Political Science 101

Professor Youde
September 2006

This guide is to aid you in getting started with your research projects. I’ll be meeting with your class next Wednesday and will go over some of these things, and perhaps others, in more detail. You can also come to that session with any questions you’ve come up with while you’ve worked on your project. Feel free to stop by my office (behind the reference) desk, or talk to another reference librarian (at the reference desk!) if you have questions between now and then. You can also email me: stuhrr.

Blogs and Blogging

Here are a few current articles that look at Blogs and blogging from different points of view. The New Yorker magazine is not a scholarly “peer reviewed” journal, but is known for the investigative journalism that it publishes. The other sources are what we call scholarly sources. This means, very generally speaking, that some level of editing and review has been done to make sure that the author has the right credentials, is knowledgeable about the subject and other scholars who have written in the area, and that the information the author presents is verifiable. For more information on the defining scholarly and popular literature please go to the libraries' instruction guide on this topic: http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/scholarlypopular.html

For more on evaluating Web and print resources go to our guide for evaluating sources: http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/InstructionGuides/evaluation1.html

Lehman, Nicholas. “Amateur Hour.” New Yorker 82.24 (2006): 44-49
Lehman looks at the blog as journalism. You can link to this article through Academic Search Premier. (Follow this link or go through our Databases and Index page)

Pew/Internet study on the state of blogging January 2005, last visited 9/8/06.
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp

from the study: Readership of political blogs

Just under one-in-ten internet users (9%) said they regularly or sometimes read political blogs during the campaign such as the Daily Kos or TalkingPoints Memo or Instapundit: 4% said they did so regularly and 5% said they did so sometimes.
Those who were heavily involved with the campaign online by getting news and information, using email to exchange arguments and mobilize others, and connecting to campaign events, were more likely than others to read political blogs. It was also relatively popular with younger internet users and with broadband users.
Kerry voters were a bit more likely than Bush voters to be political blog readers.

Lloyd, John. “The Epiphany of Joe Trippi.” The Political Quarterly 76. 1 (2005): 33-45.
I think this link will work: http://tinyurl.com/geudz

On the future of newspapers

Ricchiardi, Sherry. “Online Opposition: In the Face of the King's Crackdown on the News Media, Nepal's Journalists are Fighting Back Via the Internet.”

American Journalism Review 28.2 (2006): 60
On the use of the internet by dissidents. Article available through Literature Resource Center at this link

Academic Online sources for finding out about candidates and elections

Most of these are commercial resources—that is, the libraries pay a subscription fee to get them.

CQs Voting and Elections Colleciton
http://library.cqpress.com/elections/

For Gubernatorial candidates
Voters and demographics
State and National elections

For news on regional and national elections:
Access World News: America’s Newspapers and America’s Magazines
http://infoweb.newsbank.com

This provides access to hundreds of regional newspapers from around the country (and the world). Limit your search to the past six months or whatever time frame is appropriate. Choose the advance search so that you can limit a search term, such as “elections” to the lead paragraph.

Lexis-Nexis.Com
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/cis

Both Lexis-Nexis and Access World News include full text of The New York Times.
You might also want to use the archive search at the online New York Times, 1981-present. www.nytimes.com.
We have the printed edition of the NY Times for the most recent three months, and then back to 1851 on microfilm.

Access World News has the NY Times online back to about 2000, and Lexis Nexis has abstracts or summaries of the articles indexed back to 1969, and full text (complete articles) of the NY Times articles back to 1980.

Americas Magazines (in the same collection as America’s Newspapers) is just a small selection of popular titles but includes Time, Newsweek, U.S. World & News Report, Foreign Affairs.

Academic Search Premier

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=aph

Indexes many scholarly and popular journals and magazines, either in full text or with abstract and citation. Among several thousand indexed are: The Nation, National Review, New Republic, Atlantic, American Spectator, The Economist, CongressDaily, Harper’s Magazine,
CQ Weekly.

CQ Weekly (Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report)
We subscribe to this directly online:
http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/
With access to articles back to 1983.

Publicly Available Web sites (free to any and all):

Project Vote Smart
http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm
A good place to find all the candidates running in both national and local elections. Candidates are also expected to provide position statements. (Although a quick look through some of our Iowa candidates shows that not many of them do). You can check voting records for incumbents, find speeches, and examine campaign financing.

National Election Studies (NES)
Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior. Most statistics are current as of 2004.
http://www.umich.edu/~nes/nesguide/nesguide.htm

Politics1.com
http://www.politics1.com/
“The Ultimate Guide to U.S. Politics and Elections . . . since 1997”
This serves as a directory to candidates: state and national, a news blog(!) and provides links to candidate Web sites, local sources of news—radio, television, newspapers, and the Political Blog Roll including the Political State Report for news on national and state elections http://www.polstate.com/.

Documents in the News: Current Events Research
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/docnewsnew.html

See also our own Hot Docs site at http://www.lib.grin.edu/research/hottopics.html

Poly-Cy, Internet for Political Science
http://pslab11.polsci.wvu.edu/PolyCy/
“ . . . a directory of Web sites on political science. Topics include American politics, comparative politics, governments, international relations, teaching, public policy, judicial politics, and more.” Poly-Cy says that Blogs are “the future of information.”

State and Local Government on the Net
http://www.statelocalgov.net

(Mostly) Print resources (a few examples):

CQ Researcher
Ref H35 .C672
Takes timely subjects and presents both sides of the issue with bibliographical references for further research.

Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Almanac
Ref JK1 .C66
Earlier volumes in stacks, most recent volume in reference. Covers activity in the two houses of Congress during the previous years.

America Votes (1956-)
Ref. JK 1967 .A8
Voting statistics for national and statewide elections. Much of this is duplicated in the online CQ Voting and Elections Collection. (Go to the libraries’ databases and indexes page, click on C, and then CQ . . . )

American National Election Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952-1986-
Ref. JK 1967 .M54 1989

Prepared by Rebecca Stuhr, September 2006. Grinnell College Libraries