UC Political Science Consortium

JSC Survey Report, 2002

TO:	Lucia Snowhill
	Joint Steering Committee for Shared Collections, California Digital Library
FR:	UC Political Science Bibliographer Consortium
	Nancy Koller, Survey Coordinator
RE:	2002 Survey Update for CDL, Political Science and International Relations Resources

The UC political science and international relations bibliographers recommend the following databases. There was consensus on the items to be included, but not on priorities -- with some campuses preferring one rather than another. Therefore the titles are not necessarily in priority order; however, arguments expressed by individual bibliographers for first priority choice are included for the first two.

Prices are not included here since whatever prices are listed do not account for what discounts can be negotiated by CDL. Links to view some databases are through SilverPlatter, but we are not necessarily recommending this vendor if others are available.

CSA's World Political Science Abstracts (WPSA)

CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts is building on the merged backfiles of Political Science Abstracts, published by IFI / Plenum, 1975-2000, and ABC POL SCI, published by ABC-CLIO, 1984-2000. The database provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy, political history, and political biography. The serials list of the new database is actively under construction, with a focus on expanding international coverage. As of April 2002, approximately 1170 titles are being monitored for coverage; this list will continue to grow throughout 2002.

Enhancements to the new database include the capability to link to electronic fulltext and the addition of new fields to the record structure. Records are being indexed with a controlled vocabulary of over 3000 terms and a thesaurus will be available by mid 2002.

http://www.csa.com/csa/factsheets/polsci.shtml

While one bibliographer acknowledges this database is probably less expensive than International Political Science Abstracts, the latter might cover third world countries more thoroughly. (We have not done a scientific comparison.)

Another bibliographer (Berkeley) who has an individual campus subscription to both WPSA and IPSA says that WPSA receives more use -- probably because it appears along with other social science databases on the CSA menu. The interface for WPSA is better than IPAS at Berkeley. At least one other campus currently subscribes to this database.

International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA)

This database has been mentioned previously on our political science surveys. It, as its title suggests, is international in scope and includes areas of the world not covered well elsewhere. It is exceptionally good for pure political science as opposed to policy issues. More reasonably priced than many databases.

http://www.silverplatter.com/catalog/ipsa.htm

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) Extra

British Library of Political and Economic Science of the London School of Economics. 1981-

Multidisciplinary index covering the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology. Includes over 2600 periodicals from more than 100 countries in 70 languages, as well as books, book reviews, and book chapters.

IBSS, 1981+ (they also offer 1951+)

http://www.lse.ac.uk/IBSS/access.htm

Alt- Press Watch

Coverage of newspapers, magazines, and journals of independent and alternative presses, it includes full text with coverage (currently for the last ten years) on political science, social and cultural issues, and economics.

http://www.proquest.com/products/pd-product-alt-presswatch.shtml

Nation Digital Archive -- 1865 to present

This valuable resource, presently in print in nearly every library, is very brittle. Having the online version would facilitate use of material covering all social sciences, history, and literature.

CDL might want to negotiate for a better interface (presently requiring Adobe Acrobat 4.0) and pricing structure.

Hein-On-Line

Backfiles of legal journals, both regional and national, from their inception to most current volume. Over 180 titles with a projected 5.5 million pages available by the end of 2002.

http://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/Titles%20Currenlty%20Available.pdf

This database includes material covering a wide range of social science disciplines in the social, political, and cultural areas. The Women's Studies bibliographers and Ethnic Studies bibliographers have discussed it. UCLA currently has a subscription.

Additional Database Endorsements

There are other databases that some political science bibliographers say are sought by their graduate students and which are recommendations of the Government Documents Bibliographer Group. They would be valuable enhancements to our disciplines of political science and international relations.

Source OECD

http://www.sourceoecd.org

Digital National Security Archives

http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/

World News Connection

http://wnc.fedworld.gov/subscription.html

Another type of material, mentioned in our surveys in the past, is still of critical importance. We think poll data is a resource which is applicable to many of the social sciences and should be given serious consideration by CDL as a high priority whether other disciplines name these particular databases or not. (In other words, these titles are not going to get the highest marks on a rating grid. That does make them any less valuable to a large group on each campus, yet not affordable campus by campus to a large extent.) A few campuses subscribe to one or more of these.

Polling the Nations

Covers data from more than 6500 national, state, local and special surveys in the US and over 60 other countries with data going back over a decade.

1986+

POLL: Online Service of the Roper Center for Public Opinion
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/

Most comprehensive full-text collection of public opinion in the United States. Covers question-level archival polling data back to the 1930s in politics and government, public institutions, international relations, business, social affairs, and consumer behavior and preferences.

Includes poll data from Gallup, Harris, Roper; the major television network polls of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC; and major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Provides both full survey-level information as well as complete questions and full-text answers. Includes demographic breakdown of respondents, sponsoring organization which is conducting poll, number of respondents polled, interview dates, survey population, and more.

California Field Poll, 1979-1999

For a look at this:
http://gort.ucsd.edu/calpol/

Well respected opinion surveyors with a proven track record of reliability, long before their data was available online.

Electronic Journals

Taylor and Francis journals

Sage journals

The Economist

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