POLS3761: Senior Seminar in Political Theory
 Library Research Guide
 Fall 2009
Instructor: Ayten Gündoğdu
Librarian: Lois Coleman
US Supreme Court Building
CC License. Photo: UpstateNYer

For help with your research, visit the reference desk (hours) on the second floor of Barnard Library, or contact a Barnard reference librarian:
       Phone: 212-854-3953
       Chat: IM BarnardReference
       E-mail: refdesk@barnard.edu
Request a one-on-one consultation with a Barnard librarian if you have an in-depth research need.

This guide is intended as a starting point in your research; the databases and reference tools listed here are just a selective list.
Class handout 

Finding Books and Journals
  • Use CLIO to find books, journals (but not articles in journals), links to online journals, and other materials in the Barnard and Columbia libraries, including Union Theological Seminary and the Health Sciences Library.
  • Note that although Barnard Library is in Lehman Hall, CLIO location Lehman means the Social Sciences library.
  • For a Keyword search, use quotes for a phrase, and ? for truncation (to find variant endings of a word).
  • For a complex search, use Boolean Keyword searching: AND finds records which have all the search terms you entered; OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.  Use parentheses to group terms. Help page on Boolean searching
  • For a known item, search by Title, Author, standardized Library of Congress Subject, ISBN, etc.
  • To find primary sources, use these keywords in your search: ARCHIVES, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, CORRESPONDENCE, DIARIES, INTERVIEWS, SOURCES.
Other Libraries:
  Borrowing privileges with Columbia ID:
  • Teachers College Library: EDUCAT 
  • Columbia Law Library: Pegasus
    •
  Access with Columbia ID (but no borrowing privileges):
  • Jewish Theological Seminary: Catalog
  • New York University: BobCat 
    •
Selected Reference Works
Title Barnard Reference Call Number
Encyclopedia of the stateless nations: ethnic and national groups around the world D860 .M56 2002
The women’s movement today: an encyclopedia of third-wave feminism HQ1115 .W644 2006
Terrorism: a documentary and reference guide HV6432 .B87 2005
The human rights encyclopedia JC571 .L523 2001
America votes JK1967 .A8
A statistical history of the American electorate JK1967 .R87 2001
Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia JV22 .C59 2003
Encyclopedia of education LB15 .E47 2003
African American education: a reference handbook LC2741 .J33 2001
A dictionary of human rights K3239.3 .R67 2004g
Encyclopedia of the American constitution KF4548 .E53 2000
Landmark decisions of the United States Supreme Court KF4549 .F56 2003
Immigration and the law: a dictionary KF4817 .H56 1999
The dictionary of art N31 .D5 1996 and online
Art in world history N5300 .H674 2004
The almanac of American politics online
CQ Electronic Library online
 
Requesting Books and Articles
  • Use BorrowDirect to request a book from one of our partner libraries if it is not available at Columbia or is checked out (takes a few days).
  • Use Interlibrary Loan to request books and articles from libraries all over the world (can take up to a few weeks)
Finding Articles and Primary Materials

Finding articles using an index or database is a two-step process:
1.  Find citations to relevant articles;
2.  Find the articles themselves.  Click on elinkto go to the online version if it exists; or search CLIO using the journal title to find out which library has a print copy.

Selected Databases
 These are all on the Databases list on the Barnard Library homepage or the Columbia Libraries page. There are many other databases that can also be useful. For a full list, select Law, Politics & Government on the Databases page.
For further help, ask at the Reference Desk on the second floor of the library.
 

Subject specific databases:
General and multidisciplinary databases:
Finding Data and Primary Source Materials:

Find Articles

Search the following resources simultaneously:

  • International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
  • International Political Science Abstracts
  • ProQuest
  • Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

 
 Barnard Library Subject Guides

Columbia Subject Guides

 

RefWorks and EndNote
Bibliographic software allows you to store your references conveniently, and cite them in papers and bibliographies using any citation style you choose.  See the guide RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero: Bibliographic software at Barnard and Columbia.

Last Modified 9/23/09
Lois Coleman
Reference Librarian

 
© 2009 Barnard College Library, Lehman Hall, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 | 212-854-3846