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SOC215 - Canadian Justice System: Finding Articles

SOC 215 research guide

Database Search Tips

AND requires all specified words to appear in each document

          e.g. rights AND women
                  workers AND globalization

 

OR    requires any of the specified words to appear in each document

         e.g. "human rights" OR "civil liberties"
                 Indian* OR aboriginal* OR native* OR indigenous OR First Nation*

 

NOT  excludes terms not desired

          e.g. health rights NOT reproductive

Combining ideas

       e.g. women AND (human rights OR civil liberties)
              Canad* AND (human rights or civil liberties) AND (Indian* OR aboriginal* OR first nation*OR native* OR indigenous)
       

 

  •         prioritize your concepts to begin your search with the most important one
  •         consider additional concepts to use, if necessary, to reduce or expand retrieval
  •         if the database has a thesaurus, either online or print, check for suggested terms

 

Databases

Newspapers and Periodical Resources

Newspapers and periodical resources are an excellent way to more strongly connect real life situations to scholarly literature.  The following resources will get you started researching the major (and minor) Canadian periodical resources.

Having Problems?

Not finding enough material?

  •           if you have combined several concepts using AND, start again and search only the most important one. Then add the next most important   one, and so forth
  •           look at each concept and see if you can think of additional synonyms (use OR)
  •           if you are searching free-text, look at your terms carefully and think of ways to broaden your phrasing

 

Finding too much material?

  •         look at a sample of the items retrieved; if a high proportion is not relevant, add another concept
  •         sometimes irrelevant records may be eliminated by NOTing out a particular aspect or population
  •         try limiting by language, date, form of material, particular field instead of free-text