Research Guides: International relations & security: Essentials: start here

Always start here to locate PSCI/IS research literature

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

Security resources

Security Studies from JSTOR
Security Studies is a topical collection that “looks at security studies through a broad lens, encompassing research on international security and peace and conflict studies from all corners of the globe “ It includes content drawn from journals and ebooks already in JSTOR and adds research reports and periodicals added specifically for this collection. Browseable by topic and searchable (including image searching).
Bookmark this link. JSTOR's topical collections like this can be difficult to find in the regular JSTOR interface.

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For more about this collection, including basic JSTOR tips and tricks, see JSTOR’s Security Studies libguide.
Homeland Security Digital Library
HSDL is a collection of documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and disaster management from a wide variety of sources. These include documents from federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies, professional organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, and international governing bodies. 1941-present. HSDL is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Preparedness Directorate, FEMA and the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Create an individual account with your VT email address if you wish to access additional HSDL researcher content.
See also
- Essays in HSDL's On the Homefront blog and
- Greta's Gouge weekly current-awareness posting of papers and articles pertaining to conflict, national security, and defense; arranged by source. Compiled by Greta Marlatt, HSDL content manager at US Naval Postgraduate School.
Institute for National Strategic Studies
Policy briefs, cases, journals, books in PDF, and more from INSS at the US National Defense University. In the landing page, the link to archived content is at the bottom of the left sidebar. Aside from institute journals, most INSS content has been invisible to VT Discovery Search.
CSI Publications (Central Intelligence Agency)
Links to full-text books, monographs, and other materials from the Center for the Study of Intelligence. Includes full-text access to the serial publication, Studies in Intelligence.
CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room
View documents released through the FOIA and other CIA release programs, including many National Intelligence Estimates, topical collections, and one-off documents. Includes subcollection of "historically significant Agency documents."

Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest
The Digital National Security Archive provides primary documents on U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Subsets include the CIA Family Jewels Indexed information which reveals the CIA's most closely held secrets about their domestic intelligence activities they considered outside its charter, conducted at the height of the Cold War through 1973, and the Cuban Missile Crisis: 50th Anniversary Update which includes unpublished records from U.S. and Soviet archives.
HeinOnline
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. Hein's collections of secondary sources (law reviews and books) address wider bodies of law and more countries than the primary-sources Tech subscribes to.

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1861-
Perhaps the most important collection of official primary sources to consult before beginning research on the history of US international relations, the Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the documentary historical record of major US foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Prepared and issued by the Department of State since 1861, "FRUS" is the official compilation of selected documents from the files of the Department of State, the White House, and other agencies. It presents a historical view of American foreign policy and now comprises hundreds of individual volumes.
- FRUS for 1861-1960 has also been digitized by the University of Wisconsin.
- The official, State Department version's full-text coverage online is fairly complete through the Carter administration but spotty from the 1980s and later.
Electronic documents not yet included in FRUS might be found at their originating agency or in compilations of presidential documents. See Status of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series (State Department) and Researching U.S. Foreign Policy: Publications and Web Sites (National Archives and Records Administration).
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The organization of FRUS is generally chronological, but the dates of the volumes do not necessarily reflect the dates of documentary history. For example, the volumes for 1900-1918 do not include the records dealing with World War I or the Russian Revolution. Each volume has a subject and author index.

Besides providing the text of important foreign policy documents, FRUS also includes source citations (printed either with the document or as footnotes) that indicate the location of the original documents. In this way, FRUS serves as a guide to the location of additional documents on the same and related subjects.
Military Legal Resources
The US Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School Library in Charlottesville holds extensive collections of primary source materials and publications in the field of military law. An increasing number of selections from these collections are being made accessible in full text PDF versions via the Library of Congress Federal Research Division (FRD) website.

Surveys of US National Intelligence Agency Published Outputs (Webinars)

Archived 45-minute webcasts provide overviews for exploring publicly available information from US intelligence agencies. Presenter is Albert Chapman (Purdue University Library). Offered in 2018-19 as part of the US Government Publishing Office's "FDLP Academy" training sessions for librarians (but not geeky)

Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, Pt. 1: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This webinar describes information resources produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). This agency is responsible for leading U.S. intelligence community integration to deliver the most insightful intelligence information for national security policymakers. Organizational components whose resources are covered include the National Intelligence Council (NIC), National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), and Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC). Individuals viewing this webinar will learn more about the multifaceted and publicly-accessible information resources produced by ODNI." Recorded May 02, 2018.
Enhancing your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, PT. 2: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). "Viewers will gain an understanding of the CIA’s organizational structure, and learn to use the historical and contemporary information resources which are produced by the CIA." Recorded June 12, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 3 Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. "This webinar demonstrates the publicly-accessible information resources produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). It contains information about both of these agencies historical backgrounds (including declassified Freedom of Information Act reports, and their ongoing missions including the NSA’s role in cybersecurity and signals intelligence." Recorded September 18, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resource IQ, PT. 4 National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence University, and National Reconnaissance Office. "Viewers should gain an enhanced understanding of the publicly-accessible information resources produced by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence University, and National Reconnaissance Office and how these agencies carry out their policymaking activities." Recorded November 06, 2018.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 5: Individual Armed Services Intelligence Organizations. "This webinar will introduce viewers to the publicly-accessible information resources provided by individual branches of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. Learn more about topics such as ballistic missiles, cybersecurity, international piracy, and other areas of relevance in military intelligence analysis." Recorded January 17, 2019.
Enhancing Your Intelligence Agency Information Resources IQ, Part 7: Department of Energy, Homeland Security, State Dept., Treasury Dept., and Boards and Commissions. "Learn about the contemporary and historic intelligence information resources produced by these agencies, boards, and commissions." Recorded March 26, 2019.

Background: verviews and reference works in international relations

Oxford Research Encyclopedias : International Studies
This project is the latest collaboration between Oxford University Press and the International Studies Association. It brings newly commissioned articles together with existing and revised articles from the ISA's International Studies Encyclopedia (2017) to form a leading-edge, continuously updated digital resource.
Gale Ebooks
Gale Ebooks is a collection of searchable ebook reference works. You can search within a particular work or across the entire collection. Individual articles from these sources are presented in HTML and PDF. Illustrations, photos, maps, and multimedia content is often included.

SAGE Knowledge: Politics & International Relations
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Reference ebooks from major publisher of research works and textbooks in social sciences. Expandable menu directs you to works in most major subfields of the discipline.

SAGE Research Methods Online
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SAGE Research Methods indexes full-text books, reference sources, the "little green book" series (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences), the "little blue book" series (Qualitative Research Methods), journal articles, and videos. Since this platform focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used by researchers from the social sciences, health sciences, and more. Full text available in HTML and PDF. You can limit searches by research method type. 1970s-present.

The Methods Map is an exciting and innovative visualization tool that can be used to discover relationships between methods, to discover new methods and to find content related to them. Underpinning the Methods Map is a new taxonomy of social science research methods, developed by SAGE, and containing over 1,400 unique terms.

The Methods Lists are lists of content within the product that our users have selected and want to share through this product. You can create your own lists, either for private use, or to share with others on the site.

The Little Green Books are our famous series, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. This entire series is available on SAGE Research Methods, with additional tools across the site to filter your search on just these titles.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2d ed) by James D. Wright, ed.
ISBN: 978-0-08-097087-5
Publication Date: 2015
Comprises over 3,900 articles, commissioned by 71 section editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes; more than 80 percent of the chapters are new or updated since the original text. Both its format and integrated chapters encourage discovery and map contexts and connections within the social and behavioral sciences. Some experts prefer the first edition (2001).

Global Issues in Context from Gale
Global Issues in Context provides international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, highly relevant sources for analysis of social, political, military, economic, environmental, health, and cultural issues. Each of these gateway pages includes an overview, unique "perspectives" articles written by local experts, reference, periodical, primary source and statistical information.

Social Sciences & History Librarian

Bruce Pencek

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Email is the best way to contact me with questions or appointment requests.

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owned by Virginia Tech but are unavailable for use (print books)
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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

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Let us know how (if...) a trial fits the research, teaching/learning, and public service missions of the university. Share your judgments through the short survey linked to each trial blurb and/or more detailed remarks in an email to a subject librarians. If we do not receive favorable comments about products on trial, we will not buy them.

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International relations & security: Essentials: start here

What's on this page

Always start here to locate PSCI/IS research literature

Security resources

Surveys of US National Intelligence Agency Published Outputs (Webinars)

Background: verviews and reference works in international relations

Social Sciences & History Librarian

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Interlibrary Loan Services

Temporary, trial access only -- use while you can

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