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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/proquest-dissertations-and-theses
  • 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.”