Research Guides: POLS 121: American Politics (HC): Relevant Books

Finding Scholarly Studies in Books

Use the Tripod catalog for your home institution to look for all books (print and digital) owned by your college as well as the print titles at the other two schools.

The following searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books. Note that all these searches are in the Books+Media channel. In examples #1 and 3 below, using keywords [Any Field in Tripod] (rather than subjects) will pick up results from chapter titles.

This link opens in a new windoThis link opens in a new window to look for relevant books owned by Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore.The following subject searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, do a title or keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find some relevant material and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books.

"mass incarceration" AND (policy OR policies) [Keywords]

(imprisonment OR prisoner*) AND corrections [Subjects] AND "united states" [Keyword]

"women's rights" [Subject] AND "united states" [Subject] AND (elect* OR voting OR voter* OR referend*) [Keywords] Limited to 2000-2023 publications

("immigra* OR migra*) AND ("asylum, right of") [All Subjects] Limited to 2010-2023 publications

Tripod Catalog
The library catalog of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges. Use Tripod to find relevant scholarship owned by the tri-college libraries. Change the resource group on the search bar to limit results to specific materials like books and films.
Use the Request link in an item's record to have it delivered to the library of your choice . Note that you need to log into Tripod in order to see the Request link. If you are already in Tripod, use the Sign In link at the top of every page to log in..

WorldCat
A catalog of the holdings of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries. Includes manuscripts, maps, films and sound recordings. Covers works published before 1,000 BC-present.

Borrowing beyond the Tri-Co
1. E-Z Borrow - Request books that are not available in Tripod. It usually takes three days or less for E-Z Borrow books to arrive.
2. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) - Request books not in E-Z Borrow. They can come in as little as four or five days. Also use ILL to request films, dissertations, sound recordings, and other materials.
3. Articles - Request journal articles not available in your college library. You will receive digital copies of the articles in your email sometimes as quickly as the following day.