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Law and Legal Studies

This guide lists American University Library databases, print sources, and free Web sites of use to research in Legal Studies.

Law Journal Articles

History Journal Articles

Search Tips

Boolean operators:

AND - use to narrow a search and get fewer and more relevant results.
elections AND voters

OR - use to broaden a search and get more results. Good for synonyms and words with variant spellings. Add parentheses when using OR.
("latin america" OR argentina OR colombia)
(organization OR organisation)

NOT - use to narrow a search to get more relevant results
mexico NOT "new mexico"


Truncation:

Use to find words with different word endings. Most databases use an asterisk (*)
e.g. immigrant* yields immigrant, immigrants
e.g. immigra* yields immigrant, immigrants, immigrate, immigration, immigrating, etc.

Proximity search:

Use to find words that are close to each other in a document.

Each family of databases has its own command words.

Database Provider Replace "AND" with... Exampe
ProQuest  n/number  "mental health" n/15 (treatment OR rehabilitation)
EBSCO Nnumber  Guns N10 school

Westlaw Campus Research 

NexisUni

w/number 

w/s (within sentence) 

w/p (within paragraph)

"mass incarceration" w/p drugs 

HeinOnline 

JSTOR

"search terms"~number "juvenile justice social work"~20
Scopus w/number "first amendment" w/10 "high school"