eResources and Databases

Recommended Resources for Politics

If you want to search for journal articles on a particular topic within the Politics subject discipline, the main electronic databases to search are:

• Political Science
  This database gives users access to hundreds of leading political science and international relations journals.
• Academic Search Complete
  A database of over 6000 journals including over 400 in the politics and international affairs subject areas. Specific titles include The Journal of Politics, and International Affairs.
• Historical Abstracts
  Covering the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450-present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Indexes over 2,300 academic historical journals back to 1955.
• Humanities International Complete
  Use in conjunction with Historical Abstracts to cover a wider range of material. Journals indexed here include those relevant to the historical study of the United States and Canada.
• JSTOR
  An archive of older journal issues covering many relevant areas.
• Project Muse
  A collection of Journal titles including 32 under the broad heading of Political Science. Individual titles include Human Rights Quarterly, Journal of Democracy and Theory and Event.
• Social Policy and Practice
  An abstract database of social policy materials from 1890-present, including information on public health, social care, homelessness, and crime.
• Brexit: Five Months On
  On 23 June Britain voted to leave the European Union. Five months on, SAGE is providing free access to a range of academic research which engages directly with the referendum, the potential impacts of Brexit, or gives a background on the UK-EU relationship.

Government and Legal Information

• Westlaw UK - A large, comprehensive legal online service including UK case law, legislation, the Legal Journals Index , some full-text journal articles and a current awareness service.
• Lexis Library (Butterworths) - UK cases, legislation, legal journals, Halsbury’s Law, Halsbury’s Statutes - important legal database
• HeinOnline English Reports - (1220-1867) - A collection of the decisions of the English Courts prior to the commencement of the Law Reports in 1865
• House of Commons Parliamentary Papers - Fully indexed and searchable full-text House of Commons Parliamentary Paper from 1715 to present. Some supplementary material back to 1688.
• Proceedings of the Old Bailey - A free resource which gives a fully searchable collection of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people in 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Other smaller collections, that are either subject specific, or based on a single publishers output, are also worth searching. These include

• Sage Journals Online
• Oxford University Press Journals
• SpringerJournals

Journal Archives

Our Journal Archive titles can be found on the Journal Finder, but you will need to use the archive to search for content across the whole collection.

• British Periodicals - These trace the growth and development of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century to the Victorian age and beyond.
• Brill - A multi disciplinary archive of over 80 Journals published before 2000
• Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals Online - Provides access to nearly 100 periodicals for the study of British life in the 19th century - from women, to sport, to children and humour.
• Periodicals Archive Online Collection - 80 full text journals from 1891-2000, covering a variety of subject areas.
• Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals - An index to the authorship of articles, and a bibliography of articles written by each contributor, and using each pseudonym.

Other databases that may be of use can be found on the multi subject database page

Top Tip! Don't forget - should you find that we haven't got the full-text of an article that you would like to access (in print or electronic format) you can make a request through the Inter-Library Loan/Document Supply Service

Abstract & Indexing Databases

Should you want to undertake a more thorough search for research materials/literature try searching the following abstract and indexing databases. These contain a large number of references from a significant number of subject areas. You will need to choose your search terms carefully to be sure of retrieving the best results. Generally you will only find the abstract or executive summary of articles within these databases. Conference papers are also available too.

• Scopus
• Web of Science

News Intelligence

• Nexis - a full-text database of news drawn from over 29,000 sources. These sources include local, regional and national newspapers, newsletters, magazines and trade journals, newswires, broadcast transcripts, company news databases, government documents, legislation and legal journals. Coverage of American papers The New York Times (from 1980 full text and from 1969 abstracts only) and The Washington Post (from 1977) can be found here.

Nexis gives the text of articles only - it does not include photographs or formatting.

Newspaper archives

• The Guardian and The Observer Historical Archive - Every page as published. The Guardian from 1821-2003, The Observer from 1791-2003
• Times Digital Archive - Every page as published from 1785-2011
• New York Times Archive - The New York Times (1851-2008) with Index (1851-1993) provides easily searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time
• Daily Mail Historical Archive - More than 100 years of this major UK national newspaper can be viewed in full digital facsimile format, with advertisements, news stories and images that capture 20th century culture and society.
• Economist Historical Archive - Digitised archive from 1843-2006
• British Newspapers 1600-1900 - 3 million pages of historic newspapers, newsbooks & ephemera. The Burney Newspaper Collection and 19th Century British Newspapers are included in this service.
• Illustrated London News Historical Archive - The entire run of the paper from 1842-2003
• Picture Post Historical Archive - Picture Post’s innovative use of photo-journalism captured the imagination of the British people. In the era before television, it became the window on the world for ordinary people, bringing the major social and political issues of the day into popular consciousness.
• Top Tip! To search across a collection of the newspaper archives that the library holds use Artemis Primary Sources.  From here you will be able to cross search a selection of our newspaper archives.

Film, Television and Sound

• Alexander Street Video Videos, films, documentaries and training materials in history and politics related areas
• Box of Broadcasts enables you to choose and record any broadcast programme from 60+ TV and radio channels.  These are kept indefinitely (no expiry). You can record and catch-up on missed programmes, schedule recordings in advance, edit programmes into clips, create playlists, search a growing archive of material, plus more.
• FBIS Daily Reports, 1974–1996, is a multidisciplinary resource consisting of translated broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the globe.

Ephemera

• John Johnson Collection - the digitised collection of more than 65,000 items drawn from the Bodleians John Johnson Collection of printed ephemera.
• Burney Newspaper Collection - Also includes pamphlets, newspapers and books collected before 1817.

British Labour History Ephemera (Microfilm) - 1880-1926 - A collection of more than 2000 pamphlets, leaflets and other ephemera of British labour history. A full list of the contents can be viewed by searching on the library catalogue. This gives a link to the index which has been scanned. The collection is located in the service area on the first floor of the library.