News of Note

Political Science professor Sean Kelly's book has been published:

Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q. Kelly. Committee Assignment Politics in the U.S. House. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, Congressional Studies Series. 2006.

Jeffrey Kopstein and David Reilly (2006). As Europe Gets Larger, Will It Disappear. International Studies Review, vol. 8 no. 1, p. 140-150.

To learn more about the research interests of Political Science Department faculty, visit the department's web site.


Niagara University Library
Guide to Political Science Research

 
Need Help?

Contact the Library subject specialist for Political Science:

Jonathan Coe
716-286-8005
jcoe@niagara.edu


Finding Journal Articles

Journal articles are an important way in which new political science research is disseminated.

Where you search will depend on the emphasis of your paper, but you can always start with Academic Search Complete via EBSCOhost. This database is useful for political science research for several reasons:

  1. Political Science can be multidisciplinary, which is a strength of this database.

  2. This database covers scholarly journals and news magazines. If your topic is very recent, there may not be many research studies on it yet, but you will find information in magazines.

  3. This database has a lot of full text, meaning that you can view and print articles from your computer.

The Library provides access to a number of databases that will help you find research in journals. Where you search depends on the emphasis of your topic.

If your topic relates to:

If you are looking for current news stories, EBSCOhost and ProQuest provide good coverage of major newspapers. Also, Lexis/Nexis is a huge database of American and international newspapers.


Finding Books

Books can contain excellent summaries of existing research and can be an important component of your research. Just remember to look at the publication dates and note that journal articles may give you more recent research.

Use Niagara University's Library Catalog to locate books owned by the Library.

Of course, Niagara univeristy Library does not own all books written about your topic. If you want to search for books owned by other libraries too, then try searching WorldCat, a catalog that contains references to more than 57 million items owned by 9,000 libraries worldwide. Don't worry - if you need a book owned by another library, you can request it. To learn how, go to the section called Obtaining Materials NU Library Does Not Own.

Tip: One thing to note when searching for books is that they are usually not as specific as articles, so construct your search in a more general way than you would for an article search. So, let's say that you were doing research on President George Bush's foreign policy. In the book catalog you could probably get away with just typing "George Bush" and looking through the list of titles that were retrieved. But in a large database of millions of journal and magazine articles, you would probably need to be more specfic: Bush and foreign policy

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Finding Facts, Statistics and Web Sites

The Library has a number of useful reference books in the field of political science. For example:

  • Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (Ref E183.7 .e52 2002)
  • Encyclopedia of the American Legislative System (Ref JF510 .E53 1994)
  • Encyclopedia of American Political History (Ref E183.E5 1984)
  • Encyclopedia of Cold War Politics (Ref E 840 .T57 2000)
  • Encyclopedia of Republican Party/Encyclopedia of Democratic Party (Ref JK 2352 .E56 1997)
  • Encyclopedia of the United States Congress (Ref (JK1067 .E63 1995)
  • Encyclopedia of Women in American Politics (Ref HQ 1236.5 E53 1999)
  • Political Parties and Elections in the United States (Ref JK2261 .P633 1991)
  • World Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties (Ref JF 2011 .W67 1990)

Needless to say, in today's age, a lot of statistical information is available, but given the great variety of political science topics we can't provide a list here. Contact the Library subject specialist for political science, Jonathan Coe, for assistance. His contact information is located at the top of this page.

Here are some web sites recommended by NU political science professors:

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Obtaining Materials NU Library Does Not Own

If you need an article or a book that NU Library does not own, you can make use of Interlibrary Loan to obtain it.

Tip: In a hurry? If the article or book you need is owned by another library in Western New York, you can visit that library and use their resources on site (view a list of Western New York library web sites).

Please note: If you wish to borrow a book from another Western New York library, you can get an Infopass Card at the Reference Desk.

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How to Cite Your Sources

Format your paper and cite your sources according to the Style Manual for Political Science, published by the American Political Science Association (APSA). A copy is located at the Reference Desk.

This manual is the definitive source. The official manual is not online, though the following web site provides guidance:

The APSA Style manual is based on the Chicago Manual of Style, which the Library owns (Ref LB2369 .C45 2003). If you want to see examples of APSA style in action, take a look at recent issues of "American Political Science review," which is available in the Library.

Tip: Please talk to your professor if you have questions about how to cite your sources.

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