As undergraduate students increasingly rely on the Internet as their primary method for gathering sources, they often overlook the rich and varied resources available to them in library collections. Furthermore, students often lack the sophistication to effectively seek out and use information, an ability generally referred to as information literacy. Political scientists and librarians at one institution sought to address the gap in student information literacy skills by creating and implementing a semester-long library lab component integrated into the required research methods course within the political science department. This article presents the steps taken to implement the lab component, including the student learning outcomes we sought to address. We also focus on the measures we used to assess the impact of the lab component. Students who participated in the lab component demonstrate markedly improved information literacy skills compared to those who did not.

Some scholars of religious interest groups argue that one challenge facing religious groups in their pursuit of political goals is that they are unwilling or unable to compromise, which makes it difficult for them to operate strategically within the secular political environment. An alternate explanation is that the types of arguments religious groups use are multifaceted but do not filter into the public discourse. In this article, I examine the concept of constraint in the context of mediated debates of contentious political issues by looking at the extent to which religious and nonreligious groups differ in their development of argument frames. Compared with nonreligious groups, religious groups do display more evidence of constraint in mediated debates over public policies. Patterns of constraint relate to visibility, framing, group resources, and group purpose. More importantly, however, I find that the patterns of constraint have more to do with journalistic decisions to filter arguments made by religious groups than with the actual rhetorical strategies of religious groups.

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Choosing an American government textbook is a daunting task. A quick search of leading textbook publishers reveals over 40 diff erent texts, each with multiple versions (brief, essential, loose leaf, ebook, and more.) and online "learning experiences." Texts vary widely in approach, tone, supplemental resources, and price. Instructors of introductory American government courses approach the subject from different perspectives; our subfields and methodological approaches vary and the things we value in a text diff er widely. This review does not satisfy the need for a comprehensive comparison of all the texts on the market, but examines fi ve leading texts (see table 1 ), comparing their guiding perspectives, structure, in-text and electronic features for students and faculty, and notable strengths and weaknesses with the goal of identifying appealing texts for instructors who value diff erent approaches.We The People , 10th Edition.