On 1 October, the Penn Library will bring online CSA World Political Science Abstracts as its principal bibliographic database supporting political science, international relations, and public administration research and instruction.
At the same time, IPSA -- International Political Science Abstracts -- will be dropped from the Penn Library Web. WPSA is a much larger database than IPSA, both in chronological depth and in journal title coverage, and provides almost complete coverage overlap.
| WPSA | IPSA | |
|---|---|---|
| Backfile start | 1975 | 1989 |
| Total records, 2003 | 417,000+ | 91,000+ |
| Annual record adds | 20,000 | 7,400+ |
| 2003 articles (as of 24 Sept) | 3,338 | 176 |
| Journal titles covered | 1,300+ | 900 |
The WPSA backfile combines indexing from two major print indexes, Political Science Abstracts (published by Plenum), and ABC POL SCI (published by ABC-CLIO). WPSA provides indexing with abstracts for books and book chapters, journal articles, and dissertations.
Moving to the CSA Internet Database Service interface provides several helpful features:
- Simultaneous multiple-database searching with other CSA databases: PAIS International, IBSS - International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, EconLIT, and Sociological Abstracts.
- Thesaurus support, with comprehensive "explode" searching.
- Hyperlinking to articles in the SAGE Fulltext Collection for politics and international relations (to be activated in January 2004).
- Saved searches and weekly e-mail alerts.
- PennText article finding support.
- Unlimited simultaneous users.
Please contact the Van Pelt Library Research and Instructional Services librarians for assistance.
For more information:
Lauris Olson, Social Sciences Bibliographer
