Guides: PSCI 3300: Introduction to Political Research: Databases & Electronic Resources for Your Lit. Review

Finding Sources for Your Research Paper

How to Find Articles

The UNT Libraries subscribe to hundreds of online databases, and provide access to thousands of electronic journal titles, e-books, and an array of online art, music, and media materials. This tutorial provides basic information about finding, and getting help with these systems in general, but if you need help, ask your librarian, Brea Henson.

Understanding the Kinds of Resources Available

UNT Electronic Databases are extraordinarily diverse. The following list is representative, but not complete:

Full Text: Some contain the "full text," including actual journal or newspaper articles or other content.
Partial Full Text: Contents may be full text or abstracts.
Not Full Text But Still Useful: Many electronic databases were developed as tools to help you find information in other locations such as books, journals, or even web pages.
General Resources: Some electronic databases cover a broad range of content areas and are considered "general resources."
Specialized: Others focus on one content or subject area
Links to Articles: More and more of our non-full text databases are now providing a hyperlink to the full text article. See the "Find Full Text" link in the database for details.

How to Find Electronic Databases

You essentially have two options.

Find it Yourself: Find information yourself using one of our search/browse systems.
Use a Guide or Ask for Help: Consult a "Research Guide" (like this one) specifically tailored to a subject or class, use the ASK US link at the top of every page, or ask your subject librarian.

Find it Yourself: Using the Online Articles Search

From the libraries home page, you will see a tabbed search box. The "Online Articles" Search can search through millions of electronically available full-text, scholarly articles. Enter your search terms.
If you want to expand your criteria beyond articles to include other material types, you can do so from the advanced search.
On the results screen, use the left-column facet selectors to further refine your search.

Find it Yourself: Using the Databases Search (RECOMMENDED)

From the libraries home page, you will see a tabbed search box. Choose the "Databases" Tab, search by database title or by subject.

On the Results Page. Note the following:

Linked Title: Provides direct access to the Database. See "Access" (Above) for help with authentication.
Information About the Resource: Each record provides information about the Resource. Typically this includes the title, resource type, subjects covered, a description of the contents, coverage dates, help links/tutorials, and a contact person/service for additional help.
About this Database Link: Provides more information about the database, typically including the contributor, resource types, and other special information. You can also get a permanent link on this page for sharing or future use.

Political Science Literature and News Sources

Proquest political science
ProQuest Political Science Journals includes articles from leading political science journals, including such topics as comparative politics, political economy, international development, and environmental policy. Dates of Coverage: 1985 - current
JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to archived backfiles of journals in the arts and sciences, business, language and literature, science, ecology and botany, and music: over 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of monographs and other relevant materials. Users can access the full-text content beginning with the first volume of each journal although recent volumes may or may not be included, depending on the agreement between JSTOR and publishers of the journal in question. As a result, some titles may lag behind in terms of JSTOR coverage. Content may date back to 1890, up to present-day.
Academic search complete
Academic Search Complete provides a scholarly collection providing full text coverage for over 10,500 journals for nearly all academic areas of study - including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies, etc. Dates of Coverage: 1975 - Current
ProQuest Congressional
ProQuest Congressional Includes information on bills, laws, regulations, Congressional publications, current and previous Members of Congress, campaign finance information, financial disclosures, voting records, and committee membership. Also includes the full text of some Congressional reports, documents, and testimonies. Dates of Coverage: 1789 - present
ProQuest History Vault
ProQuest History Vault unlocks the wealth of key archival materials with a single search. Researchers can access digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials taken from the University Publications of America (UPA) Collections. The collections are organized into modules within these popular subject areas. UNT is subscribed select modules and collections, and not the entire platform.
Access world news
Access World News provides full-text information from over 600 U.S. and over 700 international news sources. Includes newspapers, newsmagazines, news wires, and transcripts. Dates of Coverage: Current

NOTE: The license for this product restricts authorized use to access by current faculty and students of the University of North Texas. The person accessing this link is liable for any infringement.
America, history and life
America: History and Life provides access to abstracts of journal articles and citations to book/media reviews and dissertations gleaned from over 1700 journal titles dealing with the history of the United States and Canada. Writings in over 40 languages are included. All abstracts, are written in English. Dates of Coverage: 1954 - Current
Cambridge Histories Online
Cambridge Histories Online is the online version of the printed book series from Cambridge University Press. This resource provides authoritative historical essays and bibliographies on wide ranging topics. Cambridge Histories Online contains e-Book collections in the subjects medieval history, Asian history, Middle East and African studies, philosophy and political thought, music and theater and more.
CQ Press library
Created and hosted by CQ Press, the CQ Press Library is the definitive reference resource for research in American government, politics, history, public policy, and current affairs. These reference products offer researcherswhether students, scholars, professionals, or interested citizensa range of tools for discovering and understanding CQ Press's content. Dates of Coverage: varies by source.
CQ Press
CQ Press includes databases, online reference books, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, a source for basic information on a variety of topics, and CQ Weekly, which provides up-to-date information on the U.S. Congress and its activities. Dates of Coverage: 1929 - present (varies by source)
Criminal justice abstracts
Criminal Justice Abstracts via EBSCOhost covers crime trends, crime prevention and deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police, courts, punishment and sentencing. Contains indexes and summaries of international journal articles, books, and governmental and non-governmental reports on a wide range of topics in criminal justice. Provides coverage of over 500 journals published in several different languages. Links to full-text. Dates of Coverage:1968 to present
Criminal Justice Database
The Criminal Justice Database is a comprehensive database supporting research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends. Scholarly journals, correctional and law enforcement trade publications, crime reports, crime blogs, and more are available. Major subject coverage includes criminology, corrections administration, criminal law, criminal justice, law enforcement, addiction, family law, industrial security, and rehabilitation.
De Gruyter Online
De Gruyter is a scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. De Gruyter Online includes information on more than 60,000 books, journals, and electronic products, as well as millions of entries from electronic journals, eBooks and databases, and subject coverage which includes architecture, chemistry, computer sciences, engineering, history, mathematics, physics, and social sciences, among others.
Empire Online
Empire Online from Adam Matthew provides manuscript, printed, and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials cover the last five centuries and are accompanied by secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps, and an interactive chronology. It charts the rise and fall of empires around the world. Empire Online provides exploration of colonial history, politics, culture, and society. It is organized into five sections: Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969 Empire Writing & the Literature of Empire The Visible Empire Religion & Empire and Race, Class, Colonialism, Imperialism.
Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints
Opposing Viewpoints In Context covers today's hottest social issues, from Offshore Drilling to Climate Change, Health Care to Immigration. Helps students research, analyze and organize a broad variety of data for conducting research, completing writing assignments, preparing for debates, creating presentations and more. Includes pro/con essays topic overviews primary source documents biographies of social activists and reformers court-case overviews periodical articles statistical tables, charts and graphs images podcasts, including weekly presidential addresses and premier NPR programs and a national and state curriculum standards search, correlated to the content that allows educators to quickly identify material by grade and discipline. Dates of Coverage: Current
Gender studies database
Gender Studies Database Combines the Women's Studies International and Men's Studies databases with the coverage of sexual diversity issues. This database includes more than 764,000 records, Dates of Coverage: 1972 and earlier to the present.
Immigration Records of the INS 1880-1930
Immigration Records of the INS 1880-1930 covers the investigations made by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the massive immigration wave of 1880-1930. The files cover Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese migration to California, Hawaii, and other states Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1906-1930, and European immigration. There are also extensive files on the INS's regulation of sex work, human trafficking, and on suppression of radicalized immigrants.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is a database that includes over 3 million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews, and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It provides broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Subjects covered include anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, demography, economics, education, ethnology and ethnography, political science, religious studies, and sociology.
Columbia International Affairs Online
Columbia International Affairs Online is a comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship that includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs. CIAO is also a source for teaching materials including original case studies written by leading international affairs experts, course packs of background readings for history and political science classes, and special features like the analysis of a bin Laden recruitment tape with video.
International Security & Counter Terrorism Reference Center
International Security & Counter-Terrorism Reference Center (ISCTRC) provides an open source intelligence resource for analysts, risk management professionals, and students. ISCTRC combines deep background from scholarly writings with expert commentary from a variety of organizations, agencies and publishers and timely reviews of recent developments across the international political, military, economic, social and technical spectrum. Content includes nearly 3,000 full-text items from a variety of sources, including reports from Stratfor Analysis, Stratfor Forecasts, and Stratfor Geopolitical Diary and over 10,500 images.
Keesing's record of world events
Keesing's Record of World Events Monthly digest of worldwide political, diplomatic, and economic affairs from all regions of the world. An archive of original, accurate, and objective articles on the world's political, social, and economic events. Includes articles in Economics, History, Journalism, Multidisciplinary, and Political Science. Dates of Coverage: 1931 - 1987: Keesing's Contemporary Archives 1987 - present:
Monthly catalog of U.S. government publications, 1895-1976
Monthly Catalog of US Government Publications : The comprehensive index to historical information published by the United States federal government, describing over 1.2 million items published between January 1895 and June 1976. Dates of Coverage: 1895 - 1976
GPO monthly catalog
GPO Monthly Catalog via FirstSearch Includes information describing federal government information resources available through the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program.
NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files and Youth Department Files
NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files and Youth Department files chronicles the local heroes of the civil rights revolution from 1913 to 1972 including attorneys, community organizers, benefactors, students, mothers, teachers, and more.
NAACP Papers: Special Subjects
NAACP Papers: Special Subjects covers topics that did not rise to the level of major campaigns but shows the scope of NAACP activism and interest. Topics include communism, anticommunism during the red scare, the congressional prossectuion of Hollywood personalitites, prison conditions throughout the United States, African colonial liberation movements, the emergency of the Black Power movement, and much more.
NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files
The NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files provides a comprehensive view of the NAACP's evolution, policies, and achievents from 1909-1970. Included are minutes of directors' meetings, monthly reports from officers to the board of directors, proceedings of the annual business meetings, significant records of the association's annual conferences, plus special reports on a wide range of issues. Topics covered include discrimination in public employment, the Ku Klux Klan, the depiction of Blacks in motion pictures, economic equality, the church and civil rights and the changing attitudes of Black youth.
NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns - Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
The NAACP's Major Campaigns - Education, Voting, Housing, Emlpoyment, Armed Forces provides documentation on the systematic assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This collection contains files from 1955 to 1965 that focus on the NAACP's efforts to implement the Brown decision as well as to combat de facto segregation outside of the South.
NAACP Papers: Major Campaigns - Legal Department Files
NAACP Papers: Major Campaigns - Legal Department Files contains papers of the NAACP Legal Department from 1956 - 1972. This includes working case files. Topics covered in these cases include school desegregation, abuses of police procedure, freedom of speech, desegregation of public facilities, voting rights, housing discrimination, and employment discrimination. Files include background correspondence as well as court documents including transcripts of court proceedings.
NAACP Papers: Major Campaigns - Scottsboro, Anti-lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
The focus of NAACP Papers: Major Campaigns - Scottsboro, Anti-lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses is on efforts to combat lynching, mob violence, discrimination in the criminal justice system, and white resistance to civil rights.
Nexis Uni
Nexis Uni provides access to news, legal, and business sources including journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, newspapers, and legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Politics
Oxford Research Encyclopedias offer long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars. They cover both foundational and cutting-edge topics in order to develop an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Hansard (the official report)
Parliamentary Debates. House of Commons and House of Lords Hansard (the Official Report) is the edited verbatim report of proceedings of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Daily debates are published the next working day by 6am. Commons debates back to November 1988. Lords debates back to 1995-96. Live and archived coverage of all UK Parliament proceedings taking place in public, including debates and committee meetings of both Houses. Historic Hansard includes debates from 1803-2005. Dates of Coverage: 1803 – current. NOTE: The content of the Archive site has been moved to a new provider in October 2012 but the search function has not yet been restored.
Political database of the Americas
Political Database of the Americas Contains information about institutions and political processes, national constitutions, branches of government, elections, political constitutional studies, and other subjects related to the strengthening of democracy in the Americas. Dates of Coverage: 1995 - current varies by country
Race relations abstracts
Race Relations Abstracts includes bibliographic records selected from the most important sources within the discipline covering essential areas related to race relations, including ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. Dates of Coverage: 1975 current.
Race Relations in America
Race Relations in American provides records of speeches, reports, surveys, and analyses produced by Fisk University's Race Relations Department from 1943-1970. This information documents the civil rights fight with concentrations on desegregation, migration of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers, the role of the Church in the Civil Rights Movement, race riots and tensions, and the activists of the Civil Rights movement.
SHAFR Guide Online
The SHAFR Guide is an annotated bibliography of U.S. Foreign Relations since 1600. It provides an annotated bibliography of historical work covering the entire span of U.S. foreign relations. It aims to jump-start the research of both students and advanced scholars.
Social Science Database
Social Science Database provides indexing, abstracts, and full-text for social science journals. Subject coverage includes anthropology, communication science, demography, economics, education, political science, psychology, policy studies, social work, and sociology. Journals from over 50 countries are featured, providing for multidisciplinary research from a variety of perspectives. Resources can include scholarly journals, trade journals. magazines, conference papers and proceedings, government and official publications, newspapers, and other sources.
Social Science Research Network: SSRN
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is composed of a number of specialized research networks in the social sciences. Topics covered by networks include accounting, economics, financial economics, legal scholarship, and management (including negotiation and marketing). The SSRN eLibrary consists of abstracts of scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an electronic paper collection of downloadable full text documents in pdf format.
Sustainability Reference Center
Designed for sustainability experts and information professionals, this collection offers unmatched full-text coverage of content relevant to many integral areas of sustainability initiative management.
United States Office of Government Ethics
Forms, Publications and Other Ethics Documents Includes public and confidential financial disclosure forms, model trust documents, a review of agency programs, and more. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics provides access to many full-text publications in their Ethics Resource Library. Included are Reference Publications, Booklets, Pamphlets, OGE Ethics Newsgram, Reports and Plans, Surveys and Questionnaires, and Proposed Legislation. Dates of Coverage: 1978 - present
WDI online
The primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Still not finding what you need? Look at this List of Political Science Databases.

Still not finding what you need? Here is a List of all 586 Database platforms that we have.

University Libraries

PSCI 3300: Introduction to Political Research

Need Help with Basic and Advance Research?

Finding Sources for Your Research Paper

How to Find Articles

Understanding the Kinds of Resources Available

How to Find Electronic Databases

Find it Yourself: Using the Online Articles Search

Find it Yourself: Using the Databases Search (RECOMMENDED)

On the Results Page. Note the following:

Political Science Literature and News Sources

PSCI 3300: Introduction to Political Research

Need Help with Basic and Advance Research?

Finding Sources for Your Research Paper

How to Find Articles

Understanding the Kinds of Resources Available

How to Find Electronic Databases

Find it Yourself: Using the Online Articles Search

Find it Yourself: Using the Databases Search (RECOMMENDED)

On the Results Page. Note the following:

Political Science Literature and News Sources

Additional Links