UCB Libraries

Finding books at CU generally starts with a search of Chinook, the library's catalog.

 

Sample Search:

• You can start with a simple keyword search, such as "politics and congress." But, as you can see this results in thousands of titles.
• If you click on one of the titles, such as Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics, you will see linked words under the "Subject" section.
• Subject Headings allow you to refine your results to a smaller set that should be more relevant to your topic. Looking at the record for Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics you might decide that what your really want is books on elections to the House of Representatives. You can click on "United States. Congress. House -- Elections." This link will let you see subject headings near this one as well as let you choose to see all the books with that subject heading.

For additional sample subject headings to use you can check out "Sample Subject Headings" below.

 

Want to know about New Political Science titles? Check out the page in Chinook or sign up for the RSS feed.

There are two major library catalogs to search for materials not available at CU.

Prospector

Prospector is a union library catalog of 23 libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. CU students, staff and faculty can request materials not held by CU (or currently checked out) through Prospector. To do this, click on the "Request this item" link and type in your identikey and password (these are the same username and password you use to login to CUConnect and CULearn). The materials requested through this database generally (if they are available at another library) take 3-5 business days to arrive.

WorldCat CU

WorldCat is a union library catalog of library catalogs from across the world. Requesting materials through this database is an ILL request. To learn more about ILL, check out their web page.

Below are some call number ranges that pertain to Political Science, all of them are generally found in Norlin Stacks (see this map). To find out where other subject areas are located in the libraries, consult the Call Number Location Chart.

J General legislative and executive papers
JA Political science (General)
JC Political theory
JF Political institutions and public administration
JJ Political institutions and public administration (North America)
JK Political institutions and public administration (United States)
JL Political institutions and public administration (Canada, Latin America, etc.)
JN Political institutions and public administration (Europe)
JQ Political institutions and public administration (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.)
JS Local government. Municipal government
JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
JZ International relations

Below are some selected subject headings for finding books in Political Science. Clicking on the subject headings will take you to the browse list in Chinook, the CU library catalog.

United States

• United States Politics and Government
• United States Congress
• Elections United States
• United States Foreign Relations

International Relations

• United States Foreign Relations Europe (change the United States and/or Europe to see relations between other countries)
• International Relations
• Bolivia Politics and Government (replace Bolivia with the name of the country you are interested in)

Find Articles and More

This is the main site to use to find all the databases available at CU. There are a few categories that you may be most interested in:

• Political Science - General
• Political Science - U.S.
• Political Science - Other Countries/Non-U.S.
• Political Science - Polling and Voting
• Political Science - Reference
• Political Science - News
• Political Science - Legal
• Political Science - Statistics

Reference/Starting Resources

• CQ Electronic Library CU
  CQ Electronic Library is a collection of resources put out by CQ Press. While this is not a collection of peer-reviewed articles, it is a great reference source for articles on politics in the United States. It also has voting records and election results for presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections.
• ABC-Clio eBook Collection CU
  This is a collection of reference sources on topics ranging from environmental issues to 19th Century France. This is a great place to go when you are trying to get an overview of a topic.

Indexes of Political Science Research

• PAIS CU
  PAIS, or the Public Affairs Information Service, has been indexing global policy issues since 1915. This database contains abstracts of articles, books, working papers and much more. This database does not contain full-text articles, but using Find it CU you should be able to find copies of the majority of the resources in this database. (Problems using Find it at CU? Check out the How Do I guide.)
• International Political Science Abstracts CU
  International Political Science Abstracts indexes periodicals from all over the world. Unlike PAIS, this database only contains abstracts of articles. Again since this is an index of materials, you will need to use Find it at CU to discover if we have a copy in our collection.

Want to access these databases from off-campus? Check out the off-campus guide for help.

Many of our journals have been sent off site to a location called PASCAL. If you want a copy of an article from one of these journals there are two options.

Option 1: Get a Copy Electronically

1. Get your citation. You may have a citation to the article in a bibliography or maybe you found it using a database, either way will work.
2. Go to ILLiad (you will need to login using your identikey and password, the same one you use to login to CUConnect and CULearn).
3. Click on "Article (delivered electronically)" under "New Requests."
4. Type in all the citation information you can here. The more you include the better, but don't worry if you can't fill in all the fields. Only the ones with the asterisks are required.
5. Click "Submit Request" at the bottom.
6. You can now logout of ILLiad, you will get an email when your article has been scanned.
7. There will be a link in your email to ILLiad, after you login click on "Electronically Received Articles" under "View."
8. This whole process should only take 1 business day.

Option 2: Get the Journal at the Library

1. Get your citation. You may have a citation to the article in a bibliography or maybe you found it using a database, either way will work.
2. Go to Chinook and type in the Journal title (if you are looking at a bibliographic citation this is generally the title in italics).
3. Choose the record with title that does not have [electronic resource] next to it.
4. At the top of the page click on the "REQUEST IT!" button or click "Request it" under the title in the main screen.
5. Login using your identikey and password and choose a pickup location.
6. Choose the volume you want. (At this time you can only choose one volume at a time, if you need to recall a large set of volumes, please contact Circulation for assistance.)
7. Hit the "Request Selected Item" button.
8. You will get an email when your volume arrives, which should be within 1 business day.

There are many primary sources available in the Libraries, including paper documents such as books, pamphlets, broadsides, and manuscripts, as well as electronic and microform collections. You can locate relevant items by searching in Chinook, the library catalog.

Tips for Searching Chinook

• Do a keyword search on your topic, remember to think of synonyms for your search terms. For example, labor or work or employment. You can even try all these words at once, for example, check out this search in Chinook for "(labor or work or employment) and World War and narratives," to see narratives on work during the World Wars.
  Note: British spelling is used in many of the international titles in English. So if you are looking for international materials, keep those spelling differences in mind. E.g. labor is labour.
• As the above search demonstrated, adding special subject terms that identify primary materials: sources (more general), correspondence, diaries, early works, narratives, pamphlets, speeches, letters, documents, etc. can help narrow down your result set.
• You can also try an author search on a particular figure during the time period you are studying.
• Don't forget to follow those "Subject" links in the full records for a title for more resources on that topic.

To learn how to find a newspaper article on your topic, check out this guide to finding newspapers.

 

Finding Historical Databases

Check out these collections of the major databases containing primary sources:

• History -- US and Canada, Primary Sources
  
• History -- Europe, Primary Sources
  
• History, Other World Areas, Primary Sources
  

The CU-Boulder library contains government resources from the local to international level. While many of these resources can be found using Chinook, the library catalog, the historical material is generally uncataloged. There are a number of resources to find these materials and if you don't find what you are looking for here, send an email or call 303-492-8834 for assistance finding material.

Indexes to Historic Material

• Monthly Catalog of US Government Publications CU
  This is an index to publications from the United States government from 1895-1976. You will find call numbers on the records for the majority of the titles in this database and they will match the call numbers of the piece in the library stacks. The materials published after this date should all be in the catalog.
• AccessUN CU
  This is an index to the publications of the United Nations from its foundation to the present. The call numbers you find on the records in this catalog are the same ones that will be on the materials in the library stacks.

Historical Collections (a small selection)

• US Congressional Serial Set CU
  The Serial Set is a collection of the reports and documents of Congress. In the early days of the United States it was also the place many reports and documents of Executive Branch agencies were printed. When the digitization is complete this database will contain 13,800 volumes with over 11 million pages.
• Congressional CU
  This database has indexes and full-text access to additional Congressional materials, such hearings, committee prints, Congressional Research Service Reports, and the Congressional Record. The index of these materials goes back to 1789 (the first congress).