• CIA World Factbook - concise background with some statistics
• Europa World Yearbook - Clapp Reference JN1 .E85 - more thorough overviews of the political, economic, and social situation for each country of the world, with some basic statistics
• ** Area Handbook Series - Library of Congress - in-depth country profiles - some are more recent than others
• ** Religious affiliation, broken down by country, 1985-2004 -- United Nations Demographic Yearbook
• ** LexisNexis Statistical > Abstracts >
  • search "religious affiliation" and [your country]
  • look up the publication mentioned in our library catalog (e.g., Statistical Yearbook of Latin America)
    
• ** Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Culture - on trial through October 18 only! has excellent bibliographies
• Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion - Clapp Reference BL65.P7 E53 2007
  
• Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion - Clapp Reference BL 458 .E53 1999

Use the Wellesley library catalog to find books, videos, and journals (not individual articles).

• use a keyword search for simple concepts
  
  
• find a book that looks useful, click on the title, then click on the Full Record tab to see the subject terms
• click on each subject term to find "more like this"

Some useful subject headings for this topic:

• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Sociology
• Hijab -- Islamic clothing
• Islam and Secularism
  
  
• use advanced search for more complex searching
  
  
  • use synonyms to find all the ways your topic might be expressed (religious OR spiritual OR belief)
  • use truncation to save time (islam* for islam, islamic, islamist, etc.)
  • combine multiple concepts using AND for best results (women or gender or female) AND (clothing or dress or veil)
  • enclose your search terms in parentheses!
    
    
• If our copy is checked out, click on to the right of the title to request a book quickly (2-4 days)
• Search WorldCat to find material we don’t own, click on and request through ILL (interlibrary loan)
• In a hurry? Get a BLC card and borrow the book directly from a nearby library

tips:

• to find the full text of an article, click on the title for the full record, then look for the Find It! @ Wellesley button to link to the full text (online if we have it, or in print, or to the Interlibrary loan request if we don't own the journal)
  
  
• do your searching early and place interlibrary loan requests NOW for books and articles we don't have -- then, when you're ready to start reading and writing, you'll have a great selection of materials. If you wait, your choices will be very limited.

most useful databases

• PressDisplay - Archived issues of over 200 newspapers from over 55 countries in their original format from the past 45 days. Compare news from several countries to get a different perspective.
  
  
• LexisNexis Academic US & foreign papers, 1980s-present
  • tips: use the General tab, not News (works better at the moment)
  • select Major US & World Publications or Major World Publications (non-English)
  • further narrow your search - sort by Subject (or language, etc.)
    
    
• BBC Monitoring (Lexis) – foreign news broadcasts in translation
  • select Major US & World Publications and enter your search terms
  • when results are displayed, select Transcripts from left sidebar
    
    
• News & Newspapers Online - news services worldwide
• Newslink - international
• IPL Online - international
• NewsDirectory.com - English-language, international media

• ** World Values Survey
• ** Pew Global Attitudes Project - Pew Research Center
• Polling the Nations - polls and surveys both domestic and international, 1986 to present
  • tip:select Search by Entering Search Criteria
  • enter a simple keyword in Full-text Search- keep it very simple!
  • add a country in Universe
  • click on the question to see the full text, response, polling sample, etc.
  • export any results of interest
    
• ICPSR: Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (on campus access only)
  • archive of downloadable datasets that can be used with statistical software packages - raw data, not summary results

Criteria to keep in mind when choosing and using soures:

• Accuracy - Does the author cite her/his sources and are they legitimate?
• Authority - Who wrote the source? Are they credible?
• Objectivity - Does the author have a bias, political or commercial or persuasive?
• Currency - Is this information new or based on outdated sources? Can you tell how current it is?

Wellesley College Library • WCIS • Laura Reiner • last modified:October 3, 2007