archeology.
Hein Online
Legal research collection of current and historical materials, including full-text law journals and texts; U.S. laws, regulations, cases and Congressional materials; international treaties and constitutions, foreign and comparative law materials, United Nations and League of Nations publications.
Legal Collection
Centered on the discipline of law and legal topics, Legal Collection is a collection of scholarly peer-reviewed publications including law journals, documents, and case studies. Legal Collection offers full text for more than 260 of the world's best law journals. This database provides information centered on the discipline of law and legal topics such as criminal justice, international law, federal law, organized crime, medical, labor & human resource law, ethics, the environment and much more.
ProQuest Search
Advanced query that searches the following databases:
ABI/INFORM Collection: Business, Management and Trade - scholarly and trade journal
articles, dissertations, market reports, industry reports, business cases and global
and trade news.
Academic Video Online: Academic Video Online makes video material available with
curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels,
and more.
Coronavirus Research Database: A free health and medical research database for openly
available content related to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Ethnic NewsWatch: Ethnic and minority publications - journal articles
GenderWatch: Gender studies - scholarly journal articles, magazines, newspapers,
newsletters, regional publications, books and NGO, government and special reports.
Global Newsstream: Global Newsstream enables users to search the most recent global
news content, as well as archives which stretch back into the 1980s featuring newspapers,
newswires, blogs, and news sites in active full- text format.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851 - 2017)
Publicly Available Content Database: Designed to complement other databases and collections,
this database brings together or links to full text for publicly available content
from a number of different sources from around the world.
Sources by Region
Latin America
Fuente Academica
Fuente Academica is a unique collection of scholarly academic journals from renowned Latin America, South American, and Spanish publishers. This database provides full text and PDFs for more than 100 scholarly Spanish language journals.
Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, El Caribe, España, y Portugal (Redalyc)
Open access database that provides full text access to journals about Latin America in the social sciences and the humanities. Mainly published in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Created by the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México.
Latin America Open Archives Portal (LAOAP)
"The Latin America Open Archives Portal is a project of the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project—LARRP, in collaboration with the Latin America Network Information Center—LANIC, to improve access to social sciences grey literature produced in Latin America."
SCIELO: Scientific Electronic Library Online
Open access social science and scientific journals from Latin America.
Middle East
Middle East—Topics & Arguments
"Middle East—Topics & Arguments (META) is an international interdisciplinary open access journal. It is published half-yearly by the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg."
University of Cambridge Islamic Manuscripts
Online archive of Islamic manuscripts.
Search the University of Cambridge Islamic Manuscripts
Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios
"Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios was born in 2014 in Spain. The aim of this society is to promote and improve the study of the Iranian and Turanian linguistics, history, culture, etc. not only in Spain, but also worldwide. This is possible thanks to the meetings and workshops organized by the members of the society, as well as the journals and other types of available publications."
Search Sociedad de Estudios Iranios y Turanios
Africa
African Studies Abstracts Online
The open access catalog of the African Studies Center Library at the University of Leiden (Holland) is a database of articles in journals as well as books. Full text is not available, but journals cited may be available in Griffin Search or via ILL.
Search African Studies Abstracts Online
African Studies Thesaurus
"A structured vocabulary of over 12,000 English terms in the field of African studies, the African Studies Thesaurus is developed and maintained by staff at the library of the African Studies Centre Leiden." It includes "the names of countries and regions, ethnic groups, African languages, African policies, and political parties in Africa...British English is preferred, but American-English variants are included as non-preferred terms."
Search the African Studies Thesaurus
African Online Digital Library
The African Online Digital Library (AODL) is a portal to multimedia collections about Africa. MATRIX, in cooperation with the African Studies Center at Michigan State University, is partnering with universities and cultural heritage organizations in Africa to build this resource.
Search the African Online Digital Library
16th–Early 20th Century Maps of Africa
Digital copies of 113 antique maps from the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University.
Search 16th–Early 20th Century Maps of Africa
Asia
The Asia-Pacific Journal
Peer reviewed, open access journal that focuses on the Asia-Pacific region.
Search the Asia-Pacific Journal
Japanese Institutional Repositories Online
Eighty-four academic institutions participated in this repository venture. It contains theses, dissertation, research papers, departmental bulletin papers, and journal articles. Searchable in English and Japanese.
Find Country Data
You may need up-to-date data on countries you are studying. Below are sources that will provide you with reliable data on countries from around the world.
CIA World Factbook
Provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities.
BBC News Country Profiles
Guide to history, politics, and economic background of countries. Included are basic statistics, profiles of governmental leaders, and other relevant data. They also include audio and video clips from the BBC archive.
U.S. Census Bureau
Provides access to Census Bureau services, including: decennial census, community facts, economic census, population estimates, and more.
Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets
Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets (formerly known as Background Noise) include facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty. These fact sheets are created and updated by the US State Department of State.
Citing Sources
Citation Resources
Properly citing your sources shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic and helps you avoid plagiarism. Explore citation resources to learn how to correctly cite sources based on style.
Need help with your research?
Get in touch with:
Spencer DeVilbiss
Liaison Librarian for Political Science
(801) 832-2255
sdevilbiss@westminstercollege.edu
Librarians are happy to answer questions via email, phone, or in-person.
Contact Spencer with a question or to schedule a research help appointment.
Faculty: Contact Spencer to suggest edits to this research guide.
Chat with a Librarian
Use the chat box below to ask the library staff a question. If chat is unavailable or we don’t respond quickly, please use the email form on our Get Research Help page and a library staff member will contact you as soon as we are available.