Guides: POL 325: Congress and the Presidency: Home

Congress & the Presidency

Course Guide

Welcome to the course guide for Congress & the Presidency. This guided is intended to provide quick links to top resources to use for research on legislation in consideration before the U.S. Senate. It is a guide in that it points you in the direction of good resources to use for searching for Government information, such as senator press releases, but you will need to spend some time learning how these sites are organized in order to find the best information. Additionally, this guide provides tips and tricks for searching in library databases such as Academic Search Complete, and how to get access to the many popular and scholarly magazines and journals available at Jenks Library.

In the Stacks

NOBLE Catalog Search
Search the Jenks Library catalog for books, eBooks, audiobooks, scores, etc.

LC CLASSIFICATION GUIDE
There are several locations within the stacks where books on political science, and United States law may be found. These may good sources to consult when research the summary/timeline of the ACA bill.

STACK 3

J - Political Science
Subclass JK - Political Institutions & Public Administration - United States

JK1-9993 Political institutions and public administration (United States)
- JK1-9593 United States
  - JK404-1685 Government. Public administration
    - JK501-868 Executive branch
      - JK631-868 Civil Service. Departments and agencies
    - JK1012-1432 Congress. Legislative branch
      - JK1154-1276 Senate
      - JK1308-1432 House of Representatives
    - JK1606-1683 Capital. Public buildings. Government property. Government purchasing
  - JK1717-2217 Political rights. Practical politics
    - JK1758-1761 Citizenship
    - JK1846-1929 Suffrage
    - JK1965-2217 Electoral system
  - JK2255-2391 Political parties
  - JK2403-9593 State government
- JK9663-9993 Confederate States of America

K - Law
Subclass KF - Law of the United States

KF1-9827 Federal law. Common and collective state law and individual states

Getting Started

POPULAR SOURCE MAGAZINES & NEWSPAPERS
Articles published in popular source magazines such as The Atlantic, The Hill, The Nation, or Time and newspapers such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal are great places to start your research. These articles are written for a general audience and will include reference to many primary sources that you can then track down.

Use these as starting places for your research to become familiar with the bill and its timeline.

The following popular source magazines are available online at the library:

The Atlantic
Features articles for the general reader, reports & comments on recent events in history, humor, fiction, poetry, arts & leisure, & book reviews.
The Nation
A journal of politics, economics, education, foreign policy, labor, law and other social issues, literature and the arts.
Available online
The Hill
The Hill is a non-partisan, non-ideological newspaper that describes the inner workings of the U.S. Congress, the pressures confronting policy makers and the many ways in which decisions are made.
Time
National and international news, behavior, books, business, cinema, law, education, environment, modern living, music, nation, press, religion, theater, video and world.

TAKING IT FURTHER
As you look through articles in popular magazines or newspapers pay attention to references to where the authors got their information. Do they mentioned statements by members of Congress? Do they reference the language in Statutes or Bills? Do they refer to policies or laws directly passed by Congress and signed by the President? Go find these sources! It is your job as the research to track the original sources on websites like Congress.gov and Senate.gov.