Research: WR151 Dissenting Channels- An American Foreign Policy Tradition: Key databases

Related Guides

Finding journal articles

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (WPSA) This link opens in a new window Indexes and abstracts international relations, political science, and foreign affairs literature. May include references to dissertations, books, or scholarly articles. Some full text included; links provided to BU content. Date coverage: 1975 - present.
PAIS Index This link opens in a new window The PAIS International database covers current public policy issues and areas of potential legislation. Cited articles, books and documents can date back to 1910 and are listed in the original language. While some full text is included, the index primarily links to full text articles available through existing BU subscriptions. Date coverage: Approximately 1910 - present.

ProQuest Politics Collection
PAIS and WPSA combined.

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window Academic Search Premier contains indexing, abstracts and full-text articles for scholarly publications, most of them peer-reviewed. The subjects covered include topics in the social sciences, humanities, general science, education and most areas of academic study. Date coverage varies by publication
Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window Social Sciences Full Text provides access to hundreds of English language journals in the social sciences. About two-thirds of the journals are peer-reviewed. Date coverage: 1983 - present.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window Sociological Abstracts indexes and abstracts the international literature of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews. It also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Forty percent of the content is published outside of North America. Date coverage: 1952 - present.
America: History & Life (AHL) This link opens in a new window Covers the history and culture of the U.S. and Canada from prehistory to present times; indexes journal articles, book titles and chapters, reviews from numerous multilingual sources; all abstracts in English. Date coverage: 1949-present
Web of Science This link opens in a new window Web of Science is one of the core general science databases covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and allows the user to search conference proceedings.
Air University Library Index to Military Periodicals This link opens in a new window Articles and book reviews on military, geopolitical and aeronautical topics, including journals published outside the United States. Date coverage: 1949-

Military and Intelligence Database Collection.
Covers 859 publications, including 302 peer-reviewed titles. 611 title include full-text.
Available courtesy of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).
War and Terrorism Collection 100 subject-appropriate, full-text periodicals that are updated daily.

Overview/ opposing viewpoints databases:

CQ Researcher This link opens in a new window Covers the most current and controversial issues of the day with summaries, pros and cons, bibliographies and more. Provides reporting and analysis on issues in the news, including coverage of issues relating to health, social trends, criminal justice, international affairs, education, the environment, technology, and the economy.

Gale Global Issues in Context
(courtesy of Massachusetts Library System)
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Integrates news, global viewpoints, reference, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics and more in a single search.
Gale U.S. History in Context
Gale World History in Context

Databases with related content:

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Google Scholar provides access to academic literature from many disciplines. The sources include articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions and come from diverse places including academic publishers, online repositories and other websites.
HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) This link opens in a new window The Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) provides citations to the contents of scholarly journals published around the world on Latin America and the Caribbean. Coverage ranges from political, economic, and social issues to the arts and humanities. Date coverage: 1970 - present.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles. Date coverage: earliest issues of each journal up to the most current five years for most publications and to the present for some.

Finding US Documents

ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window Covers abstracts and indexing for hearings, reports, documents and committee prints. Date coverage: 1970-
Digital National Security Archive This link opens in a new window Comprehensive collections of primary documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. Includes many aspects of U.S. foreign policy and military policy from 1945 to the present. Overlaps with U.S. Declassified Documents but has more recent coverage.

Govinfo
govinfo is a service of the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO), which is a Federal agency in the legislative branch which provides free public access to official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government.
CREST (Central Intelligence Agency)
The CREST system is the publicly accessible repository of the subset of CIA records reviewed under the 25-year program in electronic format (manually reviewed and released records are accessioned directly into the National Archives in their original format). Over 11 million pages have been released in electronic format and reside on the CREST database, from which researchers have printed about 1.1 million pages As of January 2017, the CIA published the records of the CREST collection online.
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
An independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents. Most records at NARA are in the public domain, but require an on-site visit for viewing. Items can be identified through the catalog
JPRS documents through DTIC
American Fact Finder
Demographic and economic statistics by county, city, town.
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
The official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Searchable online from Truman (1945) to Reagan (1988); available in print 1861+
Mugar JX 233 E52
Federal Register
The daily journal of the U.S. government. Each day Federal agencies publish documents in the Federal Register, including proposed rules, final rules, public notices, and Presidential actions.

Finding newspaper articles

Nexis Uni (formerly Lexis/Nexis Academic)
1980+ Text-only multidisciplinary database that includes current newspapers and magazines, trade journals, wire services and transcripts. Date coverage and completeness varies by publication, but generally 1980+. see Search Tips for Uni
Access World News (Newsbank)
Text-only Selected full-text of current and archived articles from small-circulation newspapers; broadcast transcripts, and news magazines. Easy-to-use interface that can be filtered by geographic location and/or media type. (Available through Aug 2020 due to grant funding.)

PressReader This link opens in a new window Full-page images and article images with searchable full text of international newspapers and magazines from the last 90 days, in the original language. Includes computer-generated translations to English and other languages for some publications.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window Full text articles from newspapers and periodicals published by ethnic, minority and native presses in the U.S. Includes both historic publications, starting in 1959, as well as current ones.
International Newsstream This link opens in a new window International, searchable, full text coverage of selected newspapers. (Text only; does not include images, charts.) Date coverage: 1977 - present.
Access World News This link opens in a new window Find full-text current and archived articles on issues, events, people, government and more. Includes local news, editorials, announcements and other sections from more than 10,000 sources.

New York Times 1985+ Text-based with some video, audio content (Gale database). Provided courtesy of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners

Boston Globe 1980+ This link opens in a new window Date coverage: 1980 - present. Searchable, current article text from the Boston Globe (no images, illustrations or charts included). For earlier editions use Boston Globe (ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
Factiva This link opens in a new window Provides worldwide full text coverage of local and regional newspapers, trade publications, business newswires, press release wires, media transcripts, news photos, business-rich websites, investment analyst reports, market research reports, country and regional profiles, company profiles, historical market data. Date coverage varies by publication.