Background Information

Online:

CQ Press Electronic Library - resources include CQ Researcher, Encyclopedia of the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court Yearbook, among others.

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd. ed)
(also in print)

Oxford Reference Online: Law

Oxford Reference Online: Social Sciences

Oxford Handbook of Political Science

News Resources

Associated Press Images Collection is a searchable database of over 700,000 Associated Press photographs and other graphics from the 1840s to the present.

ABI Inform, in the ProQuest Business Premium Collection, provides summaries and citations from over 1000 business sources, with full text available for more than half of these, including the Wall Street Journal.

Alt-Press Watch is a full text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the alternative and independent press covering a broad range of subjects.

ClimateWire is a daily environmental newswire produced by Environment and Energy Publishing, LLC.

CQ Magazine reports on the activities of the United States Congress, including: a complete wrap-up of news on Congress, the status of bills in play, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, committee and floor activity, debates, and all roll-call votes.

Ethnic NewsWatch is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish), full text database publications of the ethnic, minority and native press in the U.S.

Factiva is a database of over 8,000 business and news publications, most in full text.

Hotline, National Journal’s daily briefing on U.S. politics, provides bipartisan reporting with coverage from over 2,500 media sources.

Nexis Uni provides access to thousands of news sources published in the U.S. and in other countries.

National Journal’s Policy Central is a collection of resources on U.S. politics and policy, including the Hotline, a daily briefing on U.S. politics, Poll Track and Ad Spotlight.

New York Times (1851-2015) (Proquest Historical Newspapers)

Politico Pro: database for "legislative and regulatory insights, data tools and resources for policy research."

Finding Journal Articles on American Government & Politics

The Harvard Library subscribes to hundreds of journal indexes and databases. One way to find which resources cover a particular field is to search by subject in HOLLIS Databases.

Criminal Justice Abstracts provides comprehensive coverage of U.S. and international criminal justice literature.

HeinOnline is a digital collection of legal materials organized into several modules which are listed on the HeinOnline Welcome screen. View a module by clicking its link. Click Search to view a module's search screen or locate a document by citation using a module's Quick Link template. HeinOnline modules may be browsed and searched.

JSTOR contains full-text of core journals in the fields of Political Science and Public Policy from the first volume of the journals up to the most recent 2 to 5 years.

LegalTrac indexes the contents of nearly 1000 legal periodicals, including academic law journals, bar association publications, and legal newspapers. It also provides citations to law-related articles from business and general interest titles. LegalTrac covers English-language publications from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the U.K.

ProQuest Government Periodicals Index covers articles in approximately 170 current federal publications. It includes retrospective coverage through 1988 of over 70 additional federal publications that have major research, reference or general interest value.

Military and Government Collection offers current news and scholarship pertaining to all branches of the military.

Policy File provides abstracts and full text of domestic and international public policy reports and studies are published by think tanks, university research programs, organizations including the OECD, World Bank, the Rand Corporation,

Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS) indexes the public and social policy literature of public administration, political science, economics, finance, international relations, law, and health care.

WorldWide Political Science Abstracts indexes the journal literature in political science and its related fields, including international relations, law, and public administration and policy.

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Government Documents and Data Resources

Sample Resources:

CQ Press Electronic Library

LexisNexis State Capital provides access to the legislation and administrative law of all 50 states. Consult this resource to retrieve: the full text of bills, current state statutory codes and constitutions, adopted regulations as available in current state administrative codes.

ProQuest Statistical Insight indexes and abstracts the statistical content of selected United States government publications (ASI, 1973--), state government publications, business and association publications (SRI, 1980-), and international inter-governmental sources (IIS). Some full-text is available electronically (GIF, PDF, CSV, Excel). All publications are available in microfiche in Research Services in Lamont, Level B.


Research Guides:

Economic Data, U.S.

Legislative Histories

Public Opinion Data Resources

State and Local Government Information, U.S.

U.S. Census Data Resources

U.S. Congressional Publications

U.S. Presidential Documents

Finding Books

Finding Books at Harvard

For tips on using Harvard's library catalog, HOLLIS, see the HOLLIS User Guide.

Finding Books Beyond Harvard

  • For items that Harvard doesn't own, or that are currently checked out by other borrowers, you can request them through the Borrow Direct network. If one of the libraries in this network has the item, you should receive it within 4 business days. If it’s not available through Borrow Direct, you can submit an Interlibrary Loan request to borrow it from a broader network of libraries, which takes an average of 2 weeks. Borrow Direct and Interlibrary Loan both require logging in with your Harvard Key.
  • If you want to recommend that Harvard acquire a book or electronic resource, you can submit a Purchase Request.