Quick Tips for Research Papers
- To search within an entity’s Web site, conduct a Google site search. This way, you can find documents that aren’t necessarily listed on the site. Put site: before the organization’s url and then leave a space before writing your search terms.
site:www.whatever.org search words - When constructing search engine queries combine phrases in quotation marks with unique names or terms.
rape “war crime” tribunal - Use Clusty http://www.clusty.com to see search results divided into categories.
- When you learn about a particular journal article, search for the journal title (not the article title) in PittCat http://pittcat.pitt.edu to see which campus library owns it and to link directly to any electronic versions available through the University.
- Lots of non-law journals have valid applicable material and numerous law journals are embedded in non-law specific databases. So look through the University’s A-Z subscriptions list of databases or else the University’s list of e-journals. Both are available at the “find articles” link on
http://www.library.pitt.edu
example:
international criminal - Dissertations can be a good source of obscure documents which are attached as appendices. (This is because doctoral students conduct field research.)
http://www.library.pitt.edu/articles/database_info/digital_diss.html - To access Pitt subscriptions from off-campus, go to https://sremote.pitt.edu and log-in with your Pitt user name and password. Click on the University Library System link. Then you’ll usually want to click on “find articles.”
