POLI 210 Chaffin - Fall 2024 - Political Science Research

Today's Objectives

During our library research session, we will:

Distinguish between academic and non-academic sources that may be useful for your project
Use effective search strategies to find peer-reviewed research related to a relevant policy topic
Evaluate your findings and understand how to cite

Following our session and completion of the related activity, you should be ready to refine your research topic and prepare your proposal.

POLI 210 LIbrary Activity
This is a required assignment. Submit by Sunday, September 22.
POLI 210 Paper Guidelines

Discover CofC Libraries

The Discovery Service provides a single, unified search box for searching the holdings of the College of Charleston Libraries, including academic/scholarly journal articles, print books, e-books, newspapers, magazines, internet documents, research reports, research guides, and much more!

Key Nonprofit and Public Administration Journals

You can search for relevant articles in these journals individually using the links below. You can also search through many different journals using the Discovery Service and look for results from any of these specific journals.

Researching in Newspapers

Post and Courier Collection with Historical Archive This link opens in a new window
Coverage for the Post and Courier: 1873 to present from NewsBank's Access World News.
New York Times This link opens in a new window
To access The New York Times, College of Charleston students, faculty, and staff must create an account by clicking the link above, searching for and selecting "College of Charleston" from the list, clicking "Create Account" and completing the registration using their CofC email address, and finally, verifying their accounts through the confirmation email sent by The New York Times. Once registered and verified, College of Charleston students, faculty, and staff can access The New York Times (NYTimes.com), including the archives (dating back to 1851), podcasts, newsletters, videos, and more. The College of Charleston's subscription does not include access to add-ons like The Athletic or Games. Faculty and staff will need to re-verify their account annually.

CofC Libraries Newspaper Databases
A list of all newspaper databases at CofC.

U.S. Government

usa.gov This link opens in a new window
U.S. government's official web portal, providing free, searchable, online access to federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal government.

SC.gov
Official website of the government of South Carolina

govinfo This link opens in a new window
GPO's official system for Federal information from all three branches of the U.S. Government. Provides free online access to official Federal Government publications.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Contains comprehensive coverage from inception of both U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and the US Congressional Serial Set as well as thousands of scholarly journals, all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, presidential documents, and more.

Congressional Research Service
You can find some useful reports and other resources on various countries here.
United States Census Bureau
The Census Bureau's mission is to serve as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy.