POSC 130g: Law, Politics, and Public Policy

Initial use of search engines designed to access a large volume of materials can be helpful in scanning the literature on a particular topic and obtaining an initial understanding of how scholars, journalists, and others have studied your topic of interest.

USC Libraries Catalog -- searches all library holdings of both print and electronic books and other materials including U.S. government documents.

USC Libraries Search Engine -- the search option on the USC Libraries main web page provides a single search box with access to print and online books, selected digital resources, and full-text journal, magazine, and newspaper articles owned by the USC Libraries or accessible online through subscriptions. Information about using the Libraries' search engine can be found here.

Listed below are multidisciplinary databases that provide comprehensive access to resources that support research in administrative and regulatory law, public policy, and judicial affairs.

Google Scholar -- Google Scholar provides access to mostly scholarly [i.e., peer-reviewed, academic] sources, including scholarly titles from Google Book Search. The search engine has a "Cited by" feature that allows you to track where a particular source has been subsequently cited after publication. Information about using Google Scholar can be found here.

JSTOR --  an archive of core, full-text journals in the  social sciences, humanities, and sciences. Good source to search for historical research studies about a topic.

ProQuest -- a database that simultaneously searches hundreds of subject areas, indexes thousands of scholarly journal articles, and major newspapers and magazines. A good starting point for any topic.

Specialized Sources of Background Information

The full-text and keyword searchable databases listed below enable you to search the contents of dictionaries, handbooks, encyclopedias, and other reference books in a variety of subject areas or to find scholarly summaries of topics. These databases can be a good place to locate definitive, unbiased explanations of key concepts, theories, and topics as well as biographic profiles and descriptions of historic events. Most of these databases are multidisciplinary and some of their content overlaps, but search more than one database as needed to gain a thorough description of your topic.

• CQ Researcher -- provides access to original, comprehensive, single-themed analytical reports on topics in the news. The reports offer unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, the economy, and many other subject areas.
• Credo Reference -- comprehensive collection of highly-specialized reference works, primarily dictionaries and encyclopedias, across all subject areas. Good place to go for succinct definitions of concepts, theories, or topics. Very good place to begin your search for background information.
• Global Issues In Context -- offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, relevant sources for analysis of these issues.
• Oxford Handbooks Online -- contains in-depth, high-level articles covering a variety of disciplines. Entries offer a thorough introduction to topics and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship, creating an original conception of the field and setting the agenda for new research. Handbook articles review the key issues and cutting-edge debates, as well as providing arguments for how those debates might evolve.
• Oxford Reference Online -- provides access to the content of approximately 100 language and subject dictionaries and reference works published by the Oxford University Press in a single cross-searchable resource.
• SAGE eReference -- a full-text collection of over eighty online specialized encyclopedias from SAGE Publishers in the social and behavioral sciences, including communications, public policy, gender studies, social work, history, psychology, and political science.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.