The most common way to find articles, whether they are scholarly articles or not, is to search article databases. The library subscribes to dozens; I've listed the ones that are closely associated with political science below. You can also find articles via Google Scholar. The best researchers don't just use one database; they use many databases to cast a wide net. If you have any issues searching or accessing materials, email Julie.
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.
The easiest way to access news articles is through these databases. This will get you around any paywalls you might encounter if you were just searching Google for newspaper articles.
Student Senate pays annually for the New York Times Education and Library Subscription Program, which gives the entire campus - students, faculty, and staff - access to four newspapers: the New York Times, Star Tribune, USA Today and the Mankato Free Press. Login directions for the newspapers in the program are here.
Looking for more newspapers? The Gustavus Library provides access to hundreds of full text newspapers spanning the past several decades - and into today through the following databases, which are available to all members of the Gustavus community. The box above has more information.
