Saskatchewan Politics Research Guide: Academic Journals

When researching Canadian elections in these databases it is best to use a variety of limits for focussing your search.

1)  Time period.  If you are researching the 2008 election there is little point in looking at articles from 2007.

2) Search by Keyword rather than fulltext.  By doing this you will have more focussed results.

3) Use Boolean logic.  Eg. New democrat or ndp

4) Use Wildcards.  New democrat* will bring back results for New Democrat, New Democrats, New Democratic etc.

5) Use geographically specific terms as keywords.  Liberal Party and Canad* (keywords) will eliminate many of the articles focussed on the Australian Liberal Party.

Researching Saskatchewan using academic journals will usually bring up few results if you look directly for research on this province.  For example if you are researching Social media in Saskatchewan elections you may well end up with no results at all.  In cases such as these it may be helpful to use newspapers, magazines and (especially if you were writing a thesis) interviews of bloggers for instance.  Then, use the peer reviewed literature to bring up results on the use of social media in other jurisdictions in like countries (Australia, the United States, Western Europe).