U.S. Policy on Rwanda
A student in Bob Strong's Conduct of American Foreign Policy class is researching the Clinton Adminstration's decision-making with regard to the Rwanda crisis of the mid-1990's.
Here is the brief research guide I put together.
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October 31, 2006
Journal Citation Assignment
UPDATED late Tuesday afternoon....
Students in one of Rebecca Harris's Politics classes have an assignment in which they are supposed to find and read two journal articles on interest groups. But the plot thickens...
Both articles need to come from a core group of the top political science journals (a list she provides). And one of the articles must cite the other one.
Here's the update:
After communicating with Rebecca Harris about the scope and expectations of this assignment, I have thrown together a research guide which should help students -- and us -- with the various variations within this assignment.
The guide is linked from the Politics course guides page (where Contribute is playing hell with my spacing).
The other primary contenders for this question were Scopus and Sociological Abstracts -- both for their ability to display article bibliographies online (at least some of the time), but I decided against them for two reasons: There is no easy way to limit the search to important political science journals. The path to full-text access can be tortuous.
Comments? Any other bright ideas?
October 30, 2006
Mexico City Policy
A student in Bob Strong's Conduct of American Foreign Policy course is researching the up's-and-down's of the "Mexico City Policy," the Reagan administration's decision to cut off contributions to international agencies which fund family planning/abortion practices.
The hard part of this is that she is supposed to be looking into the background of the policy-making parties and there does not seem to be much on that.
She also hopes to look more broadly at issues associated with the relationship between values or morality and foreign policy formulation.
Here is the brief research guide we came up with.
October 27, 2006
Journalism 101 Instruction Report
course: Journalism 101 (News Media and Society)
date: 10/26/06 (2 sections)
faculty: Richardson and Luecke
librarian: Grefe
students: about 65
Each student is to research a topic relevant to journalism or mass communications, including formulating a research question and performing a literature review.
Here is the research guide.
October 25, 2006
Politics 214 Instruction Report
course: Politics 214 (Conduct of American Foreign Policy)
date: 10/25/06
faculty: Strong
librarian: Grefe
students: 23
Each student is to write a research paper on a foreign policy decision, issue, or event, including the use of primary source documents. Here is the research guide.
October 23, 2006
Wilmington Race Riot, 1898
A student in Doug Cumming's "Discovering Early American Newspapers" class is researching the 1898 race riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, focusing on the roles of black and white newspapers. She is particularly interested in primary source documents, especially newspaper coverage at the time.
There are contemporary (1898) articles in the Historic Washington Post and Historic New York Times databases.
We are requesting microfilm of November 1898 issues of several North Carolina newspapers (two Wilmington papers and the Raleigh News & Observer) through interlibrary loan. Since the offices of the black Wilimington paper were burned to the ground, it is doubtful that copies exist on microfilm.
Amazingly, the official state government report on the riot was published in 2006 (!).
A UNC-W research paper, "The Wilmington Riot of November 10, 1898," makes reference to lots of relevant primary-source documents that may be may be photocopied for ILL.
October 16, 2006
SOC 228 Instruction Report
course: Sociology 228 (Race and Ethnic Studies)
date: 10/16/06
faculty: Novack
librarian: Grefe
students: 15
Each student is to write a research paper on a relevant topic. The students opted to have individual appointments rather than a single in-class presentation.
University Press Specializations
A faculty member had a question about which university presses might specialize in one of two areas -- "Politics and Law" and/or "Politics and Science."
There are a couple of databases to which we subscribe which should be of help with this sort of question -- WorldCat and Literary Marketplace.com.
However, the two subject areas involved are so broad that the search mechanisms tend to not yield any useful list. And the fact that "Politics" is so often interchangeable with "Political Science" make it hard to separate out natural and physical sciences and related policy issues.
So, I had another suggestion.
Since Leyburn Library automatically receives many books from most U.S. university presses and also purchases a lot of books from Cambridge, Oxford, and other university presses, Annie (the W&L library catalog) might be the best way to see who has been publishing what.
1. Here is a search of Annie which lists books in our collection from university presses which are about politics and law/legal matters, arranged by publication year.
You have to click on each entry to see the publisher.
Alas, there seems to be no relatively neat search for "Politics and Science," mostly because of the prevalence of that "Political Science" terminology issue.
2. However, here is a search of Annie for books on university press books on the subject of "Science and State," which mostly covers the relationship between government(s) and science(s).
I think it is safe to say that most books on the relationship between politics and the natural/physical sciences tend to focus on one subject area, such as environmental issue, risk assessment, biotechnology, or whatever.
If you would like me to put together a "canned" search on any particular speciality, just let me know.
Stress in Various Disciplines
I am looking for articles/papers that deal with stress-related outcomes, such as health issues, one's coping methods, etc. I am looking for articles not only in the field of psychology, but in more diverse fields such as mgmt, phisiology, sociology, etc. If at all possible, do you think you could help me find some related papers on this topic perhaps in the sociology field or in any field other than psyc? This is due on Oct 25th. Thank you!
Here are 5 recommended databases:
1. Of course, the most important database for coverage of psychology is PsycInfo
Type stress in the first search box.
Use the drop down menu option labeled "Select a Field (optional)" to change that label to "SU Subjects."
Your results should number about 60,000 (!).
Note the links to sub-sections of these results in the left-side column.
2. For articles in sociology and related fields, use Sociological Abstracts
Type stress in the first search box.
Use the drop down menu option labeled "Keywords, KE=" to change that label to "Descriptors, DE=."
Your results should number about 3,818.
3. For articles in physiology and medicine, use Medline/PubMed
Type "stress, psychological" (including the parentheses) in the search box.
Your results should number about 56,000 (!).
4. For articles in management and other business-related fields, use ABI/Inform.
Type stress in the first search box.
Use the drop down menu option labeled "Citation and abstract" to change that label to "Subject."
Your results should number about 7,800.
5. You can get more inter-disciplinary coverage by using Scopus, which taps into the physical and natural sciences and the social sciences.
However, to avoid getting tons of irrelevant stuff (such as the stress on bread dough when it is baking), you need to combine the search term stress with one or more other words which will focus the search. Some examples: stress AND student* or maybe "job-related stress"
AND
It also will help if you eliminate the physical sciences from your search by simply clicking on the "Physical Sciences" button (middle of the search screen), thus removing the check-mark.
One caution -- None of these databases, with the exception of ABI/Inform, excels in providing the complete texts of articles or other documents.
To answer the ever-popular question "Do we have this article?," follow this guide.
In general, the options available through the WebBridge icon will best answer the question.
And, of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I am glad to help.
October 11, 2006
ECON 203 Instruction Report
Course: ECON 203 Quantitative Models for Economics
Presentation date: 10/11/06
Faculty: Blunch
Number of students: 30 (two sections)
Librarian: Tombarge
Research guide URL: http://info.wlu.edu
Assignment: Students will work in groups to develop a research question, prepare a literature review, collect data and analyze the data through a statistical model that they develop. Students are now working on their research questions and will start their literature review soon.
NewspaperDirect Press Display
Someone asked me about an article on page two of today's Washington Post, but without that individual having access to the printed copy of the paper.
The solution to the problem was NewspaperDirect PressDisplay.
This inquiry prompted me to update (and improve?) our introductory page, especially since the publisher has reorganized the site. It's still not the most intuitive thing to use, but it's a little better.
Our default "My Newspapers" display on the right side of the screen is now a selection of big-time U.S. papers.
Unfortunately, the real power and advantage of this service is squirrelled away behind the "Select Newspaper" icon 
, 'way up in the right corner of the screen. This is where a user can generate a list of newspapers from a particular country or in a particular language.
Furthermore, it is unfortunate that there seems to be no way to set up a persistent URL for a given language or country. (Am I missing something?)
I think our foreign-language departments and program really ought to know about this. Do they?
Relationship Between Democracy and Capitalism
A student wants to write a paper on the relationship (if any) between democratic forms of government and capitalistic economic sytems, perhaps focusing on free trade. She would like to use Chile as an example.
As it turns out, the student is in Tyler Dickovick's POL 105 class, so I referred her to the article databases in the course research guide. Most of the resources here yield some useful materials.
October 9, 2006
Characteristics of U.S. Military Training Manuals
I have been trying to help a sociology student who is beginning work on a thesis investigating the sociological (or psychological) characteristics of U.S. military training manuals.
His initial topic involved a comparison of U.S. and foreign military training films, but access to the films and the inevitable languge issue made that unworkable.
Our initial resources for the latest topic were America: History and Life and PsycInfo, to which I have since added the materials in this brief research guide.
This is a tough topic.
October 2, 2006
SOC 375 / POL 375 instruction report
course: Sociology 375/Politics 375 (Methods of Social Inquiry)
date: 10/2/06
faculty: Eastwood
librarian: Grefe
students: 15
Each student "must select a social-scientific subject and question(s)" of their choosing and "design an empirical study through which" that subject could be studied. A literature review is required.
Here is the research guide.