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Law 792-AAA: Children's Health, Violence, and the Law: Research Instruction

LAW792-AA Seminar Handouts & Assignments

Librarian Liaison:
Stephanie Davidson stephnd@illinois.edu

Research Instruction Session:
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 10a in Rm. J (Normal Class meeting time)

Research Conferences:
Topic Selection: Week of 2/4 (sign up here)
Draft: Week of 3/11 (sign up here)

General Sources

Tips from the Research Session

How to find the scholarly pieces in law:

Use HeinOnline, or Westlaw or Lexis’ journal search options (journals and law reviews). Note that you will NOT get the same results from all three.  

In Hein Online (see link on Home page):

  • click on Law Journal Library
  • click on Search tab
  • Search in small box or click Advanced Search for more options
  • Advanced includes title search, limit by type of article (eliminate cases and decisions and comments, for example, if you only want pieces that advance ground in the topic).
  • Think about how you might choose your terms differently if searching for words in the title vs. words in the text of the article…
    • More results from searching in text
    • Use fewer words for article title search

Once you have a list of results, you can view the article, but also check citations to it (incomplete, but can be helpful)

Note that you can also find out who has cited an article by selecting part of the title of the article, and searching for it in quotation marks, in the text of other articles (you’re searching for footnotes).

Limit by date, if you wish.

 

How to find the scholarly pieces outside of law:

Choose an appropriate database & search.

  • use “general sources” list on the libguide
  • use the “databases by subject” list linked from the libguide
  • search one of the larger databases such as Web of Science or Scopus
  • use Easy Search for the broadest reach

 

How to Refine Your Search:

- if you're using Easy Search, be sure to run several searches IN the database, rather than just following the Easy Search link
- use Boolean connectors, if supported by the database
- click on an article that looks relevant, browse the subject terms, incorporate those in your search