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Political Science/Geography

A Users' guide for Basic Political Science/Geography Resources

Definitions to Remember

Secondary Source:   An Interpretation by an author related to an event, individual or issue under study.  Most secondary sources in a Library will be books or journal articles.

Scholarly Journal Article:  Piece of work much shorter than a book, based on research and includes documentation of all sources.

Peer-reviewed Article:   A Scholarly journal article which is evaluated and approved by experts in the field prior to publication.  May also be called a "Refereed" or "Juried" article.

Journal Articles

Journals are a great source of information and often provide the most current detailed information on a subject.  Often a journal article will lead an author to expand it into a book.  Like books any scholarly journal article will have threads which lead you to additional information.  These threads are called notes, and take the form of footnotes at the bottom of each page, or endnotes at the conclusion of the article.  The ability to follow those threads is IMPORTANT in research.

IMPORTANT!!! :  Not all online databases are completely full-text!  In fact most are not. 

You WILL need to know how to find a journal article once you have a non full-text citation in a database.  Check first our ONLINE CATALOG for any Library holdings.  Depending upon that result, you may decide to do an INTERLIBRARY LOAN.  This is an easy process, and with present technology many articles are delivered right to your desk top.

Databases

Access to databases which Washburn University purchases will require your WIN.

Finding Journals and Interlibrary Loan

Use these sources to find whether Mabee Library has holdings/access to a cited journal, OR use the link below to do an INTERLIBRARY LOAN. [Check Mabee Library holdings BEFORE completing the loan form.]

Access to databases which Washburn University purchases will require your WIN.