Military, naval, aerospace, and veterans studies: Related disciplines, policy research, US government information

What's on this page?

Many disciplines can approach the same question or problem, bringing their own orientations, approaches, and jargon. This page provides shortcuts to a selection of the major resources to access their literatures, with special attention to sources offering primary sources and analyses of international and domestic policies.  It also points to library tools for learning languages.

Think tanks, policy papers, "gray literature"

Professors and other people with advanced academic degrees present their expertise in other settings beside peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books.  They may produce reports and analyses for governments, non-profit organizations, corporations, and all sorts of research institutes; they also distribute research for comment at academic conferences.  While these sources are often created with academic rigor, they commonly do not go through full peer review before publication.  Nonetheless, especially regarding recent events and hot topics in politics and policy, such "gray literature" can be important bridges between journalism and traditional academic publications. 

Social sciences and history

Engineering

Language learning systems

If you want to learn on the go or don't want to depend on internet access, the Virginia Tech Libraries have a large collection of language learning compact disks on the 5th floor of Newman Library that you can check out. These links will show you their call numbers and check-out status.

Many public libraries offer entry-level online language-learning tools like Mango Languages, Rocket Languages, and/or Babbel (among others) to residents with appropriate library cards.  (Virginia Tech students qualify for cards at  the Blacksburg library and other branches of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library District [MFRL] no matter where their homes are.)

Check with your local and/or hometown public library about resources it makes available to its members.

US federal government information sources

By law, the US Government Publishing Office is the "official, digital, and secure source for producing, protecting, preserving, and distributing the official publications and information products of the federal government," making it the world's largest publisher. To help locate and provide access to its vast output, "GPO aims to provide a comprehensive index of every document issued or published by a department, bureau, or office not confidential in character."

Most GPO publications have been published online since the late 1990s (and are listed in our library's Discovery service), and there has been extensive digitization of older documents by government agencies, by commercial database vendors (Voxgov, HeinOnline, ProQuest, Readex), and by nonprofits (LLMC-Digital, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, universities). 

For most of a century, Virginia Tech automatically received most GPO output in print "docs," identified by GPO's unique "SuDoc" call number system ... but didn't catalog most of them . The SuDoc number is crucial for getting your hands on physical government publications in the library, from library storage, or via ILLiad.  Most of our printed  federal publications are arranged by SuDoc number on the 5th floor of Newman Library. Don't be reluctant to ask a librarian for help.

Records in the GPO catalog, GovInfo,gov, and Voxgov databases should provide SuDoc class numbers back to the 1970s-80s.

The Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, 1895-1976 database and the print index volumes of "MoCat" near the Docs stacks will help you find older, uncataloged publications' SuDoc numbers so you can request them from library storage or via ILLiad.

Surveys of US Military/Defense Information Sources