PSCI 303: FRANCIS Search Strategies
FRANCIS is Williams College Library's online catalog which you
search to find resources that are owned or provided by the Library.
If you are just beginning your exploration of topics for this course, try browsing with these SUBJECT HEADING searches:
African American Intellectuals
African Americans Politics and Government
African Americans - Civil Rights
African Americans - Economic Conditions
African American Clergy Political Activity
United States Race Relations Political Aspects
Racism Political Aspects United States
For this class, you may benefit most from using KEYWORD searches. Use the Advanced Search for greater precision; use keywords that are meaningful to your topic; think of synonyms for your terms and use them as keywords. Some examples:
activis* and (black or "african-american")
(black or race or "african americans") and religio* and politic*
Some of your keyword searches may retrieve large numbers of records;
when that happens, it may be useful to "date sort" your results by
reverse year. This option appears after a search is run. It's
sometimes very convenient to get a chronological perspective on
scholarship in a certain area.
If an item that you need is checked out, just click 
to request that book from one of our partner libraries.
You can look at the table of contents online for many of the newer titles in our collection; just click 
to view this content.