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Search PAIS
PAIS, which stands for Public Affairs International Sevice, offers journal articles, books, reports, and pamphlets from around the world. PAIS covers public policy, current events and social sciences. International affairs are its strength, while wildlife conservation and human disease are its weak spots. If you interpret the results carefully, PAIS is more than fifty percent full-text and offers credible resources hard to find anywhere else.
1) From the alphabet below the big search box on the library home page (http://library.gsu.edu), select P. Choose PAIS.
| 2) The most important part of any search begins before you touch the keyboard. Most topics for college level papers include two concepts, for example the health aspects of cell phone use. Put into a language that PAIS understands better, this becomes cellular phones AND health. |
The AND is not a word but a command telling PAIS to find articles that include both the topics, cellular phones and health.
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3) Type your search into the search box and click the turquoise tab with the white magnifying glass to launch.
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4) PAIS shows results in groups of twenty.
5) You can move among the results by scrolling, and between pages with the Previous and Next page links. 6) Because PAIS covers books, pamphlets, reports, and articles, you need to examine the icons on the left side of and beneath each item. Please see the next parts of this handout to learn more. |
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1) Items with a 
or 
icon are journal or magazine articles. If they have a 
or 
icon beneath them, you can open and print them like any other full text articles.
2) If your articles appear not to be full-text, they will have a Find It @ GSU icon beneath them. 
3) Click the Find It box and follow the directions. PAIS' nonfulltext articles are often available in other databases.
1) In PAIS, the 
icon means book, pamphlet, e-book, or report.
2) Even if you see a Find It box, always click on a booklike item's blue title to help find it and learn more about it.
3) You can distinguish a full-length book from pamphlets and reports by looking at the number of pages. The item below is NOT a full-length book, because it is well under a hundred pages.
4) You can find, full-length, print or electronic books by searching in GIL-Find@GSU. You can learn about searching GIL-Find@GSU step by step.
5) For items shorter than one hundred pages, pamphlets, government documents, reports etc..., copy the title (and the author's last name if the title is short) into Google and search. These items are often freely available on the web, and include extremely, complete citation information.
PAIS also selects only short items published by governments and credible organizations.
Good luck, and if you have any questions, ask a librarian.
