Skip to Main Content

Political Science Resources: Finding Books

A guide to finding resources for student research projects in Political Science.

Books

photograph of books

Why use books when there are websites and journal articles available to you? For one thing, a book-length work on a topic of interest to you will probably go into more depth than you anticipate, and will show you how your specific topic is related to its discipline or disciplines, in some cases. Also, some books are collections of essays on a particular subject, which can often give you a wide range of views from top experts on a subject.

Using Reese Library

To find books located at the Augusta University Libraries, use GIL-Find.

In GIL-Find, you can search using the same techniques as in databases. If you know the title, you can limit to title. The same for author, ISBN, etc.

Most books are located on the 3rd floor of Reese Library. However, some are located on the 1st floor, including books on reserve, reference books, and the Confucius Institute Collection. You will see the location of the book in the record in GIL-Find. Books on the 2nd floor are part of the Government Information Collection. Many of these books have valuable information for political science researchers.

Books can be checked out at the Information Desk on the 1st floor. Make sure you have your JagCard, as you will need this to check out. To find out more about circulation policies, such as how long you can have the book, how much fines are, etc., click here. 

Subject Headings

Subject Headings are the way librarians classify various materials into controlled, universal language. Because subject headings use a "controlled vocabulary," you do not have to use many different keywords trying to figure out what the author used. Librarians assign a common subject heading, even if authors use different vocabulary for the same topic.

Below are some subject headings for political science topics.Remember, subject headings get more specific as the more terms are added to the right.

Political Science

Political Science -- Philosophy

Political Science -- Methodology

Political Science -- History

Political Science -- United States 

Political Science -- Europe 

Federal Government -- United States

Political Planning

Constitutional Law

Voting

European Union

These are a small proportion of the subject headings for political science topics. You can search for subject headings at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html. Once you find an appropriate one, put it into the GIL-Find search bar and press search. You will see only results that have this subject heading, even if the keyword does not turn up this result.