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POSC 4380: European Parliamentary Governments

This course is a survey of the organization, procedures and problems of the governments and nations of Europe. This course is in the course catalog as Politics of Western and Central Europe.

Discover Search

Discover Search Explained

Simultaneously searches dozens of our databases, including Web of Science and ebook collection, plus the library catalog. Note:

  • Watch dates on sources carefully - use limiters if needed.
  • Choices to refine search results are to the right of the results list
  • May select Scholarly (Peer reviewed) journals. This is at the publication level - evaluate the item you intend to use.
  • Full text often available by clicking link under "View It" on item record.
  • If not available in print or electronically, use Interlibrary Loan.

Core Resources

Research Process

The research process can look different for everyone, and may look different from project to project, but most will have a few common features:

  1. Begin with a question you want answered. What are you most interested in learning?
  2. Decide what type of information you need: do you need newspapers, books, or scholarly articles?
  3. Gather and evaluate information: are your sources current, reliable, applicable, and unbiased?
  4. Is your question answered? Do you need more (or different) information? Do you need to change your question?
  5. Repeat 1-4 until you're ready to use the information: make a decision, write a paper, present, etc.

Don't forget to ask a librarian for help!

     

Developing Keywords

Make a research question from your topic.

  • For example: "What is currently being done to help conserve the endangered Giant Panda population?"
    • Keywords: conserve and Giant Panda

Think of related words.

  • Conserve: conservation, preservation, protection
  • Giant Panda: panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca (scientific name).

Get searching!

Search Strategies

Boolean Operators are words and symbols that group keywords in specific ways.

  • Group keywords together with quotation marks to search as an exact phrase. Example: “Alfred Hitchcock”
  • Use AND to combine several keywords or phrases. Example: “opening credits”  AND typography
  • Use OR to search for information about one term, and also articles about another term. Example: film OR cinema
  • Use the asterisk * if you want to search multiple iterations of a keyword. Example: sequenc* = sequence, sequences, sequencing