Guides: POSC 104: American People and Politics: Home

Welcome to the library guide for POSC 104! On this guide, you will find information to help you explore the complex world of American politics. If you ever have any questions, need help using a library or online resource, or want personalized assistance researching a topic, please reach out to me directly through email (nicholas.dandrea@pepperdine.edu) or by scheduling an appointment.

Research Starting Points

The following two resources are great places to get solid, well-researched information on topics of interest. They're especially great if you're just starting to learn about something.

CQ Researcher

Provides professionally fact-checked and footnoted reports on the most current and controversial issues of the day.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context

Information on social issues including articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, interactive maps, videos, and streaming audio.

The following links are for two premier American newspapers. You can create an account and read both papers completely free using your Pepperdine information. These are great for learning about many recent events in America and beyond.

New York Times (NYTimes.com)

**Access requires logging in with a Pepperdine email on the NY Times homepage. Find step-by-step log-in instructions on the access guide to log in. **
Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com)

**Access requires logging in with a WSJ.com account. Register using your Pepperdine email address.** Get unlimited access to WSJ.com, WSJ mobile apps, curated newsletters and podcasts.

Academic Articles & Books

This resource is going to be useful for looking into academic sources, both books and articles.

Oxford Academic Online
Oxford University Press's academic research platform, providing access to books and journals. To limit to items available to Pepperdine patrons, select "All content I have access to" under "Availability"

These two databases will give you access to some of the top academic journals in American political research and more.

Cambridge Journals Online

The Cambridge University Press currently publishes 370 peer-reviewed academic journals containing the latest research from a wide range of subject areas. Access is provided to volumes from 2000-2016.
Wiley Online Library

Multidisciplinary collection of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science, and the humanities.

Below you'll be able to search for books at Pepperdine Libraries and beyond. Here are some useful tips for searching our library:

Use the filters to improve your results. I recommend using the library filter (shows you what we have) and the format filter (choose between ebooks, print books, articles, etc).
Use quotation marks around phrases to enhance your results. For example "Pepperdine University" will produce only results that contain those two words together and in that order
Use TI: before your search words to search just the titles of things and use AU: before an author's name to see their works

Need a book or article we don't own? Use our interlibrary loan service!

Government Information

The following links will help you begin looking for information from and about our federal government.

USA.gov
Official website for government services and information.
GovInfo
Provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
The Constitution Annotated (CONAN)
Provides a legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution based on a comprehensive review of Supreme Court case law and, where relevant, historical practices that have defined the text of the Constitution.