Overviews: Group Profiles and Background Information

These reference materials are located on the main (3rd) floor of Cook Library .

Profiles in Terrorism. 2004

• Group history, leadership, chronology, and bibliography
  
  

Encyclopedia of Terrorism. 2003

Encyclopedia of World Terrorism. 1997

Contemporary American Religion . 2000

• Christian group profiles

Search the USMAI Catalog for the materials owned by all of the libraries in the University System of Maryland.

• Be aware that Islamic groups have variant spellings (e.g.hizballah, hizbullah, hezbollah; lashkar-e-taliba/tayyiba/toiba/taiba)
• Search by name of group: If you get irrelevant hits, enclose group name in "", leaving out initial articles (e.g. a, the)
• If you use subjects that are assigned by catalogers, rather than your own keywords (e.g. instead of Al-Qa'ida, use qaida organization)
• Use categories to search by subject word/s, as books tend to cover broader topics (e.g. islamic fundamentalism; islam and politics; religious fundamentalism; jewish fundamentalism; ultra-orthodox jews; Orthodox Judaism;sephardim israel; white supremacy movements; anglo-israelism; christian conservatism; pro-life movement)

Praeger Security International: Terrorism, Homeland Security, Strategy

• Provides full text access to over 500 books, commentaries, and primary sources
• For most efficient searching, use the Advanced Search feature, type the name of your group and use the drop-down menu to search it as an organization - If you get no results, switch back to a keyword search
• This database contains many books that are focused on extremist groups, including the Encyclopedia of Modern Worldwide Extremists and Extremist Groups

Homeland Security Digital Library

• Search for materials on terrorist groups and activities from a wide variety of organizational and government sources, all available electronically
• Provides access to "U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents as well as specialized resources from universities, organizations and local and state agencies" - from the site
• Search in the Advanced Search screen, looking for your words in the title or summary
• Covers a broad range of topics in on terrorism, with a special section on suicide bombers

Note: The following Ebsco databases can be searched simultaneously.
To search more than one Ebsco database at a time, select one of them. Once you are in the search screen for that database, click on Choose Databases and select the others (e.g. Social Sciences Abstracts) that you want to search.

Academic Search [Ebsco]
Search for articles by organization name from magazines and journals in various disciplines including Political Science, Law and History. Be aware of variant spellings for organizational names.

Social Science Abstracts [Ebsco]
Search for articles by organization name from magazines and journals in the social sciences. Includes more journals in the social sciences than Academic Search. Be aware of variant spellings for organizational names.

Terrorism

START: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
[U.S. Department of Homeland Security at University of Maryland, College Park]

• Work groups are currently researching the "formation and recruitment" and "persistence and dynamics" of terrorist groups and "societal responses to terrorist threats and attacks"

Global Terrorism Database

• "...an open-source database presenting information on terrorist events around the world since 1970 (currently updated through 2004), including data on where, when, and how each of almost 80,000 terrorist events occurred" - from the Web site
• Accompanied by clickable maps, that identifies incidents and attempted incidents of terrorism worldwide. Incidents are searchable by date, geographical location, casualties, targets, tactics, and weapons. Additionally, it includes background information on groups, countries, and leaders.
• This database replaces the Terrorism Knowledge Base from MIPT

Country Reports on Terrorism [U.S. Department of State]

• In addition to terrorism activity by country, this report includes an overview of states that sponsor terrorism and information on foreign terrorist organizations. The 2004 report includes a special section on global jihad.

The Evolution of Islamic Terrorism: An Overview

• Part of the PBS Frontline Target America Series, prepared by John Moore

Terrorism [Council on Foreign Relations]

• Background information and updated news reports on issues surrounding terrorism, including topics such as terrorist groups, state sponsors of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, homeland security, port security, and rendition

• The number one spot on the Web that you should visit is the official Web site of the group that you are researching.
• There are many Web sites maintained by institutes, international organizations, governments, think tanks, and news organizations that provide information on the activities of fundamentalist groups, especially those whose activities involve terrorism.
• The activities of these groups are often controversial, which means that reporting may be biased.
• Know the source (sponsor) of the information that you use and be careful to verify by using more than one source.