Transcript Slide 1

Interdisciplinary research and
current awareness
Research Refresher –
Summer Research Assistants
3 May 2010
Julie Lavigne, Law Librarian
Brian Dickson Law Library
Interdisciplinarity
Kathleen M. Sullivan in the Foreword to the Michigan Law
Review, 2001-2002, vol. 100.
Law and…
 uOttawa:
– Law and Technology
– Law and Social Justice
 McGill:
– McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law , cosponsored with the Faculties of Medicine and
Religious Studies
 Yale Law School:
– Cultural Cognition Project
 etc.
How should I conduct
interdisciplinary research?
 Determine the major themes and keywords
that relate to your research
 Identify the relevant types of information you
are looking for
– For example, who are the experts in this field? Do you want journal
articles only? etc.
 Identify the major databases, journals,
monographs (books), websites, etc., that are
relevant
 Don’t forget to search in multidisciplinary
databases!
uOttawa Subject Guides (A-Z)
 www.biblio.uottawa.ca
uOttawa Subject Guides
LibGuides: uOttawa
Some of our multidisciplinary databases
 Academic Search Complete:
– Multidisciplinary database designed specifically for
academic institutions, it includes full text of journals,
magazines, and newspapers. It is the world’s largest
scholarly, multidisciplinary full text database.
 Academic OneFile:
– This Multidisciplinary database includes abstracts and full
text. Academic content is smaller than that of Academic
Search Premier.
Some of our multidisciplinary databases
 Expanded Academic ASAP:
– Provides journal literature from over 2,200 full-text titles
in a wide variety of subject areas including: social sciences,
humanities, science and technology, medicine, national
news periodicals, general interest magazines, and
newswires.
 JSTOR:
– Multidisciplinary database giving archival access to
scholarly journals within the following areas: arts,
sciences, humanities and social sciences. Note that Jstor
does not provide access to current issues.
Some of our business and management
databases
 See also the Management subject guide
 Business Source Complete
– This scholarly business database provides the leading collection
of bibliographic and full text content (more than 2,800 journals),
with indexing and abstracts (more than 3,700 journals) for the
most important business journals, and various types of reports.
Subjects include management, economics, banking & finance,
accounting, international business, labour relations, computer
systems, marketing, area studies, taxation, industry &
manufacturing, production & operations management,
communications & media, human resources, public
administration, and health care management.
Some of our business and management
databases
 CBCA Complete
– Includes journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters
and newswires, with comprehensive subject coverage,
including Current Events, Business, Education, Science and
Medicine, Arts, Social Sciences, and Law, all with a
Canadian focus. Full text is available for selected titles.
 Canadian Business Resource (CBR)
– Profiles on over 50 Canadian Companies, information on
2,500 of Canada's largest firms and all 3,500 TSX and TSX
Venture listed firms, and more than 40,000 contact names.
Some of our databases in criminology
 See also the Criminology subject guide
 Criminal Justice Abstracts @ Scholars Portal
– Comprehensive coverage of the major journals,
books, and reports from government and nongovernmental agencies. International coverage.
Subjects include crime trends, prevention projects,
corrections, juvenile delinquency, police, courts,
offenders, victims, and sentencing.
 Criminology: A SAGE Full-Text Collection
@ Scholars Portal
– Includes the full-text of 15 Sage journals in
criminology.
Some of our databases in criminology
 Violence and Abuse Abstracts @
Scholars Portal
– Index to journal literature on interpersonal
violence, including psychological, physical and
sexual abuse against women and children, hate
crimes against groups such as gay and lesbians
and ethnic minorities, elder abuse and neglect,
work place violence, gang violence and other
violence impinging upon domestic relations.
 See also the Government Information
subject guide and the International
Development subject guide
 Peace Research Abstracts @ Scholars
Portal: index to information on all
aspects of peace and conflicts studies
research.
Some of our databases in public and
international affairs
 See also the Public and International Affairs
subject guide
 Canadian Public Policy Collection:
– Collection of monograph publications from Canadian public policy
institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks,
university research centers and other public interest groups.
 PAIS International:
– A bibliographic index with abstracts. Includes journal articles, books,
etc. Subjects include political, social, and public policy issues.
 Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO):
– Full-text database of theory and research on international affairs that
includes working papers from university research institutes,
occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research
projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy
briefs.
Some of our news and current affairs
databases
 See also the Newspaper Articles and Current
Events subject guide
 Canadian Newsstand
– Canadian newspapers in English.
 Factiva
– Over 6,000 Canadian and foreign newspapers, magazines and reports;
most full text. Includes business news, market research reports,
analyst reports and Web sites.
 CPI.Q (Canadian Periodical Index)
– Provides access to Canadian and American periodical literature. Full
text articles for more than 160 titles and full text for selected sections
of The Globe and Mail. Emphasis on mainstream and academic titles
available in Canadian libraries. Over 400 periodicals are indexed in
CPI.Q with more than 80 journals in business.
Some of our news and current
affairs databases
 A number of other databases also
include archived newspapers :
– Globe and Mail: Canada's Heritage (1844 - 2003)
– Historical New York Times
– Paper of Record
• Free registration required
– Times Digital Archive
Some of our databases for
government information
 See also the Government Information
subject guide
 Canadian Census Analyser: Provides
access to commonly requested census data,
1971-2001
 Canadian Research Index: Index of
provincial and federal documents
Located on the 3rd floor of the Morisset library
The Invisible or Deep Web
Generally, we
know how to
search what is
here (i.e., on
the surface)
But, as the saying
goes, that is just the
tip of the iceberg.
How do you get to
everything (or, at
least, some of the
everything) that is
here?
Some tips and techniques for
improving your Google searches
 “exact phrase”
 define:  find a definition of a term
 site:  search a specific site or domain
(e.g., site:.gc.ca will search only
Government of Canada sites)
 .format  search for particular
document types (e.g., “legal ethics” .pdf
will retrieve largely only PDF
documents)
Also try...
 Google Scholar
– To search for publicly-available scholarly articles
 Google Books
– To search the full text of many publicly-available
books
 Google Translate
– To get general translations of websites in other
languages
Recommended reading!
Tara Calishain & Rael Dornfest, Google
Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching
(Sebastopol, Calif. : O'Reilly, 2005).
Available at
Morriset Library
MRT General /
ZA 4251 .G66
C34 2005
Current awareness – know the difference
between ensuring your research is up to date
…1
 For current research, you must:
– Properly situate your research within its discipline
– Read systematically on the subject, ensuring that all
aspects of the question have been properly answered
– Use relevant information and apply it to actual
questions
___
1
Adapted from Lyne Welsh, Université de Montréal, La veille documentaire: Demeurez au courant des nouvelles publications
(Training presented to the CEFES program, Fall 2007), online: http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/SS/apprendre/guides/veilledocumentaire-notes-de-cours.pdf (updated by Christiane Gagnon & Marianne O’Reilly, documentation technicians, in February
2008).
… and ensuring the researcher (aka YOU)
is up to date!
 Current awareness:
– Makes it easier to locate relevant and new
information sources
– Helps you continually be aware of developments
in your field(s) of interest
– Should be preceded by training on various tools
for remaining effective researchers
– Relies on either “Pull” or “Push” technologies
Current awareness
“Pull” represents the
classic way of using the
Web: the user goes
regularly and directly to
various Internet sites to
“pull” information and
recent news about
particular subjects.
“Push”, on the other
hand, occurs when the
information is “pushed”
toward the user; that is
to say, information is
delivered to the user
according to criteria that
he or she has set up in
the past.
RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) feeds
 RSS feeds allow you to automatically organize or index the
contents of a website, or part of a site, and to deliver it in a
digested format on another site.
 It allows websites to automatically post the last news
articles, or other pieces of content, that have appeared on a
site.
 This is called the syndication of content. Think of a TV show
that goes into syndication – its same content is now
available on alternate channels. This is the same idea,
except you have more control over which shows you want
to see (like Tivo?).
Some RSS icons
Look for these on your
favourite websites, to
see if you can set up an
RSS feed to the site.
Check out the
examples at the Globe
& Mail and the New
York Times.
RSS feeds and RSS aggregators
 You can easily access all your requested
RSS feeds using an aggregator or
reader.
 This means you just have to go to one
location to quickly check if there have
been any updates to your favourite
websites.
Example of an RSS reader: Bloglines
Table of Contents services
 Traditionally, libraries would send the
table of contents for newly-received
journals to all professors who had
requested this service. Today, many
journals offer this service online, either
through their websites or through a
database service. The Table of Contents
gets sent to your email electronically.
Example of a Table of Contents service: Legal
Scholarship Network
Research alerts
 Many databases, and even search engines
like Google and Yahoo!, allow you to set up
research alerts; i.e., you set up a search
query that you can then ask the system to
re-run for you on a regular basis
 The research results are generally sent to
your email depending on what frequency
you have requested
 The most frequently-used research alerts
by lawyers are probably those offered by
LexisNexis/Quicklaw and Westlaw Canada
Where to set up research alert in
Google
Using blogs
 Web log = blog
 You all know, more or less, what blogs are. But
there are some very good ones run by lawyers or
people otherwise affiliated with the justice system.
 Check out Blawg (http://www.blawg.com)
– A directory of legal blogs, podcasts, and news feeds
– Includes lawyers writing about their area of expertise,
law librarians offering research tips and tricks, law
professors expressing their opinions and analysis, and
technologists discussing the latest trends and ideas in
legal technology.
Social bookmarking
 Social bookmarking is a way you can take
all your bits and pieces of documented
knowledge and share it with others. It is a
way of sharing your bibliographies on
various topics, or your favourite websites,
etc., with others who share your interests.
 Some examples include:
– CiteULike
– Delicious
– LibraryThing
CiteULike: “Everyone’s library”
 A free service allowing you to collect,
organise, and share the references to
articles that you have found on particular
topics (i.e., your bibliographies)
 By searching other people’s bibliographies
on the same topic, you can find other
literature relevant to your topic. It can also
help you find other keywords to search, as
well as particular authors who contribute to
a field.
CiteULike: “Everyone’s library”
Delicious
 One of the original social bookmarking
sites
 We all have huge lists of bookmarks on
various topics. This site gives you an
easy way to share these websites with
others who may share your interests.
 You organize them by assigning “tags”,
keywords that describe the sites.
Delicious
LibraryThing
 A free service (up to 200 books)
permitting you to share your libraries
with other users
LibraryThing