SCU Databases

Which database(s) from the entire catalog of SCU databases should you query? Unfortunately, there isn't a simple answer. Usually you will need to select and search more than one. The following SCU databases are useful for finding country information. Each link above leads to a brief description of the database, tips for searching it, and a direct link to it. Make sure your have your access #. Read through the list of databases below carefully and select the database or databases that suit your particular needs.

If the direct link doesn't work, you can get to the databases through the library's list of Political Science Databases.

Oscar

What to Expect
Always start here with the library's computer catalog. These are the books that we own. The majority will be scholarly books, but we also get books from various "think tanks". These books are a fabulous source of in depth information on your country.

Search Tips

• Do a keyword search instead of a subject search.
• Check the book's date for recentness.
• Use the limit option. Limiting to recent years decreases the number of hits.
• Truncate keywords: For example, use politic* to get political/politics/politically.
• Direct the computer to searching for your words in the subject field by prefacing the individual keywords with d:
• A good search statement for a book on politics in Poland, for example would look like this: d:poland and d:politic*

top

Link +

What to Expect
Think of LINK+ as many Oscars all searchable as one. That is, in fact, what it is. You can find out what a whole bunch of libraries in California have. If you find a book in one of these libraries that we do not have here in Orradre (or that is checked out here) you can request it right there on the computer. Book requested this way come on a special van service and arrive in 3-5 days. You pick them up at the Circulation Desk.

Search Tips

• Do a keyword search instead of a subject search.
• Check the book's date for recentness.
• Use the limit option. Limiting to recent years decreases the number of hits.
• Truncate keywords: For example, use politic* to get political/politics/politically.
• Direct the computer to searching for your words in the subject field by prefacing the individual keywords with d:
• A good search statement for a book on politics in Poland, for example would look like this: d:poland and d:politic*

Note:

• This service is for books only, not periodicals, videos, or software.
• You will not get an email notice that the book has arrived. To check your books availability, you must view your circulation record in Oscar or stop by the Circulation Desk
• You can renew these books only once, and there is no grace period for fines.

top

PAIS International

What to Expect
For the most part, this is an international index to articles from political science and public policy literature, broadly defined. You will get citations to journal articles as well as government documents, U.S. federal and more, as well as other sorts of books/reports from international governmental and quasi-governmental organizations, and more! Coverage goes back to 1972 and is supplemented, historically, by the PAIS Archive, which covers 1915-1976, but the Archive is mostly U.S. material.

Search Tips

• When you enter the database, you will be searching in Advanced Search mode.
• You have 3 lines to search on. Think of each as representing a different aspect of your topic. Use one for geography, for example. You could enter France or French. On the 2nd line maybe opinion or poll or polls.
• On the line you use for geography, change KEYWORD to DESCRIPTOR.
• There is a pulldown menu for selecting date limitations.
• Use the asterisk for ending, multiple character truncation, politic* gets political/politics/politically.
• Results will be sort by type, so you can just look at the Peer-Reviewed journals, for example.
• Notice, too, there is a box to check to limit results to English, very useful! Click on "Links to Holdings" in any periodical article record to open another window and search the Electronic & Print Journals list to find out if we have the periodical.

top

World Wide Political Abstracts

What to Expect
For the most part, this is an index to about 1000 international political science and public policy periodicals of all types back to 1975. Thrown in, though, are some books/monographs and dissertations as well as scattered references to material earlier than 1975, but this early coverage is very erratic.

Search Tips

• When you enter the database, you will be searching in Advanced Search mode.
• You have 3 lines to search on. Think of each as representing a different aspect of your topic. Use one for geography, for example. You could enter France or French. On the 2nd line maybe opinion or poll or polls.
• On the line you use for geography, change KEYWORD to DESCRIPTOR.
• There is a pulldown menu for selecting date limitations.
• Use the asterisk for ending, multiple character truncation, politic* gets political/politics/politically.
• To find BOOK REVIEWS, use the book's title in a keyword search. If it is not distinctive, use the author's last name on another line and change keyword to author on that line.
• Results will be sort by type, so you can just look at the Peer-Reviewed journals, for example.
• Although there is a box to check to limit results to English, many, many, many items in this database do not contain a language field, so it's not a good idea to do this!
• Click on "Links to Holdings" in any periodical article record to open another window and search the Electronic & Print Journals list to find out if we have the periodical.

top

Social Sciences Fulltext
What to Expect
You will get citations and abstracts of periodical articles from over 544 different English language periodicals in the social sciences, which includes anthropology, psychology, sociology, ethnic studies, political science, economics, geography, urban studies, and more. Fulltext of articles are available from about 175 of these periodicals. Indexing goes back to 1983. Abstracts began with January 1994.

Search Tips

• Start with a keyword search instead of a subject search.
• You can restrict your search to peer-reviewed journals.
• Documents are sorted by "relevance." Change that to DATE to get the most recent first.
• Truncate keywords: For example, use politic* to get political/politics/polically.
• Enclose phrases in quotation marks, "cold war".
• Sadly, you cannot truncate, *, within quotation marks! Use or, as in "punch card" or "punch cards"
• For the articles that are NOT there fulltext, click on the to open another window and automatically search the Electronic & Print Journals list to see if we have the periodical.

top

Academic Search Elite (ASE)

What to Expect
ASE indexes about 3000 periodicals, including news, commentary/opinion and scholarly. The difficulty is sifting the substantive articles out from the zillions of newsy and opinion pieces. It is possible to restrict your search to refereed scholarly journals. That is imperfect, so be sure to VERIFY yourself that this is scholarly material. This automatically eliminates the newsy items. Unfortunately, it also eliminates many of the commentary/opinion pieces that you may want. Your other option is to use the Number of Pages option in the big box below the search box and enter something like >4 (meaning longer than 4 pages) to get just lengthy, presumably more substantive, discussion!

Search Tips

• Do a subject search instead of the default fields when using the country name.
• Enter ideas, other than the country name, on a 2nd search line, as default fields.
• Restrict your search to refereed scholarly journals.
• Use the Number of Pages option to enter a length minimum because there are a lot of very short articles in here, especially if you do not restrict your search to scholarly journals.
• You don't need to limit by date. The most recent documents will show up first.
• Truncate keywords: For example, use politic* to get political/politics.

top

C.I.A.O. (Columbia International Affairs Online)

What to Expect
This is a fulltext database of a very selective set of articles from journals, working papers, conference papers/proceedings, and policy briefs of university research institutes, NGOs, foundations and other think tanks that focus on theory and research in international affairs. Sources are updated frequently and some material goes back to 1991. Country profiles are just the CIA World Factbook. The Links and Resources subfile is a very selective list of relevant websites for country information and for topical information.

On the opening screen you will probably be greeted by something that is being featured, no doubt related to current international events. In the left frame, though, are your searching and browsing choices. You can select a subfile to browse, like "working papers", or you can select SEARCH and search the entire database. You can select a general subject area (like "ethnic conflict" or "energy policy")for your search using a pulldown menu. Only use this as a last resort! You have two search modes, SIMPLE and ADVANCED search (see more tips below). Results display in relevance order rather than date.

Search Tips for Simple Mode

• You have one line on which to enter keywords. Multiple keywords will be treated like a Boolean AND, or "all the words."
• You cannot search phrases!
• There is a single character wildcard, ?, and root word truncation, *, as in environment*.
• There is a pulldown menu for limited date specifications.

Search Tips for Advanced Mode

• On each line of the search grid you can specify fields, with title being the most restrictive.
• On each line, you can specify whether the words entered are a phrase or not.
• On each line, you can specify that the words MUST appear or SHOULD appear or MUST NOT appear.
• Search criteria from line to line in the search grid are linked by AND.
• There is no Boolean OR.
• There is a single character wildcard, ?, and root word truncation, *, as in environment*.
• There is a pulldown menu for limited date specifications.

top

FBIS Index

WHAT TO EXPECT
This is an index to the FBIS Daily Reports from 1975 to 1996. These are CIA translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world. The translated documents themselves will be found in the Government Documents Department.

SEARCH TIPS:

• Keep it simple!There are very few words in a record in this database. You are, in essence, searching words in the titles of the FBIS reports and a string of assigned subject headings.
• You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT as well as a proximity operator, NEARx (x is a variable number of possible intervening words), which is always a good idea for names, e.g jimmy NEAR1 carter.
• Remember! This is just an index. No text. Print out the entries you are interested in and take them to the Information Commons Desk.

top

Historical Abstracts
What to expect:
At first you may think you do not want historical information, but, you are wrong. History starts today! And, everything happening today arises from what happened yesterday. Do not underestimate the value of what you may find here. It is a superb database of scholarly history articles back to 1972. Tips:

• Immediately switch to Advanced Search mode!
• Enter your country name on the line labeled SUBJECT TERMS. Put your other key words on the line labeled KEYWORD.
• You can use the Boolean operators, AND, OR NOT and parentheses.
• You can also use the * to truncate, election* president* refugee* or immigra* .
• If you only want things about very recent events, on the line labeled TIME PERIOD enter 1990D. Don't put in an individual year here.
• Enter the word ENGLISH on the line labeled LANGUAGE.
• Try to keep to individual words rather than phrases. If you must use a phrase, enter it in quotes, as in "foreign relations".
• If you want things about relations with the UNITED STATES, enter USA as a keyword.
• Check the boxes for the types of material you want. You probably do NOT want DISSERTATIONS!
• For the journal articles click on the hotlink Resource: Primary Catalog to open another window and automatically search the Electronic & Print Journals list to see if we have the periodical.

top

Policyfile

What to Expect
PolicyFile indexes and abstracts publications of various public policy research institutions, i.e. "think tanks", of all political persuasions back to 1990. A little over half of the publications are available in full over the WWW, and links are provided to them. To find out about these "think tanks," you can use the link within PolicyFile to get to their homepages, but you can also look them up in a fine reference book (you have to come in the library for this), Encyclopedia of Associations. NIRA's (National Institute for Research Advancement) World Directory of Think Tanks is a good place to get similar information online.

Search Tips

• Use the search grid allows you to do four different things.
  1. On the the Keyword Search line or the Keyword in Field line, you can enter logical keywords and use the Boolean AND, OR, AND NOT operators. Do not use parentheses, however.
  2. You can truncate as in Oscar with the asterisk (*) at the end of words. You can also use a ? for a single character wildcard.
  3. The FIELD options are completion date, which can be useful to get material from a certain year.
  4. You can also just search the TITLEs of reports, increasing the relevancy of your search. However, you cannot search words in the title and the completion date both!
• The Browse Subject option is very broad subjects indeed. You can select an organization to search also. From the Record display, you can jump to the homepage for the issuing organization. Unfortunately, it does not link you directly to the document. From the homepage, look for a SEARCH hotlink. Most have such a function. Then use keywords from the title of the recor to try to locate the document. Notice that only about half will have the complete document on their webpage.
• Try using Oscar first. Many of these reports are, in fact, books that we purchased.

top

Lexis–Nexis Academic

What to Expect
This is a fulltext database of articles from thousands of newspapers and magazines as well as newswires worldwide. FULLTEXT means that, unlike the two database described above, you get the entire article, not just a citation to an article. Contentwise, though, the operative word is NEWS. That is its strength. It is also very timely, updated daily. The specific year coverage varies from title to title; some going back to the early 1980's. You will not, however, find any scholarly articles here. You may find some commentary/opinion articles from U.S. magazines like American Spectator or National Review.

Search Tips

• Click on the tab that says Guided News Search. This search screen is set up in four steps. For "Select a news category", you would choose "General news" if you want to get things from the most mainstream, national papers and magazines. If you want foreign sources, choose "World News". The next step is to select sources within those categories. For "General", you probably want "Major papers." For "World News", you choose a region of the world. You cannot do the whole world at once.
• If you want to search a topic in a particular newspaper, click on the Sources tab at the very top of the search screen and find your source.
• Use Boolean operators in constructing your search statement; e.g.,
  (television or media) and elections
• Use truncation, and !, to pick up variations of words, like in elect! (to get election as well as elected, electing, elections, and so on.).
• Be sure to look at your options under Date: as well as Source: The defaults may not be what you want.
• Take a look at the the Tips Lexis–Nexis offers. They are often helpful.

top

Factiva

What to Expect
Factiva has the complete text of newspapers and magazines from all over the world. While many of these are strictly business-oriented publications, others are not. The sources included are, in fact, very similar to those in Lexis-Nexis Academic. It is primarily for newsy or opinion/commentary articles. An added feature is its currency. Items are updated constantly in the case of news wires and daily in the case of most everything else. Retrospective coverage varies from title to title, but some go back to the 1980's.

Search Tips

• Click on Source Browser.
• Roll your mouse over Publications and click on Region when it appears.
• Select a region by clicking on the name, e.g. European Countries, Former Soviet Countries.
• To select only one country, click on the + sign adjacent to the region that includes it.
• To see specific publications from a country, click on the + sign adjacent to the country name.
• Select regions, countries, or publications by highlighting them with your mouse and then clicking Add Selected Sources.
• When you are done selecting, click on the Save LIst button and then close the Source browser window.
• In the search window, then, you must select Your Current Source List to search only the sources you selected.
• Important Search Tips:
  1. Use Boolean and or not and truncation (*) in your statements.
  2. If you get too many, change your options in the Search for free-text terms in: box to Headline and Lead Paragraph. The default is to search the full text of the article, very broad!
  3. Don't forget to change the Dates to what you want.

top

World News Connection

What to Expect
These 2 work together, FBIS for 1975-1996 and WNC for 1996 forward. They are products of a U.S.-government sponsored translation service and provide an amazing collection of translated foreign mass media, magazines, newspapers, TV, and radio. They are similar in nature to Global Newsbank, but containing a lot more!
The complete World News Connection database, back to 1996, can only be accessed in the library. The reference librarian has to log you in. Have the librarian walk you through a search at that time. Be sure to Exit when you are done. Otherwise you tie up the password for the next user.

Search Tips (Two Step Process)

1. Use the web-based index (click on FBIS above to get to the list of databases) to identify texts you need..
2. Get the texts, on microfiche, in the Government Documents Department (Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and Thursday evenings until 9 p.m.).

   top