Political Science Subject Guide 

Jump-start your bibliography

Search your topic in the following reference resources to find articles with robust bibliographies - a reliable method for laying the foundation of your secondary literature review.

• Blackwell Reference Online
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• Oxford Reference Online
• Historical Statistics of the United States - not just a wealth of statistical tables, but also analytical articles with extensive lists of references.

Journal articles and more

Use the resources and approaches described here to find journal articles, working papers, conference proceedings, book chapters, government publications, and other materials.

Books and more

To cast a wide net, search three catalogs together:
Orbis (Yale Library catalog), MORRIS (Yale Law Library catalog) and WorldCat (collections of more than 10,000 libraries).

It's just what I need...but it's not at Yale (or it's checked out)

• Try Borrow Direct and you may have the book you need in four business days.
• Use Interlibrary Loan for books not available through Borrow Direct and for journal articles and other materials.

Numeric data

See: Data and statistics in the social sciences (guide compiled by Stefan Kramer, Yale's social science data librarian)

Government and intergovernmental organization documents

Many, but not all, government and IGO documents are cataloged in Orbis (Yale library catalog) and/or MORRIS (Yale Law Library catalog).

Search them together:

See also the guides to:

• United States federal government documents
• United Nations documents
• European Union documents
• Canadian federal government documents
• Food and Agriculture Organization documents
• British government publications
• International Collections at Yale Library (Africa, East Asia, Judaica, Latin America, Near East, Slavic and East Europe, South and Southeast Asia, Western Europe)

News resources

Yale Library subscribes to several databases that cover a wide range of news sources from around the world.

Other primary sources

Extensive guide to primary sources at Yale University: manuscripts, archives, maps, and other special collections.

An individual consultation with Julie Linden, the librarian for political science. The resources listed here for locating secondary and primary sources are great starting points, but can't lead you to all the resources you can access via Yale Library and beyond. Contact Julie to set up a consultation session and she can advise on resources that are relevant to your particular topic.

See also: Yale Library's complete list of subject specialists