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POSC 391, Honors 1: Undergraduate Seminar

Research guide for students enrolled in POSC 391.

Multidisciplinary Databases

These databases allow you to search for scholarly research resources representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY DATABASES

  • ProQuest Multiple -- database that simultaneously searches thousands of general and scholarly titles, and provides full-text for a significant number of the articles. Contents are updated daily.
  • Google Scholar -- academic side of Google's search engine. It is also useful resource for identifying who has subsequently cited a particular work. Go here for directions about how to set up Google Scholar to link to materials we own or subscribe to electronically.
  • Chicano Database -- bibliographic index focuses on the Mexican-American and Chicano experience, and the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and Central American immigrants since 1992. Covers Chicano/a art, education, folklore, health. history, labor, language and literature, music, politics, public policy, religion, sociology, and women's studies.
  • Ethnic NewsWatch -- includes current and archival coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic and minority presses. Very important database for gaining a perspective and an understanding of civic engagement from underrepresented groups and minorities.
  • GenderWatch -- a full-text database that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, NGO and special reports.
  • JSTOR -- an archive of scholarly, full-text social science, humanities, and science journals. An excellent source for finding historical research studies about your topic or identify how scholars studied a past topic  or event at the time it occurred.
  • LGBT Life -- the premier resource to the world's literature regarding Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Transsexual issues with coverage that includes traditional academic, lifestyle, and regional publications, as well as non-periodical content such as non-fiction books, bibliographies and dissertations.
Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Discipline-Specific Databases

These databases allow you to conduct a comprehensive search for scholarly research resources in a particular discipline or area of study. Additional subject-specific databases can be found HERE.

ANTHROPOLOGY

  • Anthropology Plus -- provides coverage of journal articles, research reports, commentaries, and edited works in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archeology, folklore, and material culture.

COMMUNICATIONS

  • Communication Source -- a comprehensive source of communication-related journal articles, research reports, working papers, and books from a variety of publishers, research institutions, and information centers. Includes not only communication literature but also literature in other disciplines relevant to communication researchers.
  • Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts -- accesses the international literature in linguistics and all aspects of the study of language, including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical, and geographical linguistics. Important database to understanding the use of language in communicating policy.

HISTORY

  • America: History and Life -- database that covers the history of the United States and Canada. It includes key English-language historic journals, selected historic journals from major countries, state and local history journals, and selected indexing of relevant journals in the social sciences and humanities.
  • Historical Abstracts -- covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present. The database provides indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over forty languages back to 1955 and access to the full text of more than 349 journals and more than 120 books.

PHILOSOPHY

  • Philosopher's Index -- indexes and abstracts articles from over 500 English and foreign language philosophy journals covering topics related to the philosophical aspects of politics and ethics.

POLITICS AND POLICY

  • PolicyFile -- provides full-text access to U.S. foreign and domestic policy papers and gray literature published by a wide variety of think tanks, research institutes, and agencies. PolicyFile is updated weekly with abstracts and links to the latest reports, papers, and documents.
  • Public Administration Abstracts -- provides information on public administration-related publications worldwide covering such areas as administration and economy, administration and politics, administration and society, administrative structures and organization, public and social services, public service personnel, and theory and method.
  • Worldwide Political Science Abstracts -- indexes international journal literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Over 1,700 titles are monitored for coverage and, of these, 67% are published outside of the United States.

PSYCHOLOGY

  • ProQuest Health and Medical Collection -- offers comprehensive journal coverage of all major clinical and healthcare disciplines, including clinical and biomedical topics, consumer health, health administration, and more.
  • PsycInfo -- database with more than three million records devoted to scholarly literature of journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, and research reports in psychology and the behavioral sciences.
  • PubMed@USC -- provides access to the National Library of Medicine biomedical and health science database containing over 27 million citations. Use MeSH terms to focus a search and use this PubMed link to be able to access USC's full-text electronic journals.

SOCIOLOGY

  • Sociological Abstracts -- database for locating articles in the field of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences obtained from more than 1,800 international journal and other research publications.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Media Coverage

These databases can help you critically examine how the media has covered or framed a particular political topic.

  • Access World News -- comprehensive news collection for exploring issues and events at the local, regional, national, and international level. Source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts, and videos.
  • ProQuest Newsstand -- provides access to the full-text of over 1,300 newspapers, news websites, and blogs from leading publishers throughout the world. Archives go back to the late 1970's for some newspapers. Similar to Access World News but not quite as comprehensive.

Listed below are full-text databases for individual newspapers:

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

Subjects: Course Guides