LibGuides: Gender public policy and public administration: Search strategies &amp; suggestions

Best bets

These databases contain a lot of public policy and gender content to explore.

Canadian Public Policy Collection Primary research and opinion publications from Canadian public policy institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks, university research centres and other public interest groups.
Google Scholar Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
LGBT Life with Full Text LGBT Life is the premier resource to the world's literature regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Contains indexing and abstracts for LGBT -specific core periodicals. Includes current coverag, as well as deep backfiles for key publications - many back to the first published issue. Examples of publications indexed back to their inaugural issues include The Advocate (1967), Journal of Homosexuality (1974) and Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review (1994).
PAIS International and Archive This resource covers issues in the public debate through selective coverage of a wide variety of international sources including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more. PAIS International is the current file covering 1972 to present, and PAIS Archive includes the content from printed volumes published 1915-1976.
Women's Studies International Women’s Studies International, produced by NISC, covers the core disciplines in Women’s Studies to the latest scholarship in feminist research. Coverage includes more than 871,000 records and spans from 1972 and earlier to present. This database supports curriculum development in the areas of sociology, history, political science & economy, public policy, international relations, arts & humanities, business and education. Over 2,000 periodical sources are represented.

Browsing for books using controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabulary, like the Library of Congress subject headings, is used by libraries to organize books for retrieval. Basically they identify what the book is about. The following is a list of Library of Congress subject headings that will help you explore books in the Libraries' collection. I have hyperlinked some of the more relevant ones here so that you can browse instantly, if you wish.

Library tip: Most academic libraries employ Library of Congress subject headings for cataloguing and organizing information, so you can use these to search just about any library catalogue.

Here's a screenshot of how these subject heading searches display, using the Equality Government policy Canada example:

Constructing a keyword search

To find literature related to gender and public policy, start your search query with those terms, then add additional keywords to your search string to focus on particular aspects.

e.g.

gender AND "public policy" AND [enter additional search terms to identify what aspect of gender you’re interested in]

gender AND "public policy"

gender AND "public policy" AND theory

gender AND "public policy" AND canada [you can add a geographic term to your search to focus on a country, for example]

gender AND policy issues [try other phrases that might express policy topics]

etc....

Keyword searching works the same whether you're searching the Internet using a search engine, or a research database for articles, or the Libraries' book catalogue. Some searches may work better than others, so it's a good idea to try a few different searches, and it's a good idea to search a few places. Think of the terminology or language used by the authors of your course readings -- this will give you clues around which search terms to use.

Some "best bets" for public policy content are listed on this page.

How a search in one of the research databases might look in real life

Here is an example of an actual search run in the Women's Studies International database to give you a sense of how you would run your own search. It also shows how many of our databases will rank your results -- usually the default is by relevance.