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Political Science: Home

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Welcome to the Politics Research Guide

Welcome to the online library guide for Introduction to Political Research!

Use this guide as a starting point for your research. If you have any questions regarding research in the field of political science feel free to contact me. My contact info is located to the right.

Best of luck with your Politics research!

Keywords VS Subject Headings

When you search by keyword:

  • you are searching for words and phrases that can be found anywhere in the text of the item record and/or article.
  • you are not searching for commonly used words parts of speech. Examples include articles, pronouns, and prepositions. Databases do not index commonly used words, which are called stop words. Examples of stop words in databases are: aan,aboutafterallalsoandanyareasatbasedbecausebeen, and many more.

Searching by keyword can be a flexible way to find a large number of results. You can use keyword searching as a way to find targeted results: slang, jargon, and new terms work well in keyword searches.


When you search by subject:

you are using a term from a pre-defined controlled vocabulary determined by that database. Many databases feature a subject-specific thesaurus of subject terms that relate back to the contents in that database. You will only receive articles that were assigned the subject heading you searched with. For this reason, articles found via subject heading searches can be very reliable. The subject will appear in the record item's subject heading or descriptor field.

Searching by subject can be a very specific way to find targeted results within a specific discipline or research area. This can be very beneficial to your research; however, searching by subject only works if you know which subject terms to search with.

 

This guide will include some subject headings that can be used in the library catalog. Please contact me if you need assistance finding database-specific subject headings. 

Subject Guide

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Karla Bluestone
Contact:
7500 Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank CA 91510
Book a meeting with me
818.394.3383

Library Basics & Quick Links

We are here to help you with any aspect of your research.  Please take advantage of the library’s resources and don’t hesitate to ask for assistance should you need it.

The following are resources you may find helpful as you complete your writing assignments for this class.