Library: Politics, Languages and International Studies: Search the literature

New to a topic?

Reference works, such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias, can be a good place to start.

The Literary Encyclopedia
Provides over 9,000 articles about world literatures including: biographies of major and minor writers; scholarly descriptions of all interesting texts written by these authors; and a variety of descriptive and critical essays on literary, cultural, and historical matters which provide a finer understanding of the social contexts in which this writing was produced.
Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford Reference Online
Collection of reference works published by Oxford University Press covering the Arts, English Language Reference, Modern Languages, Politics and Social Sciences, and Science.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies
A digital encyclopedia that is peer-reviewed and regularly updated.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
A digital encyclopedia that is peer-reviewed and regularly updated.

Finding literature

The following databases are listed from broad subject disciplines to the multidisciplinary.

When you find a reference of interest, click on to find out whether the Library provides access to the full document, either online or within the Library's print collection.
Try Learning at Bath for help with search skills and evaluating what you find.

Oxford Bibliographies: International Relations and Political Science
Well organised research starting points and summaries, identifying key articles, books, journals and authors across a range of topics.

IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences) This link opens in a new window
Find literature relating to anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. Includes articles and books from 1951-

Guide to using IBSS

Scopus This link opens in a new window
Index to journals and conference papers across all subject areas.

Scopus Library Guide

Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new window
Index to selected journals, conference papers and book series across all subject areas.
Web of Science Core Collection consists of the following databases:

Science Citation Index
Social Sciences Citation Index
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Conference Proceedings Citation Index
Book Citation Index
Emerging Sources Citation Index
Current Chemical Reactions
Index Chemicus

Finding literature and other sources: film, languages, international studies

The following resources cover tracing literature to finding video clips and programmes.

Film and Television Literature Index This link opens in a new window
Trace literature covering film and television theory, preservation and restoration, screenwriting, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

BFI InView
Non-fiction film/tv titles illustrating British society from the British Film Insitute archive
Box of Broadcasts National (BoB)
Record and access broadcasts from more than 65 TV and radio channels. Includes an option to create clips. Users can embed content in presentations and Moodle (using BoB links/codes). Note that BOB only permits access from within the UK.

Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Search, browse and stream 24,000+ films, documentaries, tv series and instructional videos from over 700 international suppliers, covering over 100 academic subject areas.

Screen Online
A history of British film & tv which also reflects on Britain's social history. Coverage includes video clips, interviews, stills, posters & press books.

The following resources help trace foreign language materials.

Translation Studies Bibliography This link opens in a new window
An index for the study of translation and interpreting studies. Includes journal articles, monographs, reviews, reference materials, dissertations and unpublished manuscripts.
Cairn.info This link opens in a new window
Francophone publications in social sciences and humanities. Access the international edition of abstracts and selected articles from key French-language journals which have been translated into English.

The following resources cover a variety of literature related to specific countries or themes.

CEEOL Central and Eastern European Online Library This link opens in a new window
Trace humanities and social science scholarly journals, e-books and grey literature from and about Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Includes foreign language publications.
CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) This link opens in a new window
Devoted to international politics and related fields. Includes working papers, policy briefs, and current analysis and commentary, as well as scholarly journal articles from 1991, e-books, course packs and videos. The Economist Intelligence Unit supplies comprehensive country surveys, including in-depth political and economic data and detailed maps.
Teaching materials include original case studies written by leading experts and course packs which can be used in political science classes.
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) This link opens in a new window
This resource provides a comprehensive collection of significant primary documents on modern U.S. foreign, military, and intelligence policy available outside the U.S. government. Collections cover the most critical world events, countries and U.S. policy decisions from post-World War II through the 21st century, providing access to the defining international strategies of our time with more than 143,000 indexed, declassified documents, many published for the first time.

Eldis
Free access to research on international development issues including full-text research and policy documents from developing countries.
European Sources Online

European Views of the Americas 1493-1750 This link opens in a new window
An index to help trace European works that relate to the Americas published before 1750. Created from the bibliography European Americana, a chronological guide to works printed in Europe between 1493 and 1750.

Global Terrorism Database
Open-source, including information and systematic data on domestic, transnational and international terrorist incidents around the world from 1970 through to 2020.

SDG Online This link opens in a new window
Taylor & Francis’ curated interdisciplinary collection of digital content mapped to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The collection includes more than 12,000 book chapters and journal articles, multi-format teaching resources, videos and lesson plans.

Video: SDG Online overview

New books

New books for PoLIS Winter 2024/25

Explore previous new book selections:

New books for PoLIS Autumn 2024

Individual newspaper and magazine titles are included in the library catalogue, but if you want to search across a range of sources, you can explore the following two databases which provide access to 1000s of titles from across the world.

Nexis This link opens in a new window
Covers international news including business, company and industry news. It gives full-text access to the international press, including major world newspapers and the trade/advertising press. IMPORTANT: Please note that business and news databases are licenced for education and research purposes only and cannot be used for University business.
News coverage includes the Financial Times from 1982 with a 30 day embargo. Note that the FT is not in the UK newspapers group search (filter) in the Power Search.

Nexis help

PressReader This link opens in a new window
PressReader provides unlimited access to 7,000 digital newspapers and magazines from 120 countries in 60 languages.

PressReader Guide

A small number of titles are not included in the above databases, please follow the links below.

Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas.
Le Monde
Le Nouvel Obs
Also known as Obs, L'Obs, Le Nouvel Observateur.

Social History Archive This link opens in a new window
British and Irish newspapers from 1700 onwards and social records (such as birth/marriage/death records and the 1921 census).
British Library Newspapers parts 1 and 2 This link opens in a new window
Major London and regional newspapers spanning the 17th to19th centuries.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection This link opens in a new window
English newspapers, pamphlets, parliamentary debates and other materials.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Rare periodicals, including magazines, reflecting a wide range of society and topics.

Search for dissertations, theses and policy documents

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
PQDT Global is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses.
It includes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day together with more than a million full-text dissertations. The database offers full-text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full-text coverage for older graduate works. It also includes PQDT UK and Ireland content.
Overton This link opens in a new window
Global coverage of policy documents on social, economic, education, healthcare and management themes. Overton provides reports, working papers, guidelines, blog posts, transcripts and other sources of information written by policy makers and think tanks. Overton provides reports, think tank outputs, government guidance, parliamentary transcripts and other sources of information written by policy makers. You can also use Overton to track the impact of individual academic authors and articles on policy documents.

Guides to searching Overton

Choose a research method

There are different types of research requiring different methodologies and considerations. Sage Research Methods and the CARMA video library are good starting points. To find additional literature try the library catalogue and databases such as Web of Science and Scopus.

CARMA This link opens in a new window
Research methods video library from the Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis. CARMA contains more than 180 recorded lectures from internationally recognised scholars. Covers a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods in management and organisational sciences.

Please note: registration required.

SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window
E-books, articles, videos and case studies about research methods (quantitative, qualitative and mixed: including data analysis, interviews, focus groups, literature reviews and systematic reviews).

What If the Library does not have the materials you need?

Interlibrary Loans Service
If you find references to books, journals, articles or other materials we either do not stock in print or subscribe to online, you can request these via our Inter-library loans service. If you haven't used the service before you will need to register.

Find archival collections

Archives and Research Collections
The Library manages several unique collections that include rare books, specialist publications and historical records; to view, you are advised to book an appointment.

Politics, Languages and International Studies: Search the literature

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