In general, articles fall into two categories: scholarly articles written by scholars for other academics and students and more accessible sources that are written for a general audience. In both cases, you want to make sure you're finding articles written by experts. Typically in academia, we define experts as those who have studied a topic in depth and have earned degrees. We can also talk about expertise in other ways, especially in terms of lived experience. Keep these concepts of expertise in mind as you search.
You can certainly use Google to find news sites, but you'll likely hit paywalls. Instead try searching these databases, which provide access behind newspaper paywalls.
Provides the full text of global, regional and local news sources. Coverage ranges from over 40 Minnesota sources to international sources from over 200 countries.
When you have a source with a bibliography, you can see if a particular article from the bibliography is available by looking the journal's name up at the link below. Then you can use the volume and date information to navigate to the article. If we don't have access to that journal, we usually can get it from another library.
These are the most relevant databases to search for information related to your topics. Be sure to read the database description to make sure the coverage fits your topic. Some databases have only scholarly sources while others will have a mix. Pay attention to the kind of source you're reading. And if you need help finding the full text of an article, email me or consult the Tracking Down Materials tab above.
The databases below are listed in alphabetical order. Be sure to search Social Sciences Citation Index. This database is a major one in the field and contains a lot of content on political science. It's a little clunky to use, but be sure you are using it, otherwise you risk missing a big chunk of literature on your topic.
This search engine points toward scholarly research rather than all Web-based sources. It is stronger in the sciences than in the humanities, with social sciences somewhere in between. One interesting feature of Google Scholar is that in includes a link to sources that cite a particular item. Not all of the articles in Google Scholar are free; the library can obtain many of them for you through Interlibrary loan.
JSTOR is a digital library of journals, academic eBooks, images, and primary sources. JSTOR provides book and journal content from the date of initial publication up to a "moving wall" of 3 to 5 years before the present year.
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