Hello my name is Jennifer and I'm from
the Mary and Jeff Bell Library.
We're going to walk through some
resources today that should help with
your research skills in political
science.
We'll talk about database searching,
finding specific journals,
and identifying quality sources. If you
have specific questions or would like
some one-on-one help with your research,
don't hesitate to reach out that's what
I'm here for!
Let's go ahead and get started, you can
access the library's resources
at library.tamucc.edu.
The important parts for today are the
Ask Us menu here, where you can click to
reach out for more help:
a telephone call, a chat, a text
conversation.
We're also going to walk through the
main menu items right here that will be
most useful in your searching.
We're going to start with the central
menu here
and if you're looking for articles -
you're more than likely going to want to
choose a library database.
If you know which database you'd like
clicking on the blue database button
will get you to a menu of all of the
databases that we have access to.
So if you know for example that you want
Proquest you can click on P
Web of Science click on W and if you
aren't sure of a particular
database, you can change the list by
subject.
You can scroll down and if you click
on political science, 
political science recommendations will
come up and you can search in these
databases.
If there's a particular discipline that
you're interested in studying,
for example we'd be looking at the guide
for political science
there's a research guide that will kind
of walk you through the sources that we
recommend.
On the political science research
guide there's a tab that will let you
get more information on background and
history of ideas, how to find books, and
then how to locate those articles.
Each of the research guides will
have a librarian attached, so you can ask
questions.
For this particular class, I would
recommend not only looking at the
research guide in political science,
but maybe looking at the research guide
for history or
communication and government information, 
depending on your topic.
The other thing that's available right
up front on the library page
is a link to our journals.
If you know for example that you're
looking for a particular journal and
would like to browse it or if you're
trying to find the full text of
something...
the journals button on that front page
is going to be important.
This is called Browzine and it lets you
kind of jump into
all of the different journals that we
have. I can do a search for a
particular journal. I'm going to look for
Politics
and Society.
The journal will come up in the list
here and I can click on it
and Browzine will let me dive into
individual issues.
This is helpful if I have a citation and I know that something is published in
the journal of Politics and Society, 
let's say
in 2015, I would be able to get into that
particular issue.
The other thing Browzine will let us
do, is it will let
us browse our journals by
subject.
I can come down to social
sciences and behavioral sciences
and I can browse the titles that we have
available in political science:
comparative politics, European politics,
international,
political behavior, and economy... things
like that and I can browse the journals
that we have in those ideas there.
If we're just starting off our research
and we want to get a feel for what's out
there, we can try a Quick Search, which is what
we call searching in this box right on
the home page.
It will deliver a wide variety of
information.
I'm going to go ahead and search for
women in politics
and learn what some of our options are.
We've got the results down the middle of
the page --
but what's important here is the filters
that will let us refine
refine our search over here on the left.
In most of our databases we'll have
options on the left hand side to kind of
navigate the results that come back.
If i'm only interested, for example, in
peer-reviewed or scholarly sources I can
select this box.
If i'm only looking for journal articles,
I can select that content type as well.
The other thing that probably will prove
useful is a publication date.
If I know I'm interested in something
from the last five years or something
from 10 years ago, I can use this publication date tool and
kind of narrow the results that come
back.
The two things that I'd like to point
out on this page that are important
are this little clippy thing here, called a permalink...
which will give you a link that will let
you get back to this article later.
I would encourage you to drop this
down in your notes
and take advantage of the fact that you
can get back to this easily.
The other thing that's important right
next to that is a citation tool.
It will let you grab a quick
citation for this particular piece.
You'll probably, more than likely, be
using APSA as a style for this
particular course.
The nearest in the list is probably
going to be the Chicago, so i would click
on that
and it'll give you a quick citation that
you can copy and drop into your notes.
You can kind of conform it to the APSA
style later but grabbing a quick
citation makes it easy.
I'd like to go through and do a couple
example searches in some of our
databases and show you what the screens
look like.
I'm going to start on the library's
home page and click on databases
and the first database we'll look at is
Academic Search Complete which is right
here on the first page.
In Academic Search Complete, I'm going to
do a search for immigration reform.
As I'm typing, ideas are showing up in
the drop down menu and I can take a look
at those.
I'm going to start with just general
immigration reform and see what happens.
I've got the results down the center of
the page and I've got my refining tools
over here - my filters over here so i can
click on scholarly or peer-reviewed
sources.
If I'm only interested in finding things
that have references available
(we'll talk about that a little bit) I can
look at that over here as well.
I still have that publication date
tool as well.
When I'm looking at the individual
results, I can see the title and citation
information - one of the nice things about
this particular database is it will
offer additional subject terms.
I searched
for immigration reform but I've got
immigration law,
I have emigration and immigration, I've
got United States,
I've got additional subject terms
that I can pay attention to. The Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals is here.
I can jot down keywords and notes
and use these as Ii move forward with my
searching.
If I click on a title of an article,
I'll get more information. I've got a
link to the full text over here on the
left and then the tools that I found
earlier are here as well. I've got a
link to
the permalink over here on
the right...
and then I also have a citation tool
that will let me do that.
I can see that if Ii'm familiar with
finding the right pieces in one database,
it's just a matter of finding them
in another.
Let's look at another
database - if i click on the list I'm going to go
to P and I'm going to look for the PAIS or
the Public Affairs Information Service. This screen looks a little bit different
but the resources and tools are all
still here.
I'm going to search for civil
disobedience
and i can see kind of a pattern emerging.
I've got my results down here and I have
filters over here so I can look for a
scholarly journal
and kind of wash the rest of the things
out of the list.
If I click on an individual title,
I can get more citation
information here --  I
can also get a citation tool here. If
I click on
all options,  the first thing that will
come up at that top, is that permalink
that i know I'm supposed to be looking
for. I would encourage you to keep track
of your research as you go --
keep a research log. It's very easy to
kind of lose track of what we found last
Tuesday when we were searching.
But if I keep track of my keywords and
the databases that I'm in, it's easy to
jump back into the sources that I can
find.
Another database on the list that can be
helpful is JStor.
On the database list clicking J, JStor
Arts and Sciences is what we're looking
for.
I can add my keywords here in on
this screen,
like i've done in the past.
When I'm searching in library databases,
I'm more often than not going to use
keywords or names rather than phrases
and questions.
Databases work on a controlled
vocabulary and this seems to work best.
I have my list of results here and
I've got citation tools, downloading
articles, and saving them as options.
I've also got filters over here on
the left that can help me narrow my
content.
I'm really only interested, for
example in journal articles
and I really would like to look at
things from
a particular date range, I can add that
information over here.
Web of Science is also a good
database to use,
so going back to the library's web page
and getting back into the database list...
if I click on W, 
Web of Science is here towards the top.
I'm going to do a search
in Web of Science for national
conventions of U.S. political parties and see what
happens.
When I click on an individual title in
my results list, I'll have more citation
information here
and usually a copy of the abstract, which
is like a summary of the article.
I can get to the keywords and some
additional publisher information.
I've also got links to look up the full
text or to find the full text of the
article.
Web of Science includes a pretty
significant citation network. Not only can i look
at the cited references that these
authors use to write this piece,
but if this piece has been cited moving
forward, I can also link to those
citations as well. Now sometimes I can run up against
citations in a database or out in Google
Scholar that will be linked
and I can get links that will let
me jump into the full text of those
articles. Sometimes I'm looking at an article
that I found in a database or Ii've got a
print copy from a journal
and I've got their references here -- but
they're not linked as nicely.
I want to go ahead and talk a little
bit about how to find an article from a
citation.
This one, for example, is printed in
State Politics and Policy Quarterly and
I can do a couple of different things to
try and find the full text of this
article.
I can copy and paste the title and drop
this into
a Quick Search on the library's homepage
or I can take the title of that journal
and go ahead and drop it into our
journals list, so the State Politics and
Policy Quarterly may in fact be a journal that we have
access to in the library, so I can click
on journals
and look for State Politics
and Policy Quarterly here.
I've got access to this and I can
click through and find the right volume
and issue that I need to get into.
If you've got access to an author's
reference list,
be sure to check this for additional
sources and use the quick search of the
journals list to get back into those.
Some of the references that we'll find
in reference lists
are not going to link to journal
articles but are going to be from books
instead.
There's a pretty easy way to get
into books from the library's home.
If I do a search for a particular topic
in the Quick Search, when I have my
filters over here on the left hand side
of the page, I can very easily link to books and
ebooks.
This will wash out the other types
of material from the list.
I can see that I have ebooks that
I can jump into the full text here...
One of the things that I'll
also discover is I'll find
titles that are available upstairs in
the stacks in the library itself so the Puzzle
of Judicial Behavior here by Lawrence
Baum
is available upstairs in the Main
Collection and the call number here will
help you find it on the shelf.
When you get to the library if you've
got books that you're trying to find,
don't hesitate to reach out either at
the Ask Us Desk or the Circulation Desk
and we can help you find those.
You will, in the course of searching, run
into materials that we don't have access
to... either journal articles or book chapters
if we don't have access to it, don't be
tempted to pay for it.
We have a service in the library called
interlibrary loan
and on the home page under Borrow and
Request, interlibrary loan is down here,
it is your Island ID and password that
you use to log on to other systems.
You can put in a request for an article
or a book chapter and we'll borrow it
from another library for you for free,
so if you've got something that you'd
like but we don't have it,
go ahead and turn in a request. Our
interlibrary loan folks are great so if
you've got questions don't hesitate to
ask!
In addition to library resources, we can
also use Google Scholar to find
additional pieces.
I'm going to drop a title into Google
Scholar and
look at the sources that come up. I
found this book
about campaign discords by Benoit and
some other folks, it was published in
2003.
I can drop the title of this into
Google Scholar
and get access to the people that have
used this when they've written pieces
after this was published.
This was published in 2003 and these
160 articles
actually use this as a source in their
work.
I can click on the link and and see
how many things I can find
in addition to this particular book.
These actually link back
to the library databases because I've
connected my Google Scholar account with
the library.
I've included a link in our playlist, to
a YouTube video that will help you make
those connections.
If I find a piece that works
particularly well,
I can click on that title and I can also
continue to follow the cited by
conversation and continue to look at additional works
that might be helpful for me.
I want to remember to keep track of the
citation information and drop these in
my notes or in my journal so I can get
back to this. It makes my work a little easier to be
able to follow citations moving forward.
One of the things I am though is I'm in
Google Scholar -- so I'm out on the web.
I've lost the ability, like I had in
library databases to filter my topics by
scholarly or peer-reviewed sources.
One of the things I want to do is... I kind
of want to walk through
finding out information about this
particular
journal to see whether or not it's
scholarly or peer reviewed.
We have a database in the library that
can help us with this, so
this particular piece Communication and Citizenship,
it's published in Mass Communication and
Society.
Now I'm on Google Scholar so I don't
really know if this is a peer-reviewed
source -- but if i go back to the library's home
page and I click on databases, the database
that we're looking for is called
Ulrich's so it's in U. There aren't
very many U databases
but Ulrich's is a directory of periodicals.
If I click on Ulrich's, I can do a search
for the journal that I'm looking for.
Mass Communication in Society rises to
the top.
If I click on the journal title, I can
see from the little referee journal
that this particular journal is in fact
a scholarly or peer-reviewed source.
It helps us identify information about journal
titles, when we found them from other
sources whether it's being online on the
web or if it's looking at a print
reference list.
If we're not sure whether or not we're
looking at a scholarly source,
we can drop the title of the publication
into Ulrich's
and it will help us find information
that way.
If you have found a journal and you
can't identify whether it's a good
source or not,
don't hesitate to reach out to your
faculty member or a librarian
we can help you identify the reliability
of that.
I think this covers the information that
I wanted to share for today.
This should get you well on the road to
finding sources that you need for your
coursework.
Feel free to reach out if you have any
questions. Once you start doing research,
let us know how it's going if you aren't
finding the sources that you think you
should... reach out and let me know, I'm happy to
help!
