Political thought and philosophy: Recommended: start here

Unusual among American social sciences, political sciences retains an active, explicitly normative subfield that often has more in common with humanities than with other social sciences.

What's here

This guide focuses on principal research resources in teh foundational subfield of political science. It is supplements the main subject guide for political science and international studies. The Other political science research guides tab is a menu that connects you to related research guides for the major subfields of the discipline and for related programs in the VT School of Public & International Affairs.

Resources listed on this page are clustered into Key databases for accessing scholarly literature, Background information sources; Contact information for the subject librarian; and access to Additional information.

Parts of this guide are also available in related subject guides: News/journalism/streaming media; Advice for searching/citing/engaging with related scholarly literatures; and Accessing VT Library resources off campus.

Essential resources -- start here

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts from ProQuest
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Worldwide Political Science Abstracts indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, essays, book reviews, working papers, technical reports, theses, and dissertations in the social sciences related to politics. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1975-present.
The database 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. Over 1,700+ titles are being monitored for coverage; of these, 67% are published outside the United States.

The references cited in the bibliography of the source article have been included for citations to core journals in political science, added to the database since 2001, and for all journals added since 2004. Each individual reference may also have links to an abstract and/or to other papers that cite that reference; these references are linked both within Worldwide Political Science Abstracts and across other social science databases from ProQuest. All records added since 2000 are indexed using a thesaurus of over 3,000 terms.

Major areas of coverage include:

Comparative politics
Developing nations
Disarmament
Economic policy
Electoral systems
Environmental policy
Government/Political systems
History and theory of political science
International relations/trade
Labor relations
Military policy
Methodology and research technology
Political behavior
Political economy
Political psychology
Politics and law
Politics and communication
Politics and religion
Politics and society
Public administration
Security and defense
Welfare systems
EconLit with Full Text from EBSCOhost
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EconLit indexes citations, abstracts, and full text of journal articles, books, dissertations, and working papers on all aspects of economics. You can do cited reference searches and limit to scholarly sources. 1886-present.

HeinOnline Law Portal
The HeinOnline portal offers a large and wide-ranging collection of contemporary and historical legal materials, mainly from the US, including constitutions; statutes and legislative histories, treaties, judicial opinions, regulations and other administrative law, and topical collections of historical law/policy documents. Contains more than 2,500 law reviews and law-related periodicals. Subjects covered include jurisprudence, political science, technology, human rights, and more. Coverage for all journals is from inception (as JSTOR does for scholarly journals); about 90% of journals are available through the current issue or volume.

Philosopher's Index from EBSCOhost
The Philosopher's Index indexes citations and abstracts from journal articles, books, chapters/essays, book reviews in the fields of philosophy, aesthetics, metaphysics, social philosophy, and axiology. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1940-present.
Religion & Philosophy Collection from EBSCOhost
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Religion and Philosophy Collection indexes citations, abstracts, and full text from journal articles, magazines, and book reviews in the field of world religions, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, moral philosophy and the history of philosophy. Full-text materials are available in HTML and PDF. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1967-present.
MLA International Bibliography with Full Text from ESBCOhost
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MLA International Bibliography indexes citations and full text of journal articles, books, dissertations, and scholarly web sites in disciplines such as language, literature, folklore, linguistics, literary theory and criticism, and the dramatic arts. Coverage includes literature from all over the world and includes citations to materials in many languages other than English. 1926-present.

Open Access Digital Theological Library (OADTL)
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Despite its formal name, the scope of OADTL is not limited to religious studies: its coverage is wide ranging, taking in the range of topics addressed by the world's religious traditions as well as those of interest to clergy as teachers, counselors, and activists. OADTL brings together freely available articles, books, government reports, working papers and the like, using the familiar OCLC WorldCat Discovery platform

Reference and background information

Oxford Handbooks Online
Oxford Handbooks Online provides scholarly overviews of topics through in-depth articles. We have access to handbooks in Archaeology, Economics & Finance, Business Management, Political Science, Philosophy, Psychology, Music, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Physical Sciences, History, Literature, Neuroscience, Sociology, Classical Studies, Law, Linguistics, Religion, Social Policy and Social Work.

Political Theory : An Encyclopedia of Contemporary and Classic Terms by Scott John Hammond
ISBN: 9783133392020
Oxford Companion to Philosophy by Ted Honderich
ISBN: 9780198661320
Publication Date: 1995

Temporary, trial access only -- use while you can

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech regularly secure short-term, trial access to online resources in order to gauge their appropriateness to our university's teaching and research missions. These trials run in October, February, and sometimes April. Most trials run 30 days.

This box highlights some of these opportunities as they come available. All active trials are listed in a sidebar in the main Databases A-Z directory and as a tab atop this libguide.

Each entry includes a link to a user survey. I and other subject librarians invite you to email us moredetailed assessments of trial resources. Responses from the Virginia Tech community are vital to the library's deliberations about whether and when to acquire or enhance databases and the like.

As appropriate I will list all currently active trials and user survey links in a resource trials tab in this and my other libguides. Entries for trials I may include in here as elsewher in the body of my libguides will go away when the trial period ends.

Social Sciences & History Librarian

Bruce Pencek

Email Me

Contact:

Newman Library (MC 0434)
Office #3050
560 Drillfield Dr
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.

Office hours (walk-in and/or Zoom): T 1-3:00 pm, W-Th 2-4:00 pm (Eastern time), and by appointment.
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(540) 231-2140

Subjects: Humanities and performing arts, Social sciences and education

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