Each database is a bit different, but a good rule of thumb is this: when you see the Uc-eLinks icon click on it to view your article access options, which can range from full text to a call number to an Interlibrary Loan request:
For more information, here's a tutorial on using UC-eLinks.
Connecting from Off Campus?
You can access UCB Library resources from off campus or via your laptop or other mobile device using one of two simple methods:
Proxy Server After you make a one-time change in your web browser settings, the proxy server will ask you to log in with a CalNet ID or Library PIN when you click on the link to a licensed resource. See the setup instructions, FAQ, and Troubleshooting pages to configure your browser.
VPN (Virtual Private Network) After you install and run the VPN "client" software on your computer, you can log in with a CalNet ID to establish a secure connection with the campus network.
Find Books, Journal Titles, and More
Use OskiCat or Melvyl to Find books or Journal Titles (not articles) to see if UCB or UC has the journal. If UCB does not have it, you can request the book/article though the request feature in Melvyl. Allow 1 week+ for the item not at UCB to be available for pickup.
Find eBooks
The Library offers over 100 e-book and e-text collections in specific subject areas. E-books in collections marked * are also available through OskiCat and Melvyl. You can limit your search in OskiCat to "Available online," and in Melvyl to "Online resources."
Why use Google Books? Library catalogs (like OskiCat) don't search inside books; using a library catalog, you can search only information about the book (title, author, Library of Congress subject headings, etc.). Google Books will let you search inside books, which can be very useful for hard-to-find information. You can then use Google Books' Find in a Library link to locate the book in a UC Berkeley library, or search OskiCat to see if UC Berkeley owns the book.Try it now:
Political Science Databases
Core article databases for political science research are below.
CQ Electronic Library A reference source on American politics and government that includes the following modules: CQ Congress Collection, CQ Political Handbook of the World, CQ Researcher Plus Archive, CQ Supreme Court, CQ Voting and Elections, CQ Washington Information Directory, CQ Weekly. Access individual modules or search across all CQ collections.
PAIS International Particularly strong in government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, and research and conference reports. Public policy, politics, economics, and social issues worldwide.
National Journal Group's Policy Central Indexes National Journal, The Hotline which tracks American politics and campaigns with coverage of each day's events, Congress Daily, Technology Daily, Almanac of American Politics, Poll Track and others to provide a comprehensive resource on politics and policy.
Other Sources For Analysis
The following selected journals from both sides of the aisle are good sources for possible topics/research questions.
Have a citation? Use Citation Linker to go directly to the article.
Get immediate access to journal articles, books and other publications (or request them when they are not available) by entering a title and other citation information.
When a publication is available online: The UC-eLinks window will provide a link to the publisher's web site that should contain the full text of the publication if UC (systemwide or your home campus) subscribes to the electronic version of the publication.
When a publication is not available online: The UC-eLinks window will offer other options such as the ability to check campus library holdings in the Melvyl Catalog (and where you can sometimes find that items ARE available online), or to Request the item via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) if UC (systemwide or your home campus) does not subscribe to the electronic version of the publication.
Related Databases
The Berkeley Library provides access to hundreds of databases, below are some that might be particularly helpful.
Academic Search Complete A multidisciplinary index to articles in more than 11,000 journals, many include fulltext.
America: History and Life Core resource for U.S history, also strong in some contemporary areas such as ethnic studies.
Sociological Abstracts Core resource for sociology, as well as some article in anthropology, criminology, demography, law, social psychology, and urban development.(Search all CSA/Illumina Social Sciences databases.)
Business Source Complete Full-text for several thousand scholarly business journals. Information in nearly every area of business and other sources of full text information such as country economic reports. For guidance on how to search, see
Business Source Complete tutorial
EconLit Most comprehensive index to scholarly journal articles in economics, also indexes books and dissertations.
LexisNexis Academic Core resource for newspapers from around the world and legal sources.
PolicyFile Index to public policy from a wide range of thinks tanks, Non-governmental organizations, international governmental organizations, and other institutions worldwide.
Project MUSE 250 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. Topics include literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics and many others.
American Presidency Project Contains all major publications of the U.S. Office of the President, including: Public Papers of the President, Inaugural Addresses, Executive Orders, Signing Statements, and other information such as radio addresses, party platforms, videos of debates, and popularity polling data. This project was developed by two political science professors at UCSB.
Hein Online Provides full text to many presidential documents. Click on Presidential Library to see the list of publications.
CQ Voting and Elections Collection Offers documents and data, authoritative analyses, background information and definitions, chronology, and historical material related to specific elections (Congressional,presidential, and gubernatorial) and the electoral process in America. A data set of voting/election statistics is available for exporting/downloading. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
ProQuest Congressional One stop shopping for U.S. congressional publications. Provides index and abstracts of congressional publications back to 1789, including full text Congressional Hearings from 1824-present, full text Committee Prints from 1830-present, full text Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports from 1916-present, full text United States Congressional Serial Set from 1789-1969, and legislative histories from 1970-present. For more information on how to find hearings, consult the Congressional Tutorials homepage
CQ Congress Collection Provides an historical analysis of members of Congress, their legislative voting behavior, interest group ratings, public policy legislation, current committees, background information and definitions, and chronology related to US Congress. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
CQ Congress and the Nation Provides detailed coverage of the events, trends, and controversies of the US Congress and Presidency from 1945 to 2004. Includes analysis of bills that passed/did not pass Congress, historical context for legislation, and brief histories of key legislation. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
CQ Voting and Elections Collection Offers documents and data, authoritative analyses, background information and definitions, chronology, and historical material related to specific elections (Congressional,presidential, and gubernatorial) and the electoral process in America. A data set of voting/election statistics is available for exporting/downloading. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
Supreme Court
Oyez Project A multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. Contains all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955, and summaries of major cases going back to the courts founding. The Project also provides biographical information on all justices and offers a virtual reality 'tour' of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
CQ Supreme Court Collection Combines historical analysis with updates and commentary of US Supreme Court decisions, biographies of Supreme Court justices, Supreme Court institutional history and the US Constitution. Also includes background and commentary on constitutions from over 100 countries. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
Agency and Other Sources
GPO U.S. Government Publications Indexes government documents printed by the US Government Printing Office since July 1976; documents include Congressional committee hearings, congressional debates and records, judiciary material, documents issued by departments such as Defense, State, Labor, and the Office of the President. Also includes links to Federal agency online resources.
CQ Weekly Provides nonpartisan information about US government and congressional affairs and subjects of concern. This online version also provides access to some articles prior to when they appear in the print version of CQ Weekly. Part of the CQ Electronic Library collection.
CQ Electronic Library A reference source on American politics and government that includes the following modules: CQ Vital Statistics on American Politics, CQ Political Handbook of the World, CQ Researcher Plus Archive. Access individual modules or search across all CQ collections.
News Resources
Here are some general news and newsmedia databases. For a full listing of the Library's news resources, check this list.
Access World News Provides full-text information and perspectives from over 600 U.S. and over 700 international sources. Offers strong regional coverage, indexing more than California newspapers such as Contra Costa Times (1995-current), Sacramento Bee (1984-current), San Francisco Chronicle (1985-current), and San Jose Mercury News (1985-current). Search categories include: California newspapers (121 titles), Greater Los Angeles (54 titles), major metropolitan titles (13 titles), Spanish-language news sources (48 titles), the World (almost 2000 titles), US (855 titles).
Factiva Provides general and business news and information from more than 9,000 sources in 22 languages, including influential local, national and international newspapers, leading business magazines, trade publications, and news wires. Includes the exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal (1979-present), the Financial Times, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals, and Bureau van Dijk company profiles.
LexisNexis Academic Includes over 6,000 individual titles of international, national and local newspapers and wire services; radio and television transcripts; and business, medical, industry, and legislative magazines, journals, and newsletters. Wide geographic coverage and translations from foreign-language sources, as well as news services like the Associated Press, Agence France Press, El Pais and Xinhua (New China) News Agency.
ProQuest Newspapers Indexes the New York Times (1999-present), Los Angeles Times (1985-present), Wall Street Journal (1982-present).
The following resources will provide information on polls and public opinion across the United States.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Contains domestic and international survey data. The Center's Public Opinion Location Library (iPOLL) gives online access to a database including poll questions asked in US from 1936 to present.
Field Poll An independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored public
opinion news service. Each year the poll covers a wide range of political and social topics examining California public opinion.
National Journal Group's Policy Central Indexes National Journal, The Hotline which tracks American politics and campaigns with coverage of each day's events, Congress Daily, Technology Daily, Almanac of American Politics, Poll Track and others to provide a comprehensive resource on politics and policy.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) can provide you a wealth of information from foreign news sources. The U.S. State Department ran the FBIS to translate foreign language newspapers, wires, and broadcasts into English. FBIS only translated information relating to U.S. interests, and only distributed to the public a select amount of what was translated.
At UC Berkeley, we have 2 databases for locating FBIS documents:
Finding FBIS documents from before 1996 at UC Berkeley can be tricky, and involves using both the FBIS Electronic Index and OskiCat. The best search strategies are country, city, or personal names combined with a date range in the FBIS database. Here are two examples of citation information from the database:
Example 1: FBIS Region: China (CHI) Title: USSR Delegate Attacks China In UN General Assembly Speech Date: January 15, 1980
Example 2: FBIS Region: Soviet Union (SOV) Title: Leontyev Warns U.S. Of Boomerang Effect Of PRC Arms Sales Date: January 15, 1980
When you have the results, take the abbreviation found in the FBIS region and add it to a title search for FBIS-(abbreviation) in OskiCat. For instance, in example 1 your search would be FBIS-CHI and for example 2 your search will be FBIS-SOV. If title search does not work, you can try a keyword search. This will lead you to a record for the microfiche.
Once you have your microfiche call numbers, go to the Newspaper and Microforms Room in the basement of Doe Library and look for that particular microfiche call number. You can browse the microfiche by date and find a report with the daily translations. NOTE: Some paper versions of the FBIS documents are housed off campus at NRLF. The FBIS-SOV search is an example of this type of record. In this case, you can use the request button in OskiCat to make your request. Because the record does not indicate date, this can be very confusing and browsing the microfiche may be an easier way to find this information.
Google Search Tips, Tricks and Hacks
One of the largest hurdles of using Google is the amount you must weed through. Some searches result in thousands of pages; who has time to go through all that? You dont need to. Did you know you can manipulate a regular Google search with a couple hacks to your search. Its true! Try these search "tricks" during your next google search.
site:XXXXX This search tells google to limit your search to a particular site or domain. For instance, if you limit to site:berkeley.edu you would only search the Berkeley site. Similarly site:.gov would search only sites ending in .gov, and site:.edu would search only sites ending in .edu.
-XXXXX Adding a minus/hyphen sign "-" to a term will remove results with that term. This can be very helpfull when removing common words associated with your topic.
filetype:XXXX Using filetype: will only find certain file extentions (.doc, .pdf, .xcl, etc)
"XXX XXXX" Putting double quotes around a phrase will find only that phrase.
You can also combine some of these search hacks, such as adding -site:nytimes.com to remove results from the New York Times website. More search tricks can be found here.
Citation Management Tools
Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but any are easier than doing it by hand!
Zotero: A free plug-in that works exclusively with the Firefox browser: keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service.
RefWorks - free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
It's always good to double check the formatting -- sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is an easy way to do interdisciplinary research, and with some settings changes can become even more useful. You need a Google account to use these features.
Set up a Google Scholar Alert to be automatically notified when new articles are added to Google on topics of interest:
Do your search in Google Scholar. Look in the green toolbar for the envelope icon, and click it. New items will be sent to your email account as they are found by Google.
Make Google display links to full text of articles that Berkeley subscribes to:
Open Scholar. Click on scholar preferences [next to the search box]. Under Library Links, enter the word Berkeley. Choose up to three database providers we subscribe to: Full Text@IngentaConnect; UC eLinks; and Read article via OCLC.
Do a Google Scholar search. Click on the "Cited by" link under a citation and select the "Search within articles citing..." checkbox.
Research Advisory Service
Research Advisory Service for Cal Undergraduates
Book a 30-minute appointment with a librarian who will help refine and focus research inquiries, identify useful online and print sources, and develop search strategies for humanities and social sciences topics.
Schedule, view, edit or cancel your appointment online (CalNetID required)
This service is for Cal undergraduates only. Graduate students and faculty should contact the library liaison to their department or program for specialized reference consultations.
to link to a PDF or html file if the full text is not immediately available.
