Political Science 230: Home

Important things to know about using Google Scholar:

1. Use the Advanced Search feature for a more focused results list.
2. Stick with keywords and not full sentences or questions.
3. Understand that you may hit paywalls both on and off campus. But it may be more likely off campus.
4. Enable linking to WCU's resources.  Do this by going to the Settings men and setting your Library Links to Western Carolina University - FullText@WesternCarolinaU.
5. No vetting of resources.

Method 1:  Using the "Journals" search box on Hunter Library's main page or below. 

Method 2:  Doing the whole Google thing.

MOST IMPORTANT TIP:

Search tools are most effective with keywords or phrases, not entire research questions or sentences.  So:

Ways of decreasing hurdles and increasing registration rates for college students using online voter registration systems.  NO!

Decrease hurdles AND registration rate AND college students AND online voter registration  YES!

Other fairly important tips:

• Use the advanced search feature for a more focused results list.
• Be flexible with keywords - try synonyms or related terms.
• Phrases go in quotation marks:  "North Carolina" or "college students" 
• Use and/or/not (boolean searching) to combine words/phrases. 
  • AND - combines two or more words and makes your search NARROWER
  • OR - tell tells the tool "this term OR that term" and makes your search BROADER
  • NOT - tells the tool to ignore any results with that term, even if that result has the keyword/phrase you want.  This will make your search NARROWER

Basically:  Experts reviewing other experts.  Think of it as a form of quality control.

Blind peer review:  No one knows who is who.

Editorial review:  Editor(s) get to decide.

HOW CAN YOU TELL?

Clues:  Authors, affiliations, citations (2 types:  in text and footnotes/citation list).

Definitive:  Journal information from publisher, journal information in databases, Ulrich's.