political science – St. Thomas Libraries Blog
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political science

News & Events, Political Science

Countdown to the 2016 Presidential Election: New Hampshire Primary & Another Round of Debates This Week

preselectionTomorrow, Feb. 9th, the nation kicks off its first primary election in New Hampshire, following Iowa’s Caucuses that were held on Feb. 1st.  Following those results, both the Democrats and Republicans have scheduled live debates. The Democrats’ debate is scheduled to air on Feb. 11th at 8 p.m. on PBS, and the Republicans’ debate is to air on Feb. 13th at 8 p.m. on CBS.

To find out more about election events and the presidential candidates, check out our guide to the 2016 General Election.

Here you will find links to all sorts of useful information including:

  • A quiz to find out which candidate you REALLY support
  • Video and transcripts for all past public debates
  • Fact checking sites that show who is being honest and who is bending the truth
  • A news aggregator showing the top political headlines from sources all around the web

Visit it today and throughout 2016 to make sure you are in the know this campaign season.

Database Highlights & Trials, News & Events, Political Science, Services

Featured Librarian: Linda Hulbert

It’s time to feature another UST Librarian! Linda Hulbert wears many hats around UST Libraries; as both a subject liaison and the Associate Director of Collection Management and Services, she oversees quite a few resources.  Let’s see what she has to say about her favorites…

  1. What departments are you a liaison for? Political science and General
  2. What resource – in your topic area – do you think is the coolest?
    OK!  I love The New York Times Historical.
  3. What’s one cool thing that resource can do?
    I don’t know that it’s the best resource for my students who work in the area – but I do know that it is so cool to have current events and see when the first time certain terms were used – like suicide bomber.  I love the fact that you can look at how the country was looking at events contemporaneously – like the Civil War.  For my political science research, I also really like the papers in CQ Researcher.

Getting to know Linda: 

HNYT

  • What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
    Anything with chocolate, fudge, and caramel
  • Who is your favorite author?
    I have to many: William Styron for Sophie’s Choice; Graham Greene for Quiet American; Maeve Binchy for wonderful warm fiction; Elizabeth George – Lynley mysteries;  Rushdie – Enchantress of Florence.
  • Do you prefer the Minnesota Twins or the St Paul Saints?
    Neither. Baseball, meh – now let’s talk about the Packers!
  • Is there something random about you that you’d like us to know?
    I have a one year old grandson, and one on the way – so fun!

Linda can be contacted for research assistance or classroom sessions by email, or by phone at (651) 962-5016.  See more information about her on the library website.

Database Highlights & Trials

Core Curriculum – Social Analysis

You only need to take one class to fulfill the Social Analysis requirement. And as it turns out, the classes below with the asterisk also fulfill the Human Diversity requirement. That’s a pretty good deal.  Two birds and all that.  The goal of this requirement “is to ensure that all students develop basic abilities to perform social scientific analyses of patterns of social interactions.”  The goal of this post is to ensure that all students have quick and easy access to the resources that will help them in class.

ECON 211, 251, 252

GEOG 111*, 113*

POLS 104

PSYC 111

SOCI 100*, 110*

 

 

News & Events

Student Voting Registration 101

If you haven’t heard yet – guess what?  Today is National Voter Registration Day!

We librarians have compiled some useful information about the 2012 election on our  Vote 2012 guide – please feel free to check it out!  In the meantime, here are some highlights:

Are you registered yet?  Click here to register! 

For college students, it’s oftentimes confusing to determine where and how to register to vote.  But don’t let that stop you!  There are a lot of instructions out there, but it all boils down to this: as a student, you have a constitutional right to register and vote in the place you truly consider to be “home” — whether that’s your parents’ house, your apartment, or your dorm room.

Before you make the important decision about where to vote, make sure you know the rules (and sometimes consequences) of registering to vote in that state.  Here are the rules and regulations for student voting in Minnesota.  You can find information about other states here, or stop by the library TODAY to get registered!

10:00 AM – 2:00 PM & 6:00 – 8:00 PM

@ the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library

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Now that you’re registered…

Have you started thinking about whom you’d like to vote for?  In Presidential election years, sometimes that can get overwhelming, too, with so many candidates, platforms, and simply the larger number of races going on than in other years.

Luckily for us, there are some great resources out there to help people focus more on the issues than whatever commercial is currently airing. One resource that I particularly like is Minnesota Public Radio’s Select A Candidate feature.

 As MPR describes it,

“By answering a series of questions about major issues, you can quickly learn which candidates are most closely aligned with your views. You’ll be able to learn more about each candidate and find out how your results compare with those of others who take the survey.”

Remember to check out our Vote 2012 guide for more information!

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FAQs about Select A Candidate  (from MPR’s website):

Q: Does Select A Candidate tell me who to vote for?

A: Absolutely not. Its main purpose is to introduce you to the candidates who are running and their positions on the issues.

Q: How did you come up with these questions?

A: The questions mirror the campaign. There might be issues we are interested in that haven’t come up in the campaign so far, and those aren’t listed here. Should they come up — and we have a mechanism for your interests to be part of the campaign — they will be added to Select A Candidate. The choices from each question mirror positions that candidates have stated. If no answer is close to your position, do not answer the question, for there is no candidate with that position.

Q: How does the scoring work?

A: Each candidate gets 1 point for each question that matches your answer. If you indicate that an issue is very important to you, the candidate gets 3 points. If you indicate that the issue is of no importance to you, the candidate gets 0 points. In this way, the “match” is weighted to reflect those issues on which you decide elections.

Political Science, Uncategorized

Facts on File World News Digest

I’ll admit it, I’m a geek. I love data and Facts on File World News Digest provides me with mounds of data. By the time you read this, the 2012 London Olympics will be in the history books – or in the World News Digest chronological timeline which gives you such data as the number of visitors – from 380,000 in 1896 (not too shabby) to 6.5 million in Beijing.  I could calculate the increase but you can tell it was a big increase.  It also tells you how many countries participated – from 14 at the Athens olympics in 1896 to 204 in Beijing. The feminist in me wanted to see what percentage of the athletes were women. The change is astounding. In 1896, the first modern olympiad, there were only 241 athletes – none of them were women. In 2008 there were 10,946 athletes and 42% were women.  For the US, title 9 changed everything for women’s sports. I wonder if that has spurred other countries to change their funding mechanisms too so that they can be competitive with the U.S. women.

But this is a scintilla of the information available. There is a searchable encyclopedia and almanc and then in depth articles and information on elections. The curriculum tools will help you choose a subject for a paper and then provide timelines to use to follow your topic. The research topics go from Abortion to Supreme Court nominations. 

There are country profiles, too. And the information goes back to the 1940’s. 

 And includes editorial  cartoons like this one. But not only the cartoon, oh no. It includes discussion questions on the cartoon. Try it out. Worth your time. From Universal

 

Political Science

CQ Researcher and Archives

Looking for original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news? Look no further –well, of course, you should look further than just one resource, but this is a great place to start. There is content back to 1923 and as recent as last week BUT not in every topic. Birth control’s most recent entry is 2005 and high speed train’s is 2011. The CQ Researcher provides in-depth, unbiased coverage of  lots of topics across many disciplines: health, education, economy, etc.

Reports, researched and written by journalists, are substantive, but not too long: they do not fall into the TLDR category (oh yes, we’re on to you!) at about 12,000-words. Each report follows a consistent format with overview and background, chronology and an assessment of the current state of affairs. Pro and con statements will help you look at the positions offered from ‘both sides,’ although most issues have more than two sides and some have only one side. Maybe after reading the content YOU can think of the third or ninth side. There may be maps and charts depending on topic.

Ways to navigate include browsing by topic; using tracker to see when the most recent content on your topic was updated oryou can go directly to the pros and cons section.