interdisciplinarity, current awareness and trend-watching cml 3319: advanced legal research 7 april...
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Interdisciplinarity, current awareness and trend-watching
CML 3319: Advanced Legal Research7 April 2011
Julie Lavigne, Law Librarian
Brian Dickson Law Library
Interdisciplinarity
Kathleen M. Sullivan in the Foreword to the Michigan Law Review, 2001-2002, vol. 100.
Law and… uOttawa:
– Law and Technology– Law and Social Justice
McGill:– McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law , co-
sponsored with the Faculties of Medicine and Religious Studies
Yale Law School:– Cultural Cognition Project
etc.
How should I conduct interdisciplinary research? Determine the major themes and
keywords that relate to your research Identify the relevant types of information
you are looking for– For example, who are the experts in this field? Do you want journal
articles only? etc.
Identify the major databases, journals, monographs (books), websites, etc., that are relevant
Don’t forget to search in multidisciplinary databases!
LibGuides: uOttawa
Multidisciplinary databases
Academic Search Complete: – Multidisciplinary database designed specifically for
academic institutions, it includes full text of journals, magazines, and newspapers. It is the world’s largest scholarly, multidisciplinary full text database.
Academic OneFile:– This Multidisciplinary database includes abstracts and full
text. Academic content is smaller than that of Academic Search Premier.
Multidisciplinary databases
Expanded Academic ASAP: – Provides journal literature from over 2,200 full-text titles
in a wide variety of subject areas including: social sciences, humanities, science and technology, medicine, national news periodicals, general interest magazines, and newswires.
JSTOR: – Multidisciplinary database giving archival access to
scholarly journals within the following areas: arts, sciences, humanities and social sciences. Note that Jstor does not provide access to current issues.
Business and management See also the Management subject guides
– accounting, business law, business plans, company information, finance, human resources, industry information, international business, management, and marketing and advertising
Business Source Complete– This scholarly business database provides the leading collection of
bibliographic and full text content (more than 2,800 journals), with indexing and abstracts (more than 3,700 journals) for the most important business journals, and various types of reports. Subjects include management, economics, banking & finance, accounting, international business, labour relations, computer systems, marketing, area studies, taxation, industry & manufacturing, production & operations management, communications & media, human resources, public administration, and health care management.
Business and management
CBCA Complete– Includes journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters and
newswires, with comprehensive subject coverage, including Current Events, Business, Education, Science and Medicine, Arts, Social Sciences, and Law, all with a Canadian focus. Full text is available for selected titles.
Canadian Business Resource (CBR)– Profiles on over 50 Canadian Companies, information on
2,500 of Canada's largest firms and all 3,500 TSX and TSX Venture listed firms, and more than 40,000 contact names.
Criminology See also the Criminology subject guide
Criminal Justice Abstracts– Comprehensive coverage of the major journals, books, and
reports from government and non-governmental agencies. International coverage. Subjects include crime trends, prevention projects, corrections, juvenile delinquency, police, courts, offenders, victims, and sentencing.
Violence and Abuse Abstracts @ Scholars Portal – Index to journal literature on interpersonal violence, including
psychological, physical and sexual abuse against women and children, hate crimes against groups such as gay and lesbians and ethnic minorities, elder abuse and neglect, work place violence, gang violence and other violence impinging upon domestic relations.
See also the Government Information subject guide and the International Development subject guide
Peace Research Abstracts @ Scholars Portal– index to information on all aspects of peace and
conflicts studies research.
Public and international affairs See also the
Public and International Affairs subject guide
Canadian Public Policy Collection:– Collection of monograph publications from Canadian public policy
institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks, university research centers and other public interest groups.
PAIS International @ Scholars Portal:– A bibliographic index with abstracts. Includes journal articles, books, etc.
Subjects include political, social, and public policy issues.
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO):– Full-text database of theory and research on international affairs that
includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs.
News and current affairs databases See also the
Newspaper Articles and Current Events subject guide
Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies– Canadian newspapers in English.
Factiva– Over 6,000 Canadian and foreign newspapers, magazines and reports; most full
text. Includes business news, market research reports, analyst reports and Web sites.
Canadian Periodical Index (CPI.Q)– Provides access to Canadian and American periodical literature. Full text articles
for more than 160 titles and full text for selected sections of The Globe and Mail. Emphasis on mainstream and academic titles available in Canadian libraries. Over 400 periodicals are indexed in CPI.Q with more than 80 journals in business.
News and current affairs
A number of other databases also include archived newspapers :– Globe and Mail: Canada's Heritage (1844 - 2003)– Historical New York Times– Paper of Record
• Free registration required– Times Digital Archive
Government information See also the
Government Information subject guide
Canadian Census Analyser: Provides access to commonly requested census data, 1971-2001
Canadian Research Index: Index of provincial and federal documents
Located on the 3rd floor of the Morisset library
The Invisible or Deep Web
For more information, see Jane Devine & Francine Egger-Sider, Going Beyond Google: The Invisible Web in Learning and Teaching (Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York: 2009) and “An Illustration of the World Wide Web ‘Content Layers’” in Paul Gil, “What is the ‘Invisible Web’?”, online: About.com <http://netforbeginners.about.com/library/diagrams/n4layers.htm>.
Some tips and techniques for improving your Google searches “exact phrase” define: find a definition of a term site: search a specific site or
domain (e.g., site:.gc.ca will search only Government of Canada sites)
.format search for particular document types (e.g., “legal ethics” .pdf will retrieve largely only PDF documents)
try an Advanced Search in Google!
Also try...
Google Scholar– To search for publicly-available scholarly articles
Google Books– To search the full text of many publicly-available
books Google Translate
– To get general translations of websites in other languages
Recommended reading!
Available at Morriset Library
MRT General / ZA 4251 .G66 C34 2005
Tara Calishain & Rael Dornfest, Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching (Sebastopol, Calif. : O'Reilly, 2005).
Grey literature good source of information for science,
technology, and social sciences not conventionally or commercially
published, but produced and distributed by government agencies, academia, business, and industry in either print or electronic formats – policy briefs, technical reports, conference
papers and proceedings, government reports, theses and dissertations, and working papers
often more current because produced quickly, without peer review
Grey Literature Search databases that index or include full-text
sources of grey literature.– e.g. Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO),
Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS), Dissertation Abstracts
Search major Internet directories or gateways. Search websites of corporations or institutions
that are likely to produce grey literature. Search using general or specialty search engines
such as Google and AltaVista or Scirus or SOSIG. Search for PDF files. Search dissertations or theses as well as
conference papers and proceedings.
For more information, see: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/subjects/subjpage2.cfm?id=879.
Your research is now up to date. But are YOU???
Current awareness:– Makes it easier to locate relevant and new
information sources– Helps you continually be aware of developments
in your field(s) of interest– Should be preceded by training on various tools
for remaining effective researchers– Relies on either “Pull” or “Push” technologies
Current awareness
“Push”, on the other hand, occurs when the information is “pushed” toward the user; that is to say, information is delivered to the user according to criteria that he or she has set up in the past.
“Pull” represents the classic way of using the Web: the user goes regularly and directly to various Internet sites to “pull” information and recent news about particular subjects.
RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) feeds RSS feeds allow you to automatically organize or index
the contents of a website, or part of a site, and to deliver it in a digested format on another site.
It allows websites to automatically post the last news articles, or other pieces of content, that have appeared on a site.
This is called the syndication of content. Think of a TV show that goes into syndication – its same content is now available on alternate channels. This is the same idea, except you have more control over which shows you want to see (like Tivo?).
Some RSS icons
Look for these on your favourite
websites, to see if you can set up an
RSS feed to the site.
Check out the examples at the
Globe & Mail and CanLII.
RSS feeds and RSS aggregators You can easily access all your
requested RSS feeds using an aggregator or reader.
This means you just have to go to one location to quickly check if there have been any updates to your favourite websites.
RSS readers: Google Reader
Table of Contents services
Traditionally, libraries would send the table of contents for newly-received journals to all professors who had requested this service. Today, many journals offer this service online, either through their websites or through a database service. The Table of Contents gets sent to your email electronically.
Table of Contents services: Legal Scholarship Network
Table of Contents service: NetVibes NetVibes is actually an RSS service
that the law library is in the process of setting up to use like a TOC service
Official launch planned for September 2011
http://www.netvibes.com/droitlaw
Research alerts set up a search query that you can then
ask the system to re-run for you on a regular basis
most frequently-used research alerts by lawyers are those offered by LexisNexis/Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada, but can set up alerts in many different resources, including web search engines
sometimes alerts are actually RSS feeds
Research alerts in Google
Research alerts in LexisNexis/ Quicklaw
Research alerts in LexisNexis/ Quicklaw
Using blogs Web log = blog
Blawg (http://www.blawg.com) – A directory of legal blogs, podcasts, and news
feeds– Includes lawyers writing about their area of
expertise, law librarians offering research tips and tricks, law professors expressing their opinions and analysis, and technologists discussing the latest trends and ideas in legal technology.
Some recommended blawgs2 Slaw.ca
– Cooperative blog by legal academics, lawyers and law librarians discussing recent and interesting developments in law and legal technology.
The Court– With contributions from academics and law students, the site discusses recent Supreme Court
of Canada cases and developments at other countries’ top courts. FP Legal Post
– News stories about developments in marketing, litigation, practice management and business law.
Law21– News and opinions about changes in the legal profession.
University of Alberta Faculty Blog– Academic discussions of current legal issues in Canada and other countries, and in
international law. Library Boy
– Legal research news and developments from a Supreme Court of Canada librarian.___2
“Recommended Canadian Law Blogs” (January 2, 2009), online: Bora Laskin Law Library Reference Services Weblog <http://bllreference.wordpress.com/tag/recommended-blogs/>.
Twitter Some ways to use it in law3: for breaking international legal news, and
often the first place for links to recent court cases, new legislation, and international documents
blog Twitterfeeds will immediately alert you to new posts (similar to RSS)
news of legal developments worldwide and upcoming conferences, new books, new law library acquisitions, news from local or foreign sources and in foreign languages
network with colleagues, share ideas, and crowd source
___3
Lyonette Louis-Jacques, “Twitter for Foreign, Comparative, and International Law (FCIL) Work” (November 4, 2010), online: Slaw.ca <http://www.slaw.ca/2010/11/04/twitter-for-foreign-comparative-and-international-law-fcil-work/>.
Social bookmarking Social bookmarking is a way you can
take all your bits and pieces of documented knowledge and share it with others. It is a way of sharing your bibliographies on various topics, or your favourite websites, etc., with others who share your interests.
CiteULike: http://www.citeulike.org/
manage and discover scholarly references to articles on particular topics (i.e. bibliographies)
useful for suggesting keywords, finding literature relevant to your topic, or particular authors who contribute to a field
CiteULike: “Everyone’s library”
Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/
one of the original social bookmarking sites
huge lists of bookmarks on various topics, easily shareable and easily searchable
search and browse easily using “tags”
Delicious
LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/
share your libraries with other users and find other books on particular topics
LibraryThing