Public Administration

Posted: December 10th, 2013

The Research Question is : How can the government and mental health professionals intervene to ensure that cases of mental illness among the poor reduce?

Journal 4
For this week, look at the historical archives hosted by the NSC library. They are an excellent research tool that I use a lot in my own work.

Depending on your topic, you should look at some or all of these databases:

African American Archives
American Revolution Archives
The American Periodical Series
The Gerritsen Collection-Women’s History Online, 1543-1945
The Historic New York Times
The Historic Los Angeles Times

Please read the small lecture and watch the video in the learning module about finding historical documents. Then, find two articles that relate to your research question in some fashion. Try to use multiple databases if it is possible.

Keep in mind that you may not be able to find a historical article that speaks directly to your research question. However, you should be able to find something that provides some kind of historical context to your work. If that fails entirely, you can simply find articles that match your concentration. However, make sure you have searched carefully before selecting this more general option.

For each article, write a short (250 word) response. In this response, you may want to consider how the article could be used in an academic paper. What could the article be used to support?
In this age of digital information, physical books are slowly being replaced with electronic counterparts. For many, this is a little sad – books are really wonderful sources of information. However, it is still possible to get the benefits of books with the ease of digital access through eBooks – and they are becoming more popular each year. For this week, please read the short learning module on eBooks.

Once you are comfortable looking for eBooks, I want you to find:

1. An eBook from eBrary or Ebsco Books with a section that relates to your research question. Importantly, you do not have to find an entire book on your question – just a small section that may contain helpful information.

If you dig through all the eBooks and can find absolutely nothing that relates to your question, simply try to find something that relates to the discipline you are using. For example, if nothing relates to your topic, but your discipline is psychology, simply try to find a book with information related to psychology in it. Try to get as close as you can to your research question.

Once you have found a section in the book that you want to use, write a small response to it here. As always, make sure your response is academic and objective. Your response should be at least 250 words.

2. Look for a book on Google Books that might help with your research question. Please respond to a small section of the book here. Also, please respond to your experience with Google Books. Were you able to find the information you needed? How much of the text in the book you found was unavailable? What are the advantages and disadvantages to using Google books? Please answer in at least 500 words.