GENERAL ONLINE RESOURCES FOR C103

LIBRARY SUBJECT GUIDES: Key websites, databases and other information organized by discipline/major

Criminology, Law and Society
Sociology
Psychology & Cognitive Science
 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: BOOKS, GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS, LAW REVIEW ARTICLES

ANTPAC

MELVYL: Books, videos and government documents in UC libraries. For items you want that are not at UCI, use Request to order them through Interlibrary Loan.

Lexis-Nexis Academic: Legal, news and business research. The legal research section includes hundreds of full-text law review journals, state and federal codes (statutes & regulations), state and federal case law (high courts only), legal newspapers and newsletters, and more. For this class, you might find the legal news and law review searches useful for locating citations to research studies.

Tips on searching for law review articles:
Law reviews can be 40-50 pages in length (noted by word count in Lexis-Nexis) -- and you are searching the full-text, not abstracts, subject terms or descriptors:

• Choose unique keywords (names of parties in cases, statutes, e.g.) and search in "At Least 3."
• The default date is "previous six months" -- you can change this.
• ! is a place holder for missing letters. So constitution! will also pick up constitutional or constitutionality
• Results are automatically sorted by title -- change this to sort by relevance.

GENERAL/MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Expanded Academic ASAP

• Search by keyword
• Limit to Refereed Publications

• Search in Social Science Citation Index
• Search keywords in topic
• Find full articles through UCeLinks or by title/journal title search of ANTPAC

Criminal Justice Periodical Index

• Use thesaurus for principal concept (pornography, death penalty, etc.) or search by keyword
• Limit to Scholarly Publications

National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database via CSA

PSYCHOLOGY

PsycINFO

• Limit to journal articles only
• Search by keyword, and look for descriptors to pick up additional terms or refine your search terms
• Use Advanced Search for more search options: Including Publication Type = empirical study or Publication Type = literature review. (Literature reviews can be excellent sources of locating original research studies.)

See descriptor: insansity defense

SOCIOLOGY (STRONG COVERAGE OF CRIMINOLOGY)

Sociological Abstracts

• Limit to journal articles only
• Search by keyword, and look for descriptors to pick up additional terms or refine your search terms
• Use Advanced Search for more search options. Sociological Abstracts does not indicate whether an article is an empirical study, so you will need to judge that yourself, looking for the following:
• Description of the study elements -- characteristics of population, number of participants, data source
• Methodology: survey? observation? interviews?

CAMBRIDGE SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACTS -- SEARCHING ACROSS MULTIPLE DATABASES

From inside one of the CSA databases, select Change Subject Area. Click on Social Science and choose Advanced Search. Choose the Social Science databases you want to search simultaneously and choose Continue to Advanced Search.
 

FOLLOW-UP: LIBRARY RESEARCH AND CONSULTATION

You have many options for getting help from librarians with your research:

• Langson Library Reference Desk -- Call (949) 824-4976 or walk-in. During weeks 3-9, you can make a 1/2 hour research appointment.
• Use Ask a Librarian EMAIL or LIVE

Contact Judy directly (contact info above)

The UC Irvine Libraries Tutorial provides self-paced help with:

• Beginning your research
• Creating a search strategy
• Finding books using the libraries' online catalog ANTPAC
• Finding articles in databases
• Finding government information
• Finding Cases (new!)
• Finding Statutes (new!)
• Finding websites
• Evaluating searches
• Citing your sources (avoiding plagiarism!)