Research Skills for Law Students
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This document provides guidance on developing an effective search strategy for research projects and dissertations. It discusses identifying keywords from topics, finding alternative terms, and identifying good information sources like academic libraries. Tips are provided for searching sources, such as using Boolean operators and quotation marks. The document also covers evaluating sources using the CRAAP test and citing references using tools like Refworks and Endnote. Other libraries that can be accessed are listed, as well as how to access resources off-campus using a VPN.
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Research Skills for Law Students
- 1. Find it Faster: Advanced Research Skills for Projects and Dissertations RachelWhite Information Consultant (Law)
- 2. Developing a search strategy
- 3. Developing a Search Strategy Pick out the key words in your topic Find alternative terms Identify good sources of information Combine your key words Locate texts Read
- 5. KeyWords Alternative Terms e.g. teenagers/adolescents/youths Alternative Spellings e.g. Behaviour/Behavior Acronyms e.g. HMP/Her Majesty’s Prison Changing terminology e.g. subjects/participants
- 6. Identify Keywords from your topic Impact of AntiTerrorism Laws on society
- 7. Identify Keywords from your topic Impact of Anti-Terrorism Laws on society Impact Anti -terrorism Laws Society Effect Counter terrorism Public Positive/negative Specific aspects of laws Civil society Particular legislation/cases Certain sections of society Country specific law e.g. UK, USA etc
- 8. Developing a search strategy “The process of divorce in the UK is outdated and need to be modernised, discuss” Or use your own idea for a Dissertation topic Work in pairs to see how many synonyms you can come up with
- 10. The College Library Academic Information Information not available on the internet Free to use Variety of resources Help & Support
- 12. Searching information sources – hints & tips
- 13. • AND - Narrows your search by combining words.The results found must contain all the words which you have joined by using AND e.g. terrorism AND society • OR - Broadens your search to include resources which contain any or all of the terms connected by OR. E.g. terrorism OR counter terrorism • NOT - Narrows your search by excluding a term. • Truncation - the end of the word is replaced. For example crimin* will retrieve criminal, criminals, criminology, criminologist and so on. • Wildcard searching, single letters from inside the word are replaced with a symbol. For example wom?n will retrieve the terms woman and women. • “ ” - narrows your search down by searching for an exact phrase or sentence. For example “counter terrorism” Searching information sources –hints & tips
- 15. The CRAAPTest Currency When was it published? Is the information too old? When was it last up-dated? How important is it that you have up-to-date information? Relevancy Does it fit your project? Will your project be stronger if you include this information? Authority Who has published or written the information? Do you trust them? Is it easy to find out anything about them? Accuracy Is the information correct? Is the information supported by evidence/references? Can you verify the information in another source? Purpose Why does the information exist? Is it trying to sell you something, persuade you or give you an opinion? Once you figure this out, you can then deceive how to use the information that you have found.
- 17. Citation and referencing • Refworks • Endnote • Mendeley • Zotero
- 19. Using other Libraries Senate House Library https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/library/usingourli braries/otherlibraries/senatehouselibrary.aspx SCONUL https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/library/usingourli braries/otherlibraries/sconulaccess.aspx Copac http://copac.jisc.ac.uk/ Search 25 http://www.search25.ac.uk/ Inter Library Loans https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/library/usingourli braries/inter-library-loans.aspx
- 21. Any Questions? Remember, you can always get in contact with me: Rachel.White@rhul.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
- So you will all be thinking about your proposed dissertation and the research questions you want to answer. Before you start thinking about the searching for resources to use in your dissertation you should spend some time thinking about your search strategy Searching for resources, the clue is in the title. It can take a while to “search” for resources so important to spend some time thinking about this, planning it and reading materials. The more you can read on your area the better you will understand it. Pick out keywords Important to think about the keywords in your dissertation topic, what are the main concepts that are jumping out at you. These will form the basis of the search terms that you will use to find resources Alternative terms Are there alternative ways of saying the keywords? Important to have a bank of keywords to use. You may search say library search with a set of keywords, and then use the same on google scholar but you might not return the same number of hits. Each database has its own type of vocabulary and some keywords might return more hits than others. Trial and error 3. Good sources of information? a. Where are you going to look for resources? Google Scholar? Library Resources? Books? Articles? Films? Images? 4. Combine your keywords a. You can combine your keywords with connecting words to return more relevant searches. You can use them to broaden the number of results, or narrow them down. More in this in a second 5. Locate texts. a. Start looking for texts. Can use things like citation searching more of this in a second. Good tip is to read the abstract to see if useful before spending time reading the whole article. 6. Read a. Spend time reading resources, will give you a better understanding of the resources available. Important to evaluate material, think about who has written it and why, is this information still accurate, has it been written because of a specific agenda. More help about this can be found on the subject guide
- Divorce, might have specific legislation, landmark cases, UK is the focus so could use United kingdom, filter results from outside the UK, modernisation, obsolete, updated, are their specific areas of the process that need to be focused on e.g. the need to blame someone
- Reminder of library search and show subject guides
- Reminder of Library search as this has now changed, explain that the functions are the same e.g. articles/books/journals Hein Online Anti-terrorism law AND society = 8,000 Anti-terrorism law OR counter terrorism law AND society = 33,000 “Anti-terrorism law” OR “counter terrorism law” AND society “Anti-terrorism law” and society = 786 “Anti-terrorism law” and society and radicalism = 42