PLCY 698: Senior Capstone in Public Policy

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Welcome

This guide is designed to help you with your coursework for PLCY698: Senior Capstone in Public Policy. Links provided in this guide will help you discover information useful for selecting and understanding your study area, as well as information for displaying your findings. The guide is divided into several sections:

Research & Poster Design: Provides resources for developing your research and links to the Davis Library Research Hub and The Odum Institute. Also includes links about poster design and data visualization.
Sources of Data: Provides links to resources for finding US Census data, municipal and county data, and neighborhood characterization data.
Online Mapping Tools: Access a variety of online mapping and visualization tools. See example projects using these tools.
Campus Resources: Contains links to UNC-CH campus resources.
Articles & Reports (below): Find scholarly and Think Tank articles to support your project and writing for the course.

Image courtesy of Bucknell Institute for Public Policy and Keep Calm-o-Matic.

Articles & Reports

E-Research by Discipline
Select a subject area from this list to find the top resources for each discipline.

Academic Search Premier
Find information on academic areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education and multi-cultural topics; resource provides access to major popular and scholarly journals with many full-text articles.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: Indexing, 1975-present; Full-text, 1975-present
Agricultural & Environmental Science Database
- Articles plus searchable charts, figures, graphs, maps, photographs and tables representing all major environment topics
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Business Source Premier
Business Source Premier is the major source for scholarly, peer-reviewed journals covering all aspects of business; marketing, management, economics, finance, accounting, international business and more. Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: Varies widely.
EconLit
Major index to economic literature, produced by the American Economic Association. It includes citations and abstracts from 400 major journals as well as articles in collective volumes (essays, proceedings, etc.), books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers. Full text articles are linked if they are available in any other EBSCO database to which we subscribe. Currently there are links to full text articles in approximately 200 journals.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1969 to present
Environment Complete
Journals on topics including agriculture, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, urban planning, and more.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
ERIC
Produced by the Educational Resource Information Center, ERIC provides indexing and abstracting for journal and report literature (1966 to the present) in education and related disciplines.

Note: Many full-text documents from ERIC are currently unavailable. For more information, see here.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1966-present
Google Think Tank Search Engine
Customized Google search of 700 of the most important US and international think tanks. Think tanks are institutions affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and businesses that generate public policy research and analysis.

Access: No restrictions.
PAIS Index
A bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. Includes full-text articles.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1915 - Present
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
Indexes US dissertations from 1861 with full text available from 1997; masters theses covered selectively including some full text.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1861 to present
PsycInfo
Database from the American Psychological Association covering the academic research and practice literature in psychology and related disciplines (medicine, education, social work, etc.) from over 60 countries in more than 29 languages. It provides indexes to journals, dissertations, book chapters, books, technical reports, and other documents from 1887 to the present.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1887 - Present
PubMed
Database of biomedical literature from the National Library of Medicine covering journal articles about medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, biology and public health from 1950 to the present; multiple mobile apps available, provides access to MEDLINE, etc. Includes links to full text of UNC-CH's electronic journal subscriptions.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1957-present
Sociological Abstracts
Database covering over 2500 journals in sociology, both theoretical and applied, and related disciplines including anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Articles in 30 different languages from about 55 countries.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1963-present
Web of Science (ISI)
Opens to search the Core Collection which includes Science; Social Sciences; Arts & Humanities; Conference Proceedings; Book; and Emerging Sources Citation Indexes; Current Chemical Reactions; Index Chemicus. Provides access to BIOSIS, Current Contents Connect, Data Citation Index, Derwent Innovations Index, KCI Korean Citations Index, Russian Citation Index, SciELO, and Zoological Record. An All Databases search option is available.
Web of Science Training Materials

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1955 -

Library contacts

Please contact any of us below (Phil McDaniel, Tia Francis, and Kristan Shawgo) to set up a library consultation or to ask a research/data-related question. We are happy to meet with individuals or groups. If we don't have the expertise your team needs, we will introduce you to one of our librarians who specialize in the academic subject areas and technical skills that will best support your project.