Guides & Bibliographies

PolicyFile Guide

Introduction

PolicyFile has interdisciplinary coverage for urban affairs, business, international studies, education, social work, etc. Specific themes listed include: Arms Control, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Democratization, the Department of Defense, Economic Policy, Education Policy, the European Union, Global Economics and International Trade, Health Policy and Health Care Reform, Human Rights, Immigration, Intelligence, Latin America, Science and Technology Policy, State and Local Issues, Terrorism, and Urban Policy. PolicyFile collects data from world renowned public policy think tanks including the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Cato Institute, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Economic Strategy Institute, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institute, Hudson Institute, International Monetary Fund, RAND Corporation, Urban Institute and the World Bank; university research program and publishers. Many of the files are in the PDF format and require the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the articles.

PolicyFile is available to current UT Arlington faculty & students at this webaddress:

eresource.uta.edu/cgi-bin/db-policyfile.cgi

Searching

A truncation symbol in PolicyFile is an asterisk (*), and when this symbol is put at the end of a word, the database will be searched for all of the possible endings--suffixes--for that word. For example, the command "terror*" will have the computer search engine look for all possible endings of this word. It should find, "terrorist," "terrorists," and "terrorism."

Two Boolean operators that are important in finding information are AND and OR. The AND is used to connect two different concepts and the OR is used between concepts that are synonymous. It is critical to put parentheses around a search expression that contains an OR. Here is an example:

(homeless* OR RUNAWAY*) AND (POLICY OR POLICIES)

The first part of this statement will find material about the homeless population and runaways. The second part will look for the words "policy" or "policies". The AND then links the first set with the second. This should be an effective way to look for policy or policies for persons without shelter.

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Last Modified: 2008 Feburary 7
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