POLS 3411: Building Peace

Welcome! This page highlights key resources for conducting effective research for the Building Peace colloquium.

This guide highlights key resources for conducting effective information research in political science, including the following: 

• Reference sources to find background information on your topic
• Catalogs and search tips to search for books in print and online
• Catalogs, databases, and techniques for finding a variety of primary sources
• Databases for locating scholarly journal articles, reviews, and policy reports
• Databases and websites for news sources
• Reliable sources of data and statistics
• Legal and government information and analysis
• Selected organizations - international organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - and tips for using resources from policy institutes and think tanks
• Resources for citing your sources and writing in political science
• Tips to to help keep textbook costs down

If you need assistance identifying additional resources, search terms or strategies, please reach out to the

If you need assistance organizing, analyzing, or visualizing data sets, please visit the Empirical Reasoning Center.

Image: UN and Banner of Peace stamp (1986) via Wikimedia Commons.

Consult scholarly reference sources to get an overview of a topic, an introduction to a theory, definitions to discipline-specific terms, and more.