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Finding Information on Immigration |
Catalog • Other sources for government information • Legislative Information • Periodical Articles • Organizations
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Finding Information on Immigration |
Catalog • Other sources for government information • Legislative Information • Periodical Articles • Organizations
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Finding Books and Government Publications in the Catalog
Simply entering the word "immigration" will produce too many results to be useful. A better strategy is to add another concept in the Keyword search box. For example—statistics, policy, legislation, law enforcement, etc.—or a geographical term. Use Advanced search to be able to sort by date or relevance. To find the publications of a specific agency, add the agency's name, or part of it, as a search term, in quotes. For example: "Government Accountability Office."
When you search by keyword you are using an uncontrolled vocabulary. The search program will look for the word(s) you type no matter where they appear in a cataloging record: title, author, subject, contents, etc. All material in the Catalog is also described using a controlled vocabulary of Library of Congress subject headings. Some basic headings useful for finding material on immigration are:
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Many of these terms can be further subdivided by geography, dates, or sub-concepts. If you want to search only these subject headings, choose the Subject field on the main or Advanced Search screens.
In addition to tangible books and government publications, you can also find records to electronic-only government publications and books in the catalog. These titles will either have no "location" noted in the Catalog, or will have "Blume Online Service" given as the "location." Government publications, as well as some other freely available electronic material, can be accessed from on or off-campus without any sort of St. Mary's authentication. For electronic books available through NetLibrary, you must create a free account with this service through an on-campus computer. Then you may access these titles from off-campus by using your NetLibrary login. For more information on finding electronic books, check this information page.
Other sources for Government Information
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GPO Access. Most current and complete site for bills, includes laws back to 1995.
Thomas (from the Library of Congress). Best for keeping track of current Congressional activity.
Schedules includes floor activity and hearings schedule.
Hearings transcripts (which also include any supporting or background material provided by witnesses) are available in paper or microfiche in the Library, but usually not for several months after the hearing. For the last several years, records in the Catalog for these items have included links to online full-text of the hearings; again, however, not until several months after the hearings were held. GPO Access has links to hearings, and videos of some hearings, as well as somewhat more timely transcripts, may be found on the websites of the individual committees. Here is a good listing of committees and their membership and websites.
Here is a guide to the publications (print and online) which trace the path taken by legislation from bill to signed law. In addition, this section of our Guide to Congress, Laws, and Regulations includes links to other sources to help you trace the legislative histories of bills and laws. A good general guide (with links to follow up on the steps) is Tying It All Together: Learn about the Legislative Process (from the House of Representatives). Some other good guides:
For help with tracking state legislation, the National Conference of State Legislatures offers this compilation of links which follow state lawmaking in a variety of subject areas.
Finding Periodical Articles: journals and newspapers
Academic Search Complete is a good, general database that covers all subjects and includes a substantial number of full-text articles directly attached to their citations in the database. As with the Catalog, simply entering "Immigration" will result in the retrieval of too many citations to be useful. Add another concept word—such as statistics, policy, legislation, law enforcement, etc.—or a geographical term. Or choose a related yet more specific term, such as "drug trafficking," "border security," or "illegal aliens."
Another tip for help you find only substantial, academic articles, is to check the boxes for Scholarly (peer-reviewed) Journals or References Available. You can even stipulate the minimun number of pages you want the articles to contain. To only retrieve results with full-text links, check the Full Text box, but be aware that you might be missing good material if you use this limitation. If the full text of the article is not available in the database, we might have the journal in print on the First Floor of the Library. Or you can request the article from another library on Inter-Library Loan.
A related database, using the same search interface, is the Military and Government Collection. This database includes not only journal articles but selected government reports as well. You can search both Academic Search Complete and the Military and Government Collection simultaneously by checking the appropriate boxes in the drop-down menu under the search term spaces. Another useful feature of these databases is MyEBSCOhost, which allows you to save search results and articles from session to session, and on different computers. Remember that you can search these subscription databases from off-campus. Here is a FAQ page with information on how to log in.
If you have a citation for an article, obtained through a database or from another source, such as a bibliography or list of references, you can determine whether we have access to the journal through our Periodicals List, available through a link on the main Library webpage entitled Locating Journals. This can be a faster way of retrieving the full text of an article, if it appears in a journal we have access to through one of our databases.
Newspapers can be valuable sources of information on immigration, especially as it relates to a particular area. You can see if we have access to a particular newspaper through our Periodicals List. The best index source for newspaper articles, as well as other material, is Lexis/Nexis, which includes foreign newspapers and wire services. Elibrary Curriculum also indexes newspapers. And we have another database—InfoTrac Custom Newspapers—containing nothing but newspaper articles; and it includes some important titles like the Houston Chronicle. Many newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and Laredo Morning Times, are freely available online (sometimes a registration is required). The San Antonio Express-News is also one of these free online papers, and is indexed in Elibrary and Lexis/Nexis.
A librarian at the University of Michigan has developed this handy Public Policy Matrix which has been adapted for use by our community. It traces the evolution and development of policy from the articulation of a problem through the evaluation of the solution. At every step, there are tips on where to find information.