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Political Science - American Government: Find a Topic

Find a Topic by Browsing

Using Databases to Browse Topics

The following databases all let you start with broad categories and then choose more specific ones, so you just need a general idea of what you are interested in to get started!

Using News Sites to Browse Topics

You can also use a news sites to browse current events and hot topics that you may be interested in

Use our campus subscription to the New York Times and explore their news categories such as Politics, World News, US News, etc. to see what interests you:

Use a news aggregator (a site that brings together news from various sources, usually organizing them in categories that are easy to skim):

Explore Topics with Reference Books

Using Reference Books to Explore Topics

Reference sources are a great place to explore topics because they provide general information about MANY subjects.

Reference sources:

  • Quickly provide the basic facts of a topic to see if it is something you want to research further
  • Help you start learning vocabulary specific to a topic for more advanced searching later
  • Are NOT peer-reviewed resources

 

Use the tabs to explore our three main reference databases: Credo, Oxford and Gale

  • At the top of each tab is a link to the home page of the database where you can search across all books in that database
  • There are also examples of some specific books on topics related to American government with links to go directly to that title
    • You can browse the table of contents for potential topics of interest
    • You can use the "search within this title" feature 

Examples of some books you can find here: