CJS 411 Olivas (Hamilton): Finding Cases and Articles

Westlaw - Provides full-text access to cases from the courts of all 50 states and federal courts, statutes from all 50 states and federal statutes published in the United States Code Annotated, American Jurisprudence 2d legal encyclopedia, federal regulations, law reviews and legal periodicals. You can search by specific legal citations or case  found in other sources (ex. 266 F.Supp.3d 360 

Once you have run a search, use the menu options on the left to narrow down by a particular kind of source. 

You’ll need to enter your Miami Unique ID and password to access these resources from off-campus.

All of the databases listed below will be helpful when conducting criminal justice-related research. You can choose one to search, or you can search all of them at the same time.
-To search more than one of these at the same time, click on one of the links below.
-At the top of the page (above the search boxes) click on the name of the database. 

-Then check the box(es) next to the other databases you would like to search.
-Go to the bottom of the page and click "Select".

Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text

Academic Search Complete

If you see links that say “PDF Full Text” or "Linked Full Text”, clicking on those will take you to the full text of the article. Then, on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll see options to: download/save the article (blue arrow in the screenshot),
email (share) the article to yourself (red arrow in the screenshot), and
get the citation information for the article (green arrow in the screenshot).

After you click the icon to get the citation, you can highlight, copy, and paste the APA-formatted citation into your document. Always be sure to double-check your copied citations, though. Sometimes formatting, such as italics and hanging indents, aren’t correct. Information is typically in the correct order, but good to double-check that as well.

Need more sources? The Criminal Justice Studies Research by Subject page provides links to other resources that might be helpful for your specific topic.

How to Read Scholarly Materials (tutorial)

Choosing and Using Keywords (tutorial)

Refining Search Results (video)

Evaluating Information (tutorial)

“And”, “Or”, “Not” (Boolean Operators): Use the words to narrow or expand your search results. For Example:

• “automobiles” AND “accidents” will return results that contain BOTH of the terms.
• “juvenile” OR “adolescent” OR “teenager” will return results that contain at least one of the terms. Useful for words with similar meanings.
• “cinderella” NOT “rock band” will return results that do NOT include the 1980’s rock band, Cinderella.

Use an * at the end of a root word to find all variations of that word. For example, “child*” will search for “child,” “children,” “childhood,” and “children's.”

Brainstorm words or concepts that are similar in meaning and use those as search terms. If you find a good resource, look at the “Subject Headings” or “Descriptors” listed and use those as additional search terms.

Bibliographies/References/Works Cited pages are great ways to find additional resources. You can search the library’s Catalogs and/or Databases.