I202: Introduction to Social Informatics
Finding Government Information
Government Documents
Government Information and Kent Cooper Services Department
Government Information and Kent Cooper Services offers many local, state, and federal resources. Not finding what you want? Email a government documents librarian for help!
IUB receives about 89% 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. Most of the government documents that we receive have records in IUCAT.
- GPO Access
The Government Printing Office provides free online access to thousands of documents from the Federal Government.
Google U.S. Government Search Engine
Google's search tool for state and federal webpages.
Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine (Google Custom Search)
"Think Tank" or Research Institute Directories
The National Science Foundation, a government agency devoted to research in the sciences, offers a directory of all federally funded research and development institutes.
Foreign Policy Research Institute
The Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research institute, offers a directory of Security and International Affairs Think Tanks.
Finding Articles
General & Interdisciplinary Databases
Academic Search (EBSCO)
Provides fulltext coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journals for almost every academic discipline. Choose the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals to limit just to those.- Google Scholar
Special version of Google's index to scholarly content on the web. Connects to full-text resources available to IU users. Requires sign-on for off-campus use.
Informatics Databases
ACM Digital Library
Access to full-text articles from ACM periodicals and conference proceedings, plus the ACM Guide to Computing Literature, a bibliographic database to computing literature worldwide.- Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)
LISTA indexes over 600 periodicals and includes content on librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more. Coverage: mid-1960s to present. - IngentaConnect
An index to articles published in more than 29,000 English language journals covering all subjects. After finding an article in this database, be sure to check IUCAT to see if the library subscribes to the journal.
Social Science Databases
ERIC (EBSCO)
Covers over 750 periodicals and nearly a half a million documents. Fulltext documents since 1993. Coverage: 1966-- Sociological Abstracts
Abstracts to journal articles and citations to book reviews in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Coverage: 1952- - Social Services Abstracts
Coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, social welfare, social policy, and community development. Coverage: 1980- present
Finding Newspaper Articles
Links to the most prominent national newspapers.
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Click on the News tab to find newspapers. Check the date before you hit search since the default is the past three months.
Finding Books
Search IUCAT to find out what books, government publications, journals, videos, etc. the library owns.
Hint: Limit your search to: "Blmgtn - All Bloomington Libraries" to only find items that are on this campus.
Hint: Use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT), and Truncation Symbols ($) to construct your searches.
Hint: When you find a really good title, look at the Subject Headings for that book. Use these in a new search.
Evaluation
How do you tell if a source is a good source for information? Find more information here.
Citing Your Sources
No matter where your information comes from, you always need to cite your sources. Guides to the most frequently used citation styles (APA, MLA and Chicago) have been compiled here.
APA: Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th ed. Washington, DC: APA, 2001.
BF76.7 .P83 2001 Research Coll. - Reference Desk, and Undergraduate Services - Reference
- MLA: Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th ed. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003
LB2369 .G53 2003 Research Coll. - Reference Desk, and Undergraduate Services - Reference - Chicago: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003
Z253 .U69 2003 Research Coll. - Reference Desk, and Undergraduate Services - Reference
Chicago Manual of Style Online: The electronic version of the classic guide to documentary style.
Questions?
Ask a librarian anytime! If you are in the library, stop by the reference desk. We're happy to help you at any stage of the research process!
