REFERENCE BOOKS AND WEBSITES
OTHER WEBSITES: Governments and International Organizations
OTHER WEBSITES: Metasites
International Relations & Comparative Politics Databases
General / Interdisciplinary Databases
Encompass Search finds information by searching through a massive collection of books, scholarly journals, newspapers and magazines, dissertations, conference proceedings, music, video, maps, and more.
To find only books, use the Books limit on the left sidebar of your search results page. Many items will be in Trexler Library; note the call number and status of the item to check its location and availability. For items not in Trexler Library, use the Interlibrary Loan to request a copy from another library.
Muhlenberg College receives about 30% of all materials published by the Federal Government. These items cover a wide range of subject areas--from legal materials and the records of Congress to health and education information and in-depth research conducted by the Smithsonian. All of the government documents that we receive have records within Encompass.
Legal Information Institute (Cornell University Law School)
"The LII collection of world legal materials gathers, country by country, continent by continent, the Internet-accessible sources of the constitutions, statutes, judicial opinions, and related legal material from around the globe (excluding the U.S. material held in the LII's other collections). It also holds resources and document collections of International law. "
LexisNexis Academic
A database of popular newspapers, magazines, and broadcast transcripts, as well as business publications, legal materials, and more. To access federal and state cases, federal statutes and regulations, international cases, etc., use the "search by content type" area in the upper right corner above the search box. Full text is linked directly in the database.
ProQuest Congressional
Information on the U.S. legislature, including full text of bills from 1989 on, public laws from 1988 on, committee reports from 1990 on, House and Senate documents from 1995 on, Congressional Record from 1985 on, Federal Register from 1980 on, and more government information.
For information on why to cite your sources and how to avoid plagiarism, see the Get Started with Library Research: Cite Sources guide.
For help using Chicago style, consult the following resources:
For help with Zotero, a "free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources."
To get the full text of an article, consider the following options:
- If you are in Encompass Search or a library database, look for "Check for Full Text buttons," "Access Online," or "Check eResources" buttons. These buttons will take you the full text of the article or tell you that the full text cannot be found. If the full text is not available from Trexler Library, look for buttons to request the item from another library via interlibrary loan. Or go directly to the interlibrary loan request forms.
- If you have citation information for the article (i.e., journal title, article title, publication year, etc.), type the information about your article in Encompass Search on the library website. If the library subscribes to the full text, you will be directed to the article (see first bullet above). If not, you can request a copy of the article via interlibrary loan.
- If Trexler Library does not have access to the full text of the article, search Google Scholar by article title to see if the author has made a copy freely available online. If not, you can request a copy of the article via interlibrary loan.
