Area studies and comparative politics: Essentials -- start here

As pursued in the United States, area studies and comparative politics traditionally have dealt with the politics of countries and global regions other than the US.

What's on this page

This guide focuses on principal research resources in a 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 (including a box of region-oriented databases); background information and reference sources; contact information for the subject librarian; and tabs identifying additional information.

Parts of this guide are also available in multiple subject guides: Social data sources, News/journalism/streaming media, Advice for searching/citing/engaging with related scholarly literatures, and Accessing library resources from off-campus.

Start here to find scholarly literature

Region/geography-oriented online resources

Overviews and reference works in area studies and comparative politics

Social Sciences & History Librarian

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Bruce Pencek
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.
- virginiatech.zoom.us/j/95623507981
(540) 231-2140

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Interlibrary Loan Services

All current Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, regardless of your location, may request through ILLiad for materials:

  • not owned by Virginia Tech (books, articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
  • owned by Virginia Tech but are unavailable for use (print books)
  • owned by Virginia Tech and available in print (scans of articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)

We ship requests via UPS to users outside the immediate Blacksburg area (Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski counties).

Articles, book chapters, and many technical papers are delivered in PDF format to your ILLiad account. Occasionally, due to copyright restrictions, a paper copy of an article or standard is held for your at the Newman User Services Desk or sent o the mailing address listed on your account.

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. 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 your detailed assessments of 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 the body of my libguides will go away when the trial period ends.