1. 09/07/20161 Searching Online Resources For more advanced guidance see Advanced Online Searching & Research slides. Also available in print from the library

2. 09/07/20162 Database searching... before you begin Define your topic: consult a textbook to get some idea of the subject and the terminology used. Consider a time limit. Are you only interested in material published in the last 5 years? Most databases allow you to restrict your search by date. Decide which sources to use. These will probably include databases, printed sources, online journals, the internet. Try and write a sentence or two about what you are looking for. This will give you focus and provide some keywords. Think of alternative keywords, broader terms and narrower terms. Use sensible keywords. Using a term like “research” on its own will produce thousands of records.

3. 09/07/20163 Selecting Databases See Literature Searching - Introduction slides for detailed guide. Both Full Text and Bibliographic databases are available. Full text databases offer immediate access to the full text of the journal articles and may be a good place to start. Bibliographic databases give citation details (author, title, date, title of the journal, etc) and sometimes an abstract of the articles. Their coverage is generally larger than the full text databases. They usually have more powerful search features. The full text of articles can usually still be found electronically via SFX or from the quick article finder on MyUWSLibrary or from the Find eJournals List on the Resources link on the Library web pages.Find eJournals List Library web pages

4. 09/07/20164 Subject and Free Text Searching Most databases allow searching by Free Text, but some databases allow you to search by Subject as well. Free text searching looks for articles containing your keywords anywhere you ask it to, usually in the title, abstract and (if available) the full text of the article. This may find more irrelevant articles than subject searching. Often you will need to try both of these approaches.

5. 09/07/20165 And, or, and other useful operators These are sometimes called “Boolean operators”. This is just a selection. Click on the Help function of whichever database you are using for a full range of features. When using more than one keyword or phrase you need to combine the terms with the word “and”. For example, “European law and human rights”. This will retrieve articles about, or containing, these 2 terms. (Some databases use “&” or “+” instead of “and”). Previous searches can also be combined using “and”. To broaden a search use “Or”. For example, “EC law or European law” will retrieve articles about, or containing, either of these terms.

6. 09/07/20166 Truncation, wildcards, brackets The Truncation feature is very useful. It is used to search for words which begin with a common root but have a variety of endings. For example: legislat* will find “legistlation”, “legistlate” or “legislative” Euro* will find “Europe”, “European”, or “Euros”. The characters “*” and “$” are most commonly used. Clicking on Help in any of the databases will tell you which to use. Wildcard works in a similar way but the symbol replaces a letter in the middle of a word. Thus, by$law may find “bylaw” and “byelaw”. Consult the database help for symbols and rules. All work differently.

7. 09/07/20167 Using brackets and limiting searches Brackets are used for complex searches with multiple clauses. It is essential to use brackets if your search contains both “and” and “or”. For example: europe* and (parliament or union) (europe* or EU) and (human rights or civil rights) Most databases allow you to restrict searching to year(s) of publication. Many databases also allow you to limit your search to particular types of publication, for example, academic publications, research articles or reviews. Databases offering full text of articles usually allow you to limit your search to titles for which full text is available.

8. 09/07/20168 Finding articles published in the UK Using UK terminology, e.g. delict, will automatically find UK material. Make similar use of UK versus US spellings. If all else fails, you could try adding the following clause to your search: “and (UK or United Kingdom or Scotland) “

9. 09/07/20169 Finding research articles Many databases, including, have a Research limit you can set before performing your search. Review articles review the existing published research on a topic so their Reference Lists are valuable, in addition to their commentary on the research.

10. 09/07/201610 Searching the Internet Be wary – use the Library’s databases as first port of call. Use accredited law gateways, eg Intute and resources, eg Scottish Law Online, British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII)IntuteScottish Law OnlineBritish and Irish Legal Information Institute Google is good for finding Organisations, reports and web publications, but again, make sure it is accredited. Not a good idea to use Google for topic searching. Google Scholar may be useful but you will not have access to subscription-only publications found there unless the Library subscribes to them.