Shatford Library

Shatford Library

Political Science 2: Comparative government

1. Library Catalog - Find Books and Media

The Library Catalog is a database of books, media and course reserves located in the library's collection. To find resources in the library by subject, you will need a call number which is based on the Dewey Decimal Classification System and leads you to the specific item on the shelf. To find the call number, use the library catalog. (http://library.pasadena.edu/vwebv/searchBasic)

Basic Search

Use the Basic Search to look for an item using keyword anywhere or in a specific field (eg. title field or subject field).

To find information about a person, use Basic Search within Subject Browse (select from the drop down menu).

To find information on a topic, you can use your keyword search results to identify library subject headings or you can select the Subject tab and type in a library subject heading.

Subject headings:

  • Capitalism
  • Comparitive government
  • Developing countries - Politics and government
  • Democracy - United States - History - 20th century
  • Globalization
  • Middle East - History - 20th century
  • Political science

Related headings and subheadings (Narrower, Broader and See also)

  • Liberalism - United States - History - 20th century
  • Middle East - Politics and government - 1979-
  • Political parties - Encyclopedias
  • World politics

To search for a title you have two options: 1. select title from the drop down menu (to search by title keyword) or 2. select title browse from the drop down menu, to search by exact title wording. (Skip the first word of the title if it is an article, e.g. 'a', 'an' or 'the').

To search by author, select the Author tab, then type in the author's last name, first name, e.g. 'Kalb, James'.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search is used to combine topics, select search fields, and use other limitors to narrow a search.  You may want to search for an item using part of a title and selecting the title field from the drop down menu.  Another option is to search by ISBN.

To search by keyword, type in the words you want to search for then select from the menu whether you want to search for all of these, any of these (e.g., Guatemala or Nicaragua), or as a phrase (e.g., Central America).

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2. Reference Books

Basically, there are two kinds of reference books: general resources, which are broad in scope and deal with all fields; and specialized resources, which deal with specific disciplines such as political science. The titles cited below are only a representative sample of many specialized reference books that are available in the library.

Specialized Encyclopedias

These book can be found on the 2nd (main) floor of the library in the reference collection.

  • World encyclopedia of political systems and parties   REF 324.2 W 1 (3 vols.)
  • Encyclopedia of politics : the left and the right   REF 320.03 E 2 (2 vols.)
  • Gale encyclopedia of U.S. history. Government and politics   REF 320.973 G 14 (2 vols.)
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3. Databases and Indexes - Find Articles

To access databases from the main library page, look for Browse Databases by Name |  by Subject (http://www.pasadena.edu/library/dbsubject.htm)

  • CountryWatch: Political, business, and economic information and news about every country in the world. Includes periodical articles and statistics.
  • CQ Researcher:  Articles covering controversial issues with summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies and more. (coverage since 1991)
  • Project Muse: Full text scholarly journal articles covering the humanities, and social sciences.
  • ProQuest: Thousands of journal, magazine, and newspaper articles covering all disciplines. Includes scholarly journal articles.
  • SIRS Knowledge Source: Articles from popular magazines, newspapers and U.S. government publications.
  • Popular vs. Scholarly Periodicals: http://guides.lib.msu.edu/page_print.phtml?page_id=32

  • To browse or search to see if the library has a subscription to a particular magazine, newspaper, or journal title use the Periodical Title List. (http://dv2dw2vb3l.search.serialssolutions.com/)

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4. Resources on the World Wide Web

Librarians Internet Index: Search and browse this directory for the best of the web. Covers over 300 topics and 20,000 web sites selected by librarians as quality resources for research purposes.

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5. Citing Your Sources

Diana Hacker's Research and Documentation Online: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/

OWL at Purdue Updated MLA and APA Formatting and Style Guides (click on Research and Citation): http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl

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last updated: 07/16/2009 by L. Tirapelle revision #2