Political Science Module

     I thought it was a really valuable exercise reading through the research competencies outlined by the ACRL. These competency lists can be immensely important not only for measuring your own competency, but for how much of your own research skills and methods you impart on your patron. Part of being a reference librarian means teaching your patrons how to do better research. Being mindful of these skills and values and how you communicate them to patrons while assisting them in research will make each reference transaction more meaningful and valuable.

     One of the core competencies for any sort of information literacy is knowing which kind of source to use at what time. Very often, students assume that they absolutely must use a scholarly journal for their research, even when it is not appropriate. For instance, I had a student today ask if several different journals she wanted to use were considered professional web sites. It turned out that several of those journals did have professional websites accompanying them that she was able to use. In the case of current events and political science, I think CQ Researcher is a great resource that doesn't fit into the usual "scholarly journal" kind of resource that many students automatically assume they need. Especially for looking at issues, CQ Researcher offers valid arguments for and against many issues in the news today. Pointing out resources like this and others that do not fit the bill of scholarly journal is important for all disciplines because information comes in so many different forms.

      I chose to read one of the more recent articles in our prompted search in the International Political Science Abstracts. Hammond, Jen, & Maeda (2007) studies the relationship between the organizational hierarchy of governments and library catalogs. The research is quite interesting, although it struck me as a bit abstract, or even "theoretical" (it was published in the Journal of Theoretical Politics). Interestingly enough does give some insight into how political science researchers (or at least the three authors) approach research at the library. The entire basis of the article is to explore the overlap of "books on the shelf" next to a target book in two libraries using different classification systems. The findings show that there is very little overlap between two universities using Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal. This is all well and good, but the authors make the assertion that because of this, researchers will not have access to the same materials. This would be true only if their research method only involved one catalog search and shelf browsing. The authors go further to compare this phenomena to intelligence gathering in our government being spread out among different offices and jurisdictions. While I cannot say that I consider the authors' findings particularly applicable to political science, it is interesting to see this kind of abstraction in a scholarly journal. My only political science class was almost all abstraction, although it was an introductory course on political thought.  

     My undergraduate background was in social geography, and some of my professors employed a fair amount of abstraction as well. This is a far cry from the type of research done by other researchers which is hard, fact or evidence based research. Clearly, political scientists also use scientific and statistical evidence. I am just interested how the scientific research differs from political scientists more interested in the broad abstract concepts, which are obviously still important and relevant. I think if I had some free time I would consider taking an MIT course (or some other MOOC) that discusses political science research methods. These few looked promising:
 http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/political-science/17-869-political-science-scope-and-methods-fall-2010/index.htm
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/political-science/17-878-qualitative-research-design-and-methods-fall-2007/
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/political-science/17-960-foundations-of-political-science-spring-2005/

I had never thought of taking a free online class in order to make myself more helpful to potential clientele. If I were working for an institution that would pay for furthering my education, I would love to take classes in areas that would give myself a better understanding of the subjects I served as a liaison to. MOOCs offer an easy alternative.  

     I was happy to stumble across this LibGuide by Rick Lazenby at Temple University (http://guides.temple.edu/political_science). I will definitely use this a model for any subject guides I create in the future. So many of the ones I see simply list a few sources and give a brief description of the materials found inside. This is appropriate for an overall list of the resources available at the library, but for a subject guide to really provide value, it should explain how to use the resources. Lazenby's guide succeeds in doing this. For instance, he walks the reader through the different kinds of sources (books, journals, magazines, etc.) and when each source would be appropriate. He also covers where to find poll results, government documents, and news sources, and discusses the nuances of each of these source types.

     UCSanDiego provides this libguide with a variety of statistical and data sources (http://ucsd.libguides.com/content.php?pid=62534&sid=567117), many of which are available to the public. It is nice to see universities that indicate and promote the use of non-proprietary sources.

     I have not used it at all, but have been seeing it mentioned in various places around the web, I think it might worth mentioning here: http://www.r-project.org/. The R-Project is an open source software and computer language written for statistical analysis. From what I can tell, it is quite powerful. There is also R Revolution Analytics, which is based on R and seems to provide more support. http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/downloads/. This software and many other open source options might be useful for political scientists, as well as many others in the social science world. I am a big fan of open source software and always try to plug for it when I can.



Hammond, T. H., Jen, K. I., & Maeda, K. (2007). "Learning in hierarchies: An empirical test using      library catalogues." Journal of Theoretical Politics, 19(4), 425-463. doi:10.1177/0951629807080776.