POLS 2304 (Huerta) - Fall 2025

On the website you can use the Quick Search, get help, find out library hours, and learn more about how to do research!

Quick Search is the search box on the library's home page. It searches all of the library's digital and physical collections (books, ebooks, scholarly journals, DVDs and streaming video, and more)!

Tips for searching:

• Use quotation marks around phrases. Examples: "bill of rights" "united states"
• Play around with different keywords that reflect aspects of your topic.
• Use limiters to filter by material type. Try the "subject area: political science" limiter if your results need more focus.

Citation help: While the citation tool doesn't offer APSA, it does offer Chicago/Turabian: Author-date, which is close.

• Important: There may be errors in the citation given by Quick Search. Compare the citation you get from Quick Search to the examples provided by your professor, and tweak as needed.

Permanent links: When you find a result you want to use, look for the link icon to get a permanent link.

• You can use this link to get back to the article from anywhere, both on and off campus.

Here is a screenshot from a Quick Search results list, showing where to find the permanent link, citation help, and full text.

In an annotated bibliography, the citations are accompanied by "annotations". Annotations are:

• Brief - Each annotation is about 150 words or so
• Analytical - Each entry summarizes and evaluates a source
• Distinct from abstracts, which are mostly a condensed description of an article