Political Science Tutorial

Vast amounts of information for political science has been published in print and electronic formats. Much of the information is free and may be found on the Internet. Other information may be found in specialized databases to which the library subscribes. Hints for obtaining information from these sources follow.

Internet (Internet glossary)

To find information, try the following search techniques at search engines. A search engine searches documents by keywords and returns a list for linking to the documents. Four search engines are Google, Alltheweb, Yahoo and Altavista Notice that the advanced search tool allow choices for language, domain, etc. If you choose to use the basic search tool, i.e. Google,you must use the + sign, quotes, and an asterisk with your keywords to refine a search: "historical research methods" +historiography .

Different engines have different techniques so it is best to click on "Help" for detailed search instructions for the engine you use. Try typing in "political thought " +clearinghouse" to retrieve a list of Internet sites that link to many other sites. Internet terms that are interchangable with "clearinghouse" are "gateway," "metasite," "pathfinder" and "directory. Some search engines attempt to limit searches to specific Internet domains: +"modern America " +domain:gov but often mixed domains are returned in the results. Valuable information may be obtained from the deep web content of PDF or powerpoint files, i.e. "world civilization" +filetype:pdf and "world civilization" +filetype:ppt (You must have PowerPoint software on your computer in order to view powerpoint programs.) If one search engine does not retrieve satisfactory results, switch to another search engine. Whatever data you find, it is always wise to evaluate information

Digitized formats of valuable reference resources are slowly being added to the Internet but most are still in print form on library shelves. Following are some online reference and other fulltext resources:

Political Science Gov Law & Legal Political Science Net Think Tanks Political Parties Foreign Govs Online Books & Journals Scholarly Internationals Vanderbilt Web Politics Countries & Politics World Govs Yale Sites Theory Cornell Law Embassy CountryWatch

More information, contact Ann Greer


Specialized Resources

Research Central accesses fulltext and bibliographic electronic databases that you are encouraged to use during your studies with the university. However, you must have a southern.edu e-mail account to access the databases. Digital Dissertations is an excellent full text source. NetLibrary contains full text of books.


Search Strategies

Listed below are miscellaneous search strategies that you may tailor to the search instructions of the engine you use.

Need speech by Iraq's Saddam Hussein: +"Saddam Hussein " +speech
Need bibliography on politics in Europe: +"European politics" +bibliography
Need to read a poem about strife in politics:" +"political strife " +poem
Need an online language conversion dictionary for Spanish: +language dictionary +"Spanish"
Need to see a list of congressmen for the state of Tennessee: +"Tennessee" +"congressmen" +list
Need to find a picture, video or audio? Use Altavista search engine's Search screen and click choice at top