Political Science: Finding Scholarly Sources

Key databases and catalogs are outlined on the Finding Books and Articles page of this guide.

It can also be helpful to browse the shelf (see useful call numbers below).

Browsing for books on the shelf can be a very useful way to gather material on a topic. Seymour Library uses the Library of Congress call number classification system, and all materials on a topic are shelved together. For political science, try browsing these sections:

Political Science

JA 1-92 Political Science (General)

JC 11-605 Political Theory. The State. Theories of the State.

JF 20-2112 Political Institutions & Public Administration

JF 20-1177 General. Comparative Government

JF 1338-2112 Public Administration

JJ 1000-1019 Political Institutions & Public Administration (North America)

JK 1-9993 Political Institutions & Public Administration (United States)

JL 1-3899 Political Institutions & Public Administration (Canada, Latin America, Caribbean Area)

JN 1-9689 Political Institutions & Public Administration (Europe)

JQ 21-6651 Political Institutions & Public Administration (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area)

JS 39-8500 Local Government. Municipal Government

JV 1-9480 Colonies & Colonization. Emmigration & Immigration. International Migration.

JZ 5-6530 International Relations

Law

K 1-7720 Law in General. Comparative & Uniform Law. Jurisprudence.

KB 1-4855 Religious Law in General. Comparative Religious Law. Jurisprudence

KBM 1-4855 Jewish Law. Halakah

KBP 1-4860 Islamic Law. Shari'ah. Fiqh

KBR 2-4090 History of Canon Law.

KBU 2-4820 Law of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See

KD Law of the United Kingdom & Ireland

KE Law of Canada

KF Law of the United States

KG-KGZ Latin America (General). Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Caribbean area.

KH-KHW South America

KJ-KKZ Europe

KL2-5919 History of Law. The ancient orient

KLA-KLW Eurasia

KM-KMY Asia (General, Middle East, Southwest Asia)

KN-KP Asia (South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia)

KQ-KT Africa

KU-KW Pacific Area

Whether you are using a database (principally for articles, but also for books, dissertations or conference proceedings) or the Knox Library and I-Share Catalogs, you can apply smart searching techniques in order to get the best search results.

Some things to try:

• Use as few terms as possible to describe your topic - don't search for long phrases or statements, but pick out keywords that describe your topic, remembering that you may need to try broader terms or synonyms
  

  Example topic: 
  Political Legitamacy in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters: the Case of Hurricane Katrina (try various combinations of all or parts of these phrases and/or key politicians or government agencies)

• If you are searching for books (not using a database), be sure to look for very general topics--your specific interest may appear in a chapter or section of a chapter, rather than as the subject of an entire book.
• Try using terms that you found in reference sources as general or subject keywords in your searches! Especially in subject-specific databases, those are likely part of the controlled vocabulary, or predefined terms, that indexers and catalogers use.
• When presented with a list of results from a database, read the abstracts. This will help you figure out which articles to actually read based on subject or application of theory or methodology.
• Whether you are using databases or library catalogs, use subject terms. When you have found an article or book that looks pertinent, click on the subject terms to find other materials on the same subject.
• Follow the references! If you find an article that is pertinent, read through its reference list and try to locate other articles that relate (this is tracing the conversation thread). Even if only one paragraph in the introduction is pertinent, check out the specific references for that passage. You can also use Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge, and other resources to find out what other works cite the item you are looking at. For more about using Google Scholar, check this guide.

Tips:

• If you are searching for an exact phrase such as "United States," put quotation marks around it (but remember that U.S. Americans often don't think they need to state that their work is about the United States--we are, after all, the center of the universe!)
• If you are searching for something very specific, try to think of larger, more general (but parallel) examples. For example, if you are looking at politics in Knox County, you might want to search for "Midwest" or "rural."
• In library catalogs and databases as well as some article texts, the term "case study" is often used for sources that contain just that. This can be a way of identifying works in the social sciences.