PA 503 - Politics, Policy and Public Management - Fall Semester 2007
Professor Brint Milward
For Further Information Contact:
Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration
and Government Documents Librarian
520-621-4867
Politics, Policy and Public Management - Course Syllabus
Also, see Government Documents page for more links and sites.
Do You Know the Difference Between Primary and Secondary Sources?
Primary Sources: First-hand account of an event; an original work
Examples:
- Autobiographies, letters, e-mails, diaries, speeches, interviews
- Documents, laws, treaties
- Raw data that has been collected
- Works of literature, art, music
- Newspaper accounts of events by an eye-witness
Secondary Sources: A summary, interpretation, or analysis of another's work; a second-hand account
Examples:
- Articles, books, biographies which summarize, interpret the original statements, documents
- Encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks
- Analyses of statistics
- Criticism -- of literature, art, music
- Secondary accounts of events by those who compile and synthesize the original accounts
How to Begin:
1. Topic/Program Selection:
- Information about Funded Programs and Agencies: Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance
2. Legislative Process:
3. Finding Resources:
A. Primary Full-Text Sources:
- CIS Congressional Universe - tip sheet (after 1969) before 1969 (see categories under Advanced Search in CIS historical documents)
- Historical Documents (LC)
Federal Government Official Sites:
B. Implementation of Public Law Sources
- Executive Branch Resources
- This sites includes:
- Code of Federal Regulations (CFR): Current regulations
- Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR): A regularly updated, unofficial, non-legal edition of the CFR, created in partnership with the Office of the Federal Register
- Federal Register: Notices and regulations (proposed, new, amended)
- List of CFR Sections Affected (LSA): Index of updates to regulations
- Regulations.gov: Find, review, and submit comments on Federal rules open for comment
- Unified Agenda: Developing or recently completed regulations
- GAO Comptroller General Decisions
GAO Comptroller General Decisions contains decisions and opinions issued by the Comptroller General in areas of Federal law such as appropriations, bid protests, and Federal agency rulemaking. The database is updated within two business days after decisions have been released. Documents are available as ASCII text and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Available from 1995 forward.
- GAO Reports
The GAO Reports application contains reports (“blue books”) on audits, surveys, investigations, and evaluations of Federal programs conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). All published reports, testimonies, correspondence, and special publications are included. Products that are restricted or classified are not included. The current fiscal year’s database is updated within two business days of a report’s release. Reports are available as ASCII text and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. 1995-2004 GAO Reports and also includes limited reports from 1993 and 1994.
Tutorials and Guides:
- Lawmaking in the US (Univ. of Ill.)
- U.S. Legislative Information Sources on the Internet (Bowling Green St. U.)
- Public Policy Matrix and legialtive Process (U. Michigan)
- Legislative History Tutorial (U. Michigan)
- Finding Legislative Resources in the UA Library
- Lexis-Nexis Tutorial
C. Secondary Sources:
- Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Weekly
- America's Newspapers (Newsbank)
- CQ Supreme Court Collection
- CQ Researcher Plus Archive
- PAIS
- PAIS Archive -(finds contemporary articles from news magazines and other types of magazines, 1915-1976)
Related Full-Text Articles from Electronic Journals:
JSTOR
Back issues of full-text articles from selected journals relating to this area.
Project Muse
Includes current full-text articles from Journal of Democracy, Human Rights Quarterly, and World Politics.
Washington Post, The Hill, and The Roll Call
Search background articles on Congress and the executive branch by clicking on "Inside Washington."
Other General Encyclopedia:
Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy
D. Court Rulings and Cases:
4. Creating Citations:
See under Help in CIS Congressional Universe.
RefWorks - RefWorks allows individual users from the UA to create your own personal bibliographic database, each user will need to set up their own profile by creating a unique username and password
Avoiding Plagiarism: www.library.arizona.edu/help/tutorials/plagiarism/index.html