Identifies resources and search strategies to access relevant items for the VCE Global politics - Global actors & challenges
In this area of study you will examine the causes, consequences and significance of a global issue that transcends national and regional boundaries. Consider the range of factors that may cause conflict, whether these be social, political, economic, environmental, ideological, cultural or technological. Inestigate the effectiveness of the institutions available to address these issues, including international laws and the global institutions that facilitiate cooperation between the global actors. Think about the causes of the issue, which global actors are involved, how effective their responses are in addressing the issues, and what the implications of the response are.
Your global issue will be chosen from the following:
For definitions and overviews of ethical issues and definitions of key terms:
For treaties and conventions under the auspices of the United Nations, search the UN Treaty Collection website.
To search our eBook collection, set the drop-down menu to the right of the search box to 'Ebooks'. To search articles, change the drop-down menu to 'Articles'. You can search your keywords anywhere in the record, or search more specifically within the subject field. See the Catalogue tab of this guide for more information about searching.
There will be vast amounts of information on climate change. Below are a few resources and suggestions for researching this issue.
Search environmental issues and policies, including views from the scientific community, governmental policy makers and corporate interests.
Find a large selection of full-text titles covering science and technology, including computing, telecommunications, medicine and environmental science.
Explore topically-focused digital collections of historical documents covering the Middle Ages forward - from witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Spotlight Discover more about this resource in our Online Collection Spotlight: Archives Unbound blog post.
Search the catalogue by changing the dropdown in the search bar to 'eBooks', and performing a broad search for climate change, in the subject. You can further narrow down your search by adding additional keywords or using the filters on the right hand side.
Some other suggested subject headings or keywords are:
Some examples of eBooks in the collection:
Modern Climate Change Science : an overview of today's climate change science by Climate change and climate science is a huge area of study, and as such there will be a vast number of articles published on the subject. You can afford to be quite specific with your article searches, and still expect to yield a good number of results. Try using Advanced Search, and mixing subject headings with other keywords.
For instance:
Searching of the databases highlighted above or in the key online resources (such as ProQuest) will allow more focussed and targeted searches, as databases will have specialised searching options not available in the SLV catalogue.
The following articles look at the complexities of government responses to climate change
SLV has a range of physical books relating to climate change. Many of our books will be in storage, but some will be available on the shelf in the Redmond Barry Reading Room.
Perform a catalogue search using the Books scope. You can Ask a Librarian for assistance if you need to order an item from storage. Alternatively, use the Find on Shelf search scope to limit results to books you can read immediately. Note that SLV is not a lending library; books are to be read onsite at the Library.
Many books of climate change will be scientific in nature. To ensure that you are finding books that are relevant to the field of global politics, look within the Social Sciences section of the Library, located downstairs in the Redmond Barry Reading Room.
If you would like to browse the shelves, start at 363.73 - Environmental problems. Below are some of the books that you can expect to find at that range:
Politics of Climate Change by 
Climate Politics and the Climate Movement in Australia by This is a broad subject, so perform searches for several keywords or subject headings to find relevant material, using the eBooks drop down in the search bar. Consider also searching for specific issues such as the Global Financial Crisis.
Some suggested subject headings include:
The European Union and the global financial crisis : a view from 2016 by 
Access a huge range of international and Australian content on business, education, humanities, medicine, social sciences, science and technology topics.
Explore topically-focused digital collections of historical documents covering the Middle Ages forward - from witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
Spotlight Discover more about this resource in our Online Collection Spotlight: Archives Unbound blog post.
This is a very broad topic, use quite specific keywords to narrow your search. Consider searching in a specific database rather than using the SLV 'article search', as the searching options will be more focused.
Here, we have performed an Advanced Search for recent peer-reviewed articles with the subject containing 'globalization', and including the keywords 'econom*' and 'instability'. Note the truncation ( * ) that has been used on econom* - this will search 'economy', 'economist', 'economic' etc.
See also these articles from ProQuest:
Search the catalogue by changing the dropdown in the search bar to 'eBooks', and performing a search for weapons of mass destruction or nuclear arms control. You can further narrow your search by adding additional keywords, such as Australia or International, searching in the subject only, or by refining your search results using the filters on the right hand side of the screen.
Some other suggested keyword searches are:
Some example of eBooks in the collection:
Weapons of mass destruction : the search for global security by 
Nuclear Arms Control in Peril : why the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty matters and how to save it by Change the drop-down box next to the search bar in the catalogue from Everything except articles to Articles & more.
When looking for articles, note that the terms "weapons of mass destruction" and "WMD" may be used interchangeably. You can search for them together using the search string: ("weapons of mass destruction" OR WMD)
Add further keywords such as challenges, response, "international law", implications or consequences to put the issue into a global context. You can also refine your results by articles written in the last ten years.
Here is an Article search for: ("weapons of mass destruction" OR WMD) AND challenges, filtered to the last ten years, showing only peer-reviewed articles.
A selection of articles is as follows:
Karlas, J. (2023) Explaining state participation in ten universal WMD treaties: A survival analysis of ratification decisions. Contemporary security policy. 44 (3), 410–436.
Okoro, O. I. & Oluka, N. L. (2019) Weapons of Mass Destruction and Modern Terrorism: Implications for Global Security. Asian social science. [Online] 15 (3), 1-.
The following can be found online on the United Nations Treaty Collection website:
