Full-text of thousands of newspapers, magazines, news transcripts, reference works, and legal materials. Includes NY Times (1980-current)

Newspaper collections from NewsBank provide full-text articles from the electronic editions of record for more than 700 newspapers around the globe, including the NY Times (2000-present). Database covers 1977-present.

Congress.org provides directory information on elected officials in Congress, the White House, and state legislatures.  It also provides a forum for citizens to post letters to these officials, provides "action alerts" created by citizens and interest groups, and tracks legislative activities.

Provides detailed contact information for federal employees, including listings of office staff with job titles & specific mailing addresses.  We get an updated directory every six months.

"This U.S. Government Web site encourages public participation in the Federal rulemaking process by allowing you to view and comment on regulations and other actions for Federal agencies." (from website)

Use this site to find regulatory actions that are or have been under consideration, and to view comments submitted by citizens. 

To find submitted comments, go to Advanced Search and select "PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS" from the Document Type menu.  Use the other fields to specify a keyword or an agency. 

You can also find public submissions by going to a specific agency website and searching the site for the term "public comments."  Here is an example from the FTC site; most of the results contain listings of public comments.

Use this list to quickly find websites for federal regulatory agencies.

Directory of state and local government websites.

Provides online access to abstracts and full-text articles on public policy research and analysis from think tanks, university research programs, research organizations and publishers.  Click Organization Browse to identify NGOs dealing in various topics.

Provides current articles from a variety of research and advocacy groups, in a clearly organized manner.  Also serves as an excellent directory of relevant organizations on a wide variety of social policy topics: click Members to browse or search.

Long list of NGOs that focus their efforts on environmental issues, with descriptions.

Online guide, including excellent 6-page PDF summary handout, from the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

This is LexisNexis's help page for citing articles in MLA and APA format.

Endnote Web is an online tool you can use to a) keep track of references and b) output them in any of a number of official citation formats. 

Since it is web-based, you can access it from anywhere.  You can export citations from most online databases (e.g., EconLit, ProQuest Research Library) to a file which can be imported into EndNote Web, saving you the step of re-typing each reference.

Extensive help is available on the EndnoteWeb site.  This is a user guide prepared by one of the Tricollege librarians.  You may also ask the reference librarians for assistance.