Find data on special interest groups, lobbyists, and politicians, see who contributes to who and identify interest groups and lobbyists. To learn about contributions, click on Menu and then Interest & Lobbying and select Interest Groups. To find out about Lobbyist select Lobbying.
Among other things, Charity Navigator reports revenue for organizations. See the Browse Category link in the left column to see what kind of organizations are included. There are more 225 public policy organizations reviewed in this database, includes think tanks.
Finding Legislation and Legislative News
The following resources allow you to find legislation, hearings, congressional reports, or legislative news.
Find congressional materials, legislative histories and member profiles. To find who contributed to a Senator or Representative, click on Members & Committees and then Member Records.
If you like to see legislation or reports related to your topic, do a keyword search using terms that describes your policy issue. Results will include hearings, reports, the Congressional Record, and committee prints.
If you have a bill or public law number, click on Congressional Publications and then Search By Number. Enter the citation to your search in the search form and press Search. f you have a bill or public law number, click on Search By Number under Congressional Publications.
Description: Key database for information by and about the United States Congress. Includes full text of bills, laws, regulations, the Federal Register, the U.S. Code, and many other congressional publications. Other features include extensive information about members of congress, the bills they sponsored, how they voted, and financial disclosures. Time Period: 1789 to present Primary Materials: Citations, Legal Materials, Maps, Report
Subject Headings: Law, Social Sciences Scholarly or Popular: Scholarly Sources: Information Included: Full Text, Citations FindIt@BALL STATE: No Print Equivalent: None Publisher: ProQuest Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited
Contains the text of legislation and a legislative history. Enter a citation (e.g. H.R.1) in the Current Legislation box and press Enter. To search legislation from other Congresses, change the Current Legislation drop down box to All Legislation and enter a citation (e.g. 115 H.R. 1370).
Description: Access legislation, committee reports, and the Congressional Record from the 104th Congress (1995) to the present. Member profiles are available from the 93rd Congress (1973) to the present with some profiles from 1929-1972.
Congress.gov is in an initial beta phase with plans to transform the Library of Congress's existing congressional information system into a modern, durable and user-friendly resource. Eventually, it will incorporate all of the information available on THOMAS.gov. Time Period: 2001 to present Sources: Subject Headings: Law, Social Sciences Scholarly or Popular: Semi-scholarly Primary Materials: Legal Materials, Report, Videos Information Included: Full Text, Citations FindIt@BALL STATE: No Print Equivalent: Congressional record, daily digest of the Congress Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited Other:
Good for finding books, articles and government publications. Do a search using keywords that describe your topic. Use the Content Type facets in the left column of the results list to limit the results to books, journal articles or government documents. Use quotation marks around phrases and capitalize Boolean operators (AND, OR NOT).
Description:OneSearch is a tool that cross searches much of the content our databases and other online sources. You can search across many collections in one search box simplifying the resource discovery process. Time Period: 1600 to Present Sources: Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Music, News, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology Scholarly or Popular: Scholarly Primary Materials: Abstracts, Citations, Government Documents, Journal Articles, Books Information Included: Abstracts, Full Text, Citations Print Equivalent: None Publisher: ProQuest Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited
Do a search and look for CRS Report in the left column of the results list to find in depth reports prepared by the Congressional Research Service for congress.
Description: Key database for information by and about the United States Congress. Includes full text of bills, laws, regulations, the Federal Register, the U.S. Code, and many other congressional publications. Other features include extensive information about members of congress, the bills they sponsored, how they voted, and financial disclosures. Time Period: 1789 to present Primary Materials: Citations, Legal Materials, Maps, Report
Subject Headings: Law, Social Sciences Scholarly or Popular: Scholarly Sources: Information Included: Full Text, Citations FindIt@BALL STATE: No Print Equivalent: None Publisher: ProQuest Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited
Contains briefings and reports prepared for Congress but not officially release by the United States Government. Type the name of a law or the policy issue into the search box.
Academic Search Premier indexes hundreds of Public Policy journals and includes to the full text to many. The database has a peer review limit in the left column of the results list as well as the "Times Cited in this Database" feature.
Description: Good database for most research topics and contains lots of full text, peer reviewed articles. More than 18,000 of the journal titles indexed are peer reviewed and almost all of the full text is. Provides searchable cited references for more than 1,000 journal titles so you can easily see what sources a given article cites. Time Period: 1911 to present Sources: Indexes nearly 18,000 journals and magazine and provides full text for more than 8,700. Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Law, Music, News, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology Scholarly or Popular: Semi-scholarly Primary Materials: Abstracts, Case Studies, Citations, Conference Papers, Images, Journal Articles, Magazine Articles, News, Other, Reviews Information Included: Abstracts,Full Text,Citations FindIt@BALL STATE: Yes Print Equivalent: None Publisher: EBSCO Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited
Good for cultural context and background of federal laws and policies. This database finds historical and current articles in many fields, including political science. Select Political Science or other relevant categories under Journal Filter. Use the keywords describing your policy issue and look for relevant results and revise your search as necessary.
Description:JSTOR allows you to search across approximately 2,000 journal titles from more than 50 disciplines. It contains complete backfiles of scholarly journals starting with the first issues, many of which date back from the 1800s. Although the majority of titles do not have the most recent 3 to 5 years available in full text, there are some which have the current issues available.
Note: Additional content has been permanently added to JSTOR, including archived journal collections and primary resources. Searches performed using the databases page link will include results from the additional sources, as will the link above.
Time Period: 19th century to present Sources: Provides the full text for approximately 2,000 journals. Subject Headings: Art & Architecture, Business, Education, English & Linguistics, General, Health, History, Humanities, Law, Mobile, Music, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Science, Social Sciences, Technology Scholarly or Popular: Scholarly Primary Materials: Citations, Journal Articles, Reviews Information Included: Full Text, Citations FindIt@BALL STATE: No Print Equivalent: None Publisher: JSTOR Updates: Daily Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited
Provides the cultural context and background of federal laws and policy issues. Use the keywords describing your policy issue and look for relevant results and revise your search as necessary.
Description: Key database for the field of political science and public policy issues. Includes PAIS Archives 1914-1976. Time Period: 1914 to present Sources: Indexes more than 3,800 journals. Subject Headings: History, Law, Philosophy & Religion, Psychology, Social Sciences (Political Science) Scholarly or Popular: Semi-scholarly Primary Materials: Journal Articles Information Included:Abstracts, Citations, Full Text FindIt@BALL STATE: Yes Print Equivalent: None Publisher: Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Updates: Monthly Number of Simultaneous Users: Unlimited