Looking for policy documents and researchers mentioned in them?

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy

Overton reports to be the world’s largest collection of policy documents, parliamentary transcripts, government guidance, and think tank research. The web-based application allows researchers to search and browse policy documents and the researchers and institutions to which they are linked. Overton collects data from 180+ countries and indexes over six million documents from 31,018 organizations in 1,593 policy sources to help users find documents and researchers and measure their influence on government policy.

The search interface offers three ways to find policy data:

• Policy documents – search over 6 million policy documents by topic and keyword
• People – search over 7 million people cited by policy
• Scholarly articles – search over 4 million books and articles cited in policy

For trial access until Sept. 30: Register at Overton using your Villanova email and pick a password. All search features in the trial are active but access to full results is limited.

Search choices include keyword, phrase, Boolean, and proximity searches. Results can be filtered by funder, country, publication, institution, and other criteria. Policy searches can be saved and exported to MS Excel & MS PowerPoint. Author and Scholarly Article results can be exported to CSV. Search alert set up is also available. Search shortcuts linked to Villanova University can also be customized for an organization.

Overton organizes documents into categories and analyzes them to extract key terms and topics and then maps connections within them. Fullest coverage is provided from 2015 to present. Coverage is less comprehensive from 2000 to 2015, due to the nature and prevalence of policy documents over time.

For more information visit https://help.overton.io/article/video-getting-started-with-overton/ and https://help.overton.io/article/what-is-overton/.

A link to the collection is also available on the Falvey Library Databases A-Z list.

Merrill Stein is Political Science Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

Scholars interested in the early modern period (1450-1850) will appreciate the Encyclopedia of Early Modern History for its interdisciplinary approach, its focus on global connections, and its unique central European viewpoints and voices. Translating the Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit into English for a wider audience was a worthwhile, but difficult project that is still in progress. The Library offers trial access to the partial translation of the Enzyklopädie. At this time entries up until “La” have been published by Brill and can be consulted in English. Articles not yet translated are already cross referenced and will be published shortly.

Although much of the scholarship referenced in this publication is in languages other than English, there are nevertheless a fair amount of English language sources cited. Indeed, one of the strengths of the Encyclopedia is the network of international scholarship it presents.

Most articles are concise and to the point. They are cross referenced with a core of in-depth key articles that deal with overarching concepts such as knowledge, culture, nationalism, race, colonialism, the environment, the Atlantic world, and the everyday world to name just a few of the over one hundred key articles. While most article titles are translated into English, in some cases editors decided to retain German terminology for the sake of clarity (e.g., Bildungsbürgertum and Frauenzimmer).

“The Castle of Batavia” by Andries Beeckman 108 x 151.5 cm, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1901318

Trial access is available until November 8. Contact Jutta Seibert to recommend this resource for the permanent collection.