Recommended Public Policy Web Sites
Find organizations, think tanks, and advocacy groups concerned with your issue by going to at least one of the following sites and looking up your topic:
Political Advocacy Groups
SpeakOut.com Issues Page
Public Agenda Online
Links to Lobby and Advocacy Groups
Hop Topics Page from Evergreen State College
Researching Public Policy in Print Media
Use a database to research the coverage of your topic in the print media (newspaper, magazines, journals). Every article you find on a library database appeared originally in print -- it is not a web site, merely web-delivered. Remember to cite all articles you receive from a database following the conventions of citing eletronic resources. If you only have a citation (i.e. the article does not appear in full-text in the database), use the Pink Book at the library to see if we own the publication your article appeared in. Some recommended databases are:
Choose "NEWS" and then "GENERAL NEWS", "TODAY'S NEWS", or "U.S. NEWS"
Select "GUIDED SEARCH" rather than "BASIC SEARCH"
Make sure you select the source type (newspapers, magazines, etc.) and dates
Lexis/Nexis indexes the New York Times, but not the Chicago Tribune
Print or email articles
Provides the full-text of bills on major current issues
Type in your topic but then click on "NARROW BY SUBDIVISION" whenever possible
Read the articles and abstracts carefully BEFORE printing to save time and resources
Infotrac indexes the New York Times, but not the Chicago Tribune
Print or email articles
Choose "ACADEMIC SEARCH ELITE" for journal articles and "NEWSPAPER SOURCE" for newspapers
Use the "ADVANCED SEARCH" feature
Choose the "SUBJECT SEARCH" to see which subject terms are used
Print or email articles
Select from a list of other library databases to find more articles, particularily scholarly articles
How to Search the Web
Many students are familiar with searching the web, but fail to take advantage of search engines' advanced features. Follow these tips:
- Lexis/Nexis list of useful sites
- Provides links to websites on the American political process
- Google Advanced Search
- Possibily the largest searching engine, covering over a billion sites
- Lists sites that are most-linked to first
- Search by phrase or keyword
- Limit your searches by date last updated, where term appears, etc.
- Limit your searches to sites that are .gov, .org, .edu when appropriate
- Yahoo! Advanced Search
- Organizes sites into Yahoo! categories, grouping similar sites together
- Will do a search in Google if initial search turns up nothing
- Search by Yahoo! categories or web sites
- Limit your searches by date
- Librarians' Index to the Internet
- Sites here are selected for their value and entries are annotated
- Search by your topic
- FirstGov
- A search engine for official government information
To learn more about searching the web and search engines, go to Search Engine Watch
|