New for Politics

National Bureau of Economic Research.
Available online.   A printed copy is being added to the collection.
"In this paper we estimate the impact of press coverage on citizen knowledge, politicians' actions, and policy... Exploring the links in the causal chain of media effects -- voter information, politicians' actions and policy -- we find statistically significant and substantively important effects. Voters living in areas with less coverage of their U.S. House representative are less likely to recall their representative's name, and less able to describe and rate them. Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies..."
Links will be maintained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

U.S. Census Bureau.
Available online.
Annual collection of data on state and local governments in the U.S. -- where they get their funding, what they spend it on, etc.
Links will be maintained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Available online.
"Throughout the spring, surveys by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press have found that roughly one-third of Americans have been following news about the primary campaign very closely -- a level of interest often not usually reached until the peak of election season. Within this context, large numbers of Americans are not only going online to learn about the campaigns, but are also taking an active role in promoting online conversations about politics and spreading news and information about their candidate of choice or the race in general."
Links will be maintained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

U.S. Census Bureau.
Available online.
"Information on reported voting and registration by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics is collected for the nation in November of congressional and presidential election years." Includes access to tables in Excel.
Links will be mainained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Available online.
"Based on interviews conducted in English and Spanish with a nationally representative sample of more than 35,000 adults... Explores the social and political attitudes of religious groups, including members of many small religious traditions -- such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics -- not typically analyzed in public opinion surveys."
Links will be maintained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

Grey House / Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Available online.   (W&L subscription)
Second edition (2008) contains more than 250 A–Z entries which "explore the people, crimes, investigations, and court cases behind 200 years of American political scandals."
Links will be maintained in several locations in our Web site, including here.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Available online.
"Growing numbers of Americans are reachable only by cell phone, and an even larger number who have both a landline and a cell phone may be "functionally cell-only" because of their phone use habits. The latest Pew Research Center national survey... finds that the overall estimate of voter presidential preference is modestly affected by whether or not the cell phone respondents are included."
A link will be maintained on this library Web page.

On Monday 28 July, the Washington and Lee University is going to unveil a new version of its Web site, which you can preview at this temporary URL.

Changes from the current site to the new one are not drastic or fundamental, but more cosmetic and organizational.
Lots of pages will have URL's different from their current ones, but we think (fingers crossed) that automatic forwarding will take of most of those issues.

If you notice any problems with the new site -- links not working, etc. -- please feel free to let me know.
We realize that this change likely will require quite a bit of trouble-shooting and tinkering over the next few weeks, but we have a goal of getting the site cleaned up by the time the students begin returning next month.

We also know that this change is likely to cause you and your students some inconvenience at some point and we apologize for that. If that happens, please just let us know how we can help.