Points of View Research Guide

This guide is to help you identify sources which provide different viewpoints or opposing views on various topics.

Opposing Viewpoints Series
Each volume in this series is a collection of writings reprinted from newspapers, magazines, and journals, with pro and con points of view on a particular topic or issue.  You can find a complete list by clicking on the title link above.  To find books in the series on a specific topic, do a keyword search in the Library Catalog using the terms opposing viewpoints and your topic.
            Example:  "opposing viewpoints" and abortion
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center* provides online access to much of the information in this series. (2 simultaneous users)

Open CRS --Reports from the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service on topics of current interest.

Contemporary World Issues 
Each volume in this series considers a particular topic.  You can find a complete list by clicking on the title link above.  To find books in the series on a specific topic, try a keyword search in the Library Catalog, using the terms contemporary world issues and your topic.
            Example:  "contemporary world issues" and pornography

CQ Researcher.  Library has print issues from 1991+   Reference H 35 E352 
Each issue of the CQ Researcher covers a different topic.  This is a good source for gaining background information on a topic as well as gathering different points of view.  Each issue presents questions about the topic, gives background material, gives opposing viewpoints, reprints some articles on the topic, and provides a bibliography for further reading.

History in Dispute.  Reference D 20 H56 2000
Each volume (2000+) presents, in a pro-con format, different perspectives on major historical events drawn from all time periods and from all parts of the world.

Pro-and-Con Online*
Full text database of the recent years of the following monthly periodicals.  Each issue gives pro and con views on a particular topic. 
    Congressional Digest.  Library has print issues from 1921+    Periodicals JK 1 C65
            It is indexed in Readers Guide Retrospective* from 1921 to 1982.
            It is indexed in Readers Guide Abstracts from 1983 to the present.
     International Debates.  Library has print issues from 2004+
    Supreme Court Debates.  Library has print issues from 1998+   Periodicals KF 4546 A3 S86

Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Available on LexisNexis*, these surveys show public opinion on a variety of topics.  You may do a keyword search to find polls on your topic.  To get to it, click on LexisNexis*, choose NEWS from the top red bar.  Then look at the right side and choose Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

The Left Guide.  Reference HS 2321 L44 1996
The Right Guide.  Reference HS 2321 R54 1997


Periodicals

Many news and opinion magazines try to give differing viewpoints.  Others promote the ideas or philosophy of a particular group or institution.  The following list of periodicals with their particular political or cultural slant will help you find articles with different views.  You must remember that these are generalizations only and that the positions of some these periodicals may be liberal on some issues and conservative on others. 

**The point of view listed here comes from Magazines for Libraries by William Katz or the University of Washington Libraries Web site.

Web Sites

Conservative Organizations.  List prepared by the Politix Group.
Liberal Organizations.  List prepared by the Politix Group.
Links to Policy Sites and to Sites that Represent Different Perspectives. 
                California State University-Dominguez Hills.
Multi-Issue Politicized Sites.  List prepared by University of Washington Libraries.
Society/Issues/Multi-issue publications.  DMOZ: Open directory project.  Choose from a list of
                Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive and Left.


 

Items marked with * are limited to use on the Truman State University network.

 

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Last Modified 16 June 2008