Database Search Tips
e.g. public policy AND women
e.g. drug policies OR narcotic policies
e.g. policies NOT procedures
Combining ideas
e.g. public polic* AND (women* OR female* OR feminis*)
(domestic violence OR family violence OR spous* abuse) AND (policy OR policies)
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prioritize your concepts to begin your search with
the most important one
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consider additional concepts to use, if necessary, to
reduce or expand retrieval
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if the database has a thesaurus, either online or
print, check for suggested terms
Other useful databases
Many of the Library's 400+ databases contain material that can be used in public policy research. Below are a few recommended databases to begin researching a topic.
Other subject categories may also have relevant databases, for example: Education, Human Justice, Political Science, Social Sciences, Sociology etc.
- PAIS International with Archives
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An index to journal articles, books, conference proceedings, government documents, book chapters, and statistical directories. Subject areas: agriculture, banking, business, demographics, education, environment, finance, government, health, international relations, law and legislation political science, public administration, social sciences, statistics. - Canadian Major Dailies
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The full text database includes national and leading regional papers such as National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal,Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Regina Leader Post, Vancouver Sun, and the Victoria Times-Colonist. - CBCA Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database
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The Canadian Business & Current Affairs™ Database combines full text and indexed content from all four subsets (Business, Current Events, Education, and Reference). The content comes from a broad range of Canadian sources, with the majority of content in English and hundreds of thousands of full-text articles in French. The resource includes millions of full-text articles and records from 1933 to current, providing content in Canadian current events, business, science and technology, medical, humanities and the arts, and hundreds of topics. - CPIQ Canadian Periodicals (Gale OneFile)
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index to Canadian periodicals - Criminal Justice Abstracts with full textpublic policy issues related to crime and justice
- Academic OneFile Select (Gale)
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Provides access to scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers across disciplines. The database meets research needs in subject areas including the arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and technology
Databases
Below are some databases that are helpful in locating other (non-journal) information related to public policy, including databases about government publications., publications from NGOs, statistical information, etc.
- Canada CommonsAccess to Canadian e-books, health and public policy documents. Formerly 3 separate collections: Canadian Health Research, Canadian Public Policy, Canadian Publishers.
Canada Commons has become the new home for desLibris/Canadian Electronic Library as of May 2022. - Canadian Research Index/Microlog
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An index to monographs and annual publications of lasting reference value from Canadian government and institutional sources. - Conference Board of Canada e-Data Service
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Electronic access to over 8,000 regularly updated indicators that forecast the economic performance of Canada, the United States, the provinces, 27 Canadian CMAs and ten Canadian Industrial Sectors. The Consumer and Business Confidence databases are also included. All students, faculty and staff at University of Regina can freely download the data and tables. - GALLOPThis bilingual government and legislative publications portal is called GALLOPP (Government and Legislative Libraries Online Publications Portal). It contains over 300,000 full-text documents (a majority dating back to 1995) from Canada's federal, provincial and territorial governments.
The resource is not comprehensive or exhaustive but archives information is at http://aplicportal.ola.org/aplicscopenote-eng.asp. This resource is managed by APLIC/ABPAC (Association of Parliamentary Libraries in Canada). - Policy Commons Open access (Limited access)Comprehensive digital library of non-partisan policy research in areas such as business, education, energy, environment, health, human rights, justice, law, population, social conditions, technology, and transportation. Summaries and full texts, videos, reports, briefs, and multimedia of think tank, university, government, and foundation-funded policy research.
- World Bank e-LibraryThe collection consists of over 1,600 World Bank publications and over 2,300 Policy Research Working Papers .
Having Problems?
Not enough material?
- if you have combined several concepts using AND, start again and search only the most important one. Then add the next most important one, and so forth
- look at each concept and see if you can think of additional synonyms (use OR)
- if you are searching free-text, look at your terms carefully and think of ways to broaden your phrasing
Too much material?
- look at a sample of the items retrieved; if a high proportion is not relevant, add another concept
- sometimes irrelevant records may be eliminated by NOTing out a particular aspect or population
- try limiting by language, date, form of material, particular field instead of free-text