Pols 350 Group and Minority Politics

Paper Research Resources

Research resources appropriate for Paper #1 Interest Group Analysis and Paper #2 Interest Group Strategies and Tactics include books, articles, and web sites.  The following links should help get you started.    

Books

The McIntyre Library Voyager Catalog allows you to search for books in a number of ways.  If you know the book title or author, you may search on that.  Most of you, however, need to do a general search for books on the paper topic.  The Command Keyword or the Keyword Search Builder are two familiar keyword search tools for books available at UWEC.  You can obtain books not held locally with an Interlibrary Loan or a Universal Borrowing request.   (Note it may take a few weeks for the library to receive a copy through Interlibrary Loan).

An informative reference on certain interest groups is Public Interest Group Profiles, 2004-2005, located in the McIntyre Library Reference Collection (JK 1118.P79).  This source provides vital information such as:  assessments of group effectiveness, group political orientation, contact information, mission statements, funding sources, leadership and membership information, and methods of advocacy.

Articles

There are several searchable on-line databases available to you through the McIntyre Library.  A good place to start is with the "Core & More: Resources By Discipline" web page for Political Science.  The Social Sciences Full Text (Wilson Web) and Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) allow you to do keyword searches for articles in academic journals and magazines with a political or policy bent.  The in-depth coverage of controversial issues by CQ Researcher On-Line may be helpful as well.  There are several Newspaper Databases available for you to search for articles.  The best bets are Lexis-Nexis Academic and ProQuest.  Congressional Quarterly Weekly Reports (JK1.C15), a great source for coverage of group involvement in policy fights, is available in the McIntyre Library's Reference Collection for recent issues and the stacks for older issues, with a semi-annual index to help you locate articles by topic.  Most of the articles from these sources are available in full text on-line.  To locate articles that are not on-line you will need to search the McIntyre Library Voyager Catalog for the journal availability or do an Interlibrary Loan request if the journal is not in the UWEC collection. 

Web Sites

The course Interest Groups Links page provides several sources for links to interests group web sites and the UWEC Internet Search page links to a the major search engines.  A word of warning is necessary when using web sites for research papers.  Consult the Selecting and Using Internet Search Tools for more instruction.   

 

Professor Rodd Freitag Schneider 200E Phone: (715) 836-5044 Fax: (715) 836-2944 Updated: February 5, 2008