Resources for Pacific Seminar II

Books

Use PacifiCat, the online catalog, to locate books on your topic.

Reference Books

• Encyclopedia of American Law:  KF154.W47
• Encyclopedia of the American Constitution: KF 4548.E53
• Gale Virtual Reference: online on the database page

Periodical Articles

The library has periodical articles in print and online. Others you can request through InterLibrary Loan. We have both popular and scholarly periodicals. Here are some ways to tell the difference:

Popular	Scholarly
Contemporary, popular topics	Literature reviews, original research
Written by staff writers	Written by scholars and experts
Selected by the editor	Accepted by a panel of experts
Few or no footnotes, bibliographies	Footnotes, bibliographies

Databases

The following databases should be useful for this course:

• Academic Search Complete: abstracts and full-text of popular and scholarly articles
• CQ Electronic Library: full text reports about legislation and policies
• JSTOR: backfiles of the full-text of important scholarly journals
• Lexis-Nexis: full text news stories and law reviews
• Scopus: full text articles on many social science topics

Quality Websites

• USA.gov: links to information about the federal government
• FedWorld.gov: easy access to many government agencies
• Thomas: guide to legislative information
• Project Vote Smart: “How a Bill becomes a Law” and other useful information
• OpenSecrets.org: directory of political action committees