The Library Comes to You

Welcome to Library Notes for Political Science, a site designed to promote communication between the McGill University Library and the Political Science department.

Here you will find:

• links to new resources
• materials for use in the classroom
• announcements about library collections and materials

Comments and recommendations are welcomed.

Update to article databases tool

The library’s Article and Research Databases list has been updated with several new features:

• Quick Search: save time by searching several pre-selected article databases at once. The familiar Find a Database list will still be available for selecting article databases by name or specific subject.

• Customization: sign in with your library account (barcode on your McGill ID card and PIN) to save search results and store your favourite e-journals and databases.

• Save or email selected article citations or export them to EndNote.

• Set up automatic searches and be alerted by e-mail when new results are found.

• Refine your searches by browsing the subjects, authors, and publications dates displayed in your results. Full Text and Full Text Peer Reviewed articles are indicated by icons (see image below).

If you have any questions or comments about this, don’t hesitate to ask me! You can also read the help files for more information.

Select several databases to search at once. Choose from pre-selected sets or pick your own.

Refine your search results

New library catalogue

In January, the library will officially move to a new online catalogue powered by WorldCat, a consortium of libraries worldwide. This catalogue is currently available from the library homepage when you click on “New: try our Beta catalogue”.

The new catalogue can perform customized searches at multiple levels simultaneously. You can limit the search to just McGill, but you can also expand your search to other Quebec libraries and or even libraries worldwide. Some articles citations are also included in the catalogue.

The interface replicates the Amazon experience, making it easier to browse for books, DVDs, and other materials. Sharing, linking, saving, exporting to EndNote, and making lists can now be easily done as well.

The catalogue with which you are familiar will remain accessible, labelled as the “classic” library catalogue on the library’s website. Course reserves lists and library account functions (e.g., making requests and renewing books) will still be housed in the old interface.

As always, comments and questions are welcome!

Grab some DVDs for the holiday break

With DVD loans extended to 1 week for students (1 renewal allowed) and 2 weeks for staff  (1 renewal allowed), now’s a great time to stock up on movies for the holidays.
Check out our classic or new beta catalogue to view titles available. Be sure to grab them before the library closes on December 23.

Happy holidays!

Library holiday closures

All branches of the McGill Library will close for the holidays at 5:00 pm on December 23 and will reopen on January 4. Please check the website for opening hours in the new year. The Library wishes everyone a happy holiday season.

Better know a database #3: Factiva

Factiva is an essential source for searching international newspaper articles, as well as business and industry information. It provides the full text of articles from 8,000 publications, including newswires, newspapers, websites, and television transcripts. Over 118 countries are represented, and searching in non-Roman alphabets is supported. The interface itself is available in English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.

The Factiva search page offers several options to be completed before searching:

1. Enter keywords
2. Select a date range
3. Select the publication source: by publication name, region or country, industry, language, and type
4. Select which part of the article should be searched: headline only, headline and lead paragraph, or full article

Because you are searching only the full-text of the articles themselves, rather than abstracts or standardized “subject” categories, it’s important to be creative with search queries.

The search screen offers a list of fancy tips when you click on the link labeled Example:

globali?ation will retrieve hits for the word globalization or globalisation. The question mark is used as a single wildcard character. A minimum of three characters must be entered before the question mark. Letters can be entered after the question mark.

cat* will retrieve cats, category, catastrophe, and so on. The asterisk is used at the end of a term. A minimum of three characters must be entered before the asterisk. No values should be entered after the asterisk. There is no limit to the number of characters after the stem word that will be searched.

toyota/F50/ will find the name Toyoto within the first 50 words of the article.

atleast10 Olympics and atleast10 Winter Games will find articles that include the word Olympics and the phrase “Winter Games” at least 10 times.

And many more…

The full text of the article is displayed alongside the search results, and selected articles can be viewed as PDFs, saved, or e-mailed from the same screen.

For more fun: try the audio feature that reads English articles aloud. Factiva also has a new “beta” translate feature, which is useful for helping readers determine the jist of an article in a language they don’t know. (Or at the very least, it’s good for comic relief!)

U.S. legal information from Google

The ubiquitous Google is constantly expanding its products, services, and spheres of influence. One recent addition to its search features is rather interesting for social science and legal research: Google Scholar now indexes legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate, and supreme courts. The full text of the opinions are freely available online.

The main search screen allows users to limit to legal information only, and the advanced search screen allows for further refinement by state or federal court.

An important feature for researchers is the “how cited” function, which displays citations for other decisions and journal articles that have cited the original case. An extremely basic search for Maher Arar shows how easily legal information can be retrieved:

An official blog post from Google (“Finding the laws that govern us“, with a rather enigmatic pronoun) describes the service more completely.

However, unsurprisingly, Google does not offer the same level of search precision as legal giants like Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, and Hein Online. In the case of Hein, at least, Google’s indexing is not complete (see details on the Hein Online blog). The tool is new, but legal librarians and researchers have offered some preliminary assessments, for example on Slaw and the Columbia Science and Technology Review.

Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding: A Selected Bibliography

The Canadian non-profit organization Peacemakers Trust has put together a bibliography of works related to conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Hosted on the organization’s website, the bibliography can be browsed by subject category or searched by keyword. Topics include just war theories, game theory, gender and conflict, terrorism, indigenous peoples, and more.

Compiled by Catherine Morris, a lawyer and conflict resolution consultant, the bibliography primarily lists academic articles and monographs.

Unlike the library’s research databases, it does not include abstracts or subject keywords, but it is still useful for identifying sources on conflict resolution and peace studies. The text-only listings are also a perfect place to make use of the McGill Library’s LibX toolbar. LibX allows you to search the library catalogue right from your web browser. Once it is installed, you can highlight text to launch a search of the catalogue. I wrote more about LibX here.

Climate Policy journal

The library has a new subscription to the journal Climate Policy, published by EarthScan.

According to the publisher’s description:

“Climate Policy presents the highest quality refereed research and analysis on the policy issues raised by
climate change, and provides a forum for commentary and debate. It addresses both the mitigation of,
and adaptation to, climate change, within and between the different regions of the world. It encourages
a trans-disciplinary approach to these issues at international, regional, national and sectoral levels.”

Here is the table of contents for the most recent issue (Volume 9, Number 6, 2009):

Historic versus output-based allocation of GHG tradable allowances: a comparison
pp. 575-592(18)
Author: Quirion, Philippe

Differentiating (historic) responsibilities for climate change
pp. 593-611(19)
Authors: Müller, Benito; Höhne, Niklas; Ellermann, Christian

Assessing the value of price caps and floors
pp. 612-633(22)
Authors: Philibert, Cédric

Who picks up the remainder? Mitigation in developed and developing countries
pp. 634-651(18)
Authors: Winkler, Harald; Vorster, Shaun; Marquard, Andrew

Sectoral approaches for a post-2012 climate regime: a taxonomy
pp. 652-668(17)
Authors: Meckling, Jonas O; Chung, Gu Yoon

Synergies in addressing air quality and climate change
pp. 669-680(12)
Authors: ApSimon, Helen; Amann, Markus; Åström, Stefan; Oxley, Tim

CDM: from policy to practice
pp. 681-683(3)
Author: Greiner, Sandra

Rethinking political theory: ethics, justice and global climate change
pp. 684-686(3)
Author: Palmer, Charles

International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

The library now has access to the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 to the Present online as well as in print (8 volumes). Search for keywords or browse by subject, name, time period, or country. Each entry provides a summary of key events, people, and terms, in addition to offering a bibliography of further readings. Other features include maps, a chronology, images, and a glossary.

Copyright updates

Copyright reform is an exceedingly hot topic in many different fields: higher education, law, the music and film industries, web design… Indeed, copyright regulations now touch most aspects of daily communication and creative production.

In Canada, Michael Geist, professor of law at the University of Ottawa, is the authoritative source of current debates and legislation.

Another new and useful source of international copyright legislation is Copyright Watch. Still a work in progress, the site collates relevant legal documents and sources of monitoring that are searchable by country.

The Hill Times Policy Briefing recently included a series of articles about intellectual property and copyright legislation:

• Q&A with Industry Minister Tony Clement
• Copyright consultation provides blueprint for reform by Michael Geist
• Getting it right: Tories must move from regressive to progressive copyright by NDP MP Charlie Angus
• Introducing a copyright bill is kind of like swatting at a bee hive with a big stick by Simon Doyle
• Canada’s copyright regime is outdated and lags behind its major trading partners by Harris MacLeod
• ‘There has never been a better time to live than right now’: Heritage Minister James Moore delivered on June 22 on copyright and digital media
• Canada can capitalize on digital reality, unparalleled opportunities by Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore
• Canadian Copyright collectives and Copyright Board after 20 years: does the system serve its purpose? by Howard Knopf
• Canadian copyright’s just three things by Giuseppina D’Agostino

Hat tip: Special Info & Musings for Ottawa Information Professionals by CLA-CASLIS Ottawa

And finally, Lawrence Lessig, eminent copyright expert in the U.S., gave a rousing speech at the 2009 EDUCAUSE conference in Denver, Colorado, which I was fortunate enough to attend. Lessig spoke extensively on his work with creative commons. He argued that the current system is strangling rather than protecting culture and intellectual work. He called on educators and IT professionals in higher education to actively advocate for a re-evaluation of copyright legislation especially in the realm of academic publishing and distribution of information.

A video of the talk is available here.