Are you looking to read more on this topic, but finding that most of the academic materials are not free? Hello, I'm Catherine Shreve, Duke University Librarian for Public Policy & Political Science, and I'm here to help you with your search. No further reading is required for this course. But if you are curious to find out more about the topic, please watch this brief video. It will show you some ways to find scholarly articles, book chapters, and reports that are open access. That is, free to read and download. Google Scholar is a way to limit your Google search to academic materials. Go to scholar.google.com and notice that you may use the Advanced Search link at the top for more effective searching. Here is a sample search on US terrorism policy since the 9/11/2001 attacks. Notice that the advanced search gives you multiple options for narrowing your search and making it more relevant. I am searching all the words terrorism policy. I put United States in the exact phrase box, so that Google will know not to search for the two separate words United and States. If you want to really narrow your search, click the drop down arrow next to where my words occur and choose in the title of the article. To further narrow your search, enter the dates you want. Click the blue search button. Here are the results. Now the challenge is to identify those that you may get for free. Look for results that have a link on the right side. Or come from an Internet address ending in .edu for educational institutions, or .org for non-profit organizations. Or .gov for US government documents. Books.google.com as in our first result, will show you selected excerpts from published books, often including most of the first chapter. Notice on the left that you may change the date limits from the results page here and you may sort by relevance or date. There are more Google search tips in your course document, titled for further reading. This documents also has links to other websites with free scholarly publications. Here's another resource you may use to find current analytical reports and papers. Harvard University's Librarians have created a custom Google search of hundreds of think tanks. They define think tanks as institutions affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, etc., that generate public policy, research analysis and activity. You may browse or use the search box as you would do for a regular Google search. Here is a sample search on a current topic, "united states" relations Russia snowden. Notice that I used the Google tip to put the phrase, United States in quotes. In the results, notice that you can identify which organization each result came from by looking at the URL underneath it. Although each think tank claims and strives to be independent and objective, you will notice as you read their materials that they may have slight political biases. It is up to you to be a critical reader. You might also look at the part of each site that says about us to get an idea of the organization's mission and leaders. If you find one good article on your topic on a site, explore that site further. It maybe an organization that focuses on your area of interest. This site has sections on topics, regions, programs, experts, etc. Each site may have its own search box as well. I hope these tips for using the Google Scholar and Harvard Think Tank search engine would help you enrich your studies. Remember that there is also a document on your course site entitled For Further Reading, and enjoy your explorations.
