Political Science and Public Policy

The Public Policy reading room is located in the Main Library, 2nd floor, south end, Wilkins Building. It includes two collections:

• Public Policy: covers many aspects of political science, research methodologies and the formulation of government policy.
• International Relations: for material on the interaction between states and issues relating to global governance, terrorism and security studies.

Explore is the principal tool to find books, journals and other materials (either in print or in electronic format) held in UCL libraries. From Explore, you will find the location details of the materials you are looking for. A typical shelfmark for a book openly available will consist of the name of a subject (indicating a section of the Library), followed by letters and numbers denoting its classified position on the shelves in that section, e.g. PUBLIC POLICY JN 956 for books on the UK electoral system. Finally, 3 letters will indicate the author or editor of the work.

On UCL Explore, you can look at the results of your search to quickly discover if a book is available in print or/and online: View Online means that the book is available electronically, while Available means that the book is available in print. In some cases a book is available both in print and online.

Consult introductory material or general reference works for a broad overview of your issue or topic, and to identify key concepts, theories and researchers in the field. Introductory material may include:

• subject or discipline specific dictionaries and encyclopaedias 
• handbooks
• companions
• introductions
• guides
• histories

Find introductory material in Explore by combining a topic keyword with one of the material type descriptors above, e.g. handbook deliberative democracy.

These are some examples of introductory material available for Economics in the Library. The list is not extensive, and you should perform your own search to see what else is available in our collections.

A brief guide to finding and accessing e-books via UCL Explore.

Check out our Explore guide to find out more about how to use Explore for your research.

• Explore guide

ReadingLists @UCL is an online service that gives students easy access to materials on their reading lists wherever they are, and allows academic staff to create and update their own reading lists.