Search Guides
Criminal Justice and Legal Studies
CJ Searching has librarian-recommended search tips to help you make the most of your research time.
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Quick OneSearch TutorialIn less than 2 minutes learn how to use the library's OneSearch--the google for our library's articles and books! Includes how to generate free APA citations.
Step 1: Choose an area of interest
- deinstitutionalization
- probation
- restorative justice
- offenders
- ex-offenders
- parole
- rehabilitation
- recidivism
- community-based corrections
- victim’s rights
- public safety
- substance abuse
- mental illness
- race or ethnicity
- gender
- economics
Step 2: Combine Keywords and Tricks to Improve Your Search
Adding AND narrows a topic
- Reentry AND Employment
- Juvenile AND "Sex Offender"
- Female Offenders AND Parole AND Mississippi
- Health Care AND Prison*
Adding OR in (parentheses) broadens a topic
- Reentry OR Re-Entry
- (Recidivism OR Desistance) AND Drugs
- Women AND (Probation OR Parole)
- Teenagers AND Murder AND Sentenc*
Special Characters to use:
- Use parantheses to indicate phrases that need to have words side by side. Example: "stop and frisk" "juvenile delinquent" "race relations"
- Use a wild card to catch multiple spellings of a common word. Example: wom?n will find "woman" and "women". Col?r will find "color" and "colour"
- Use the truncation symbol to catch multiple compound words in a single search. Example: Sentenc* will catch the words, "sentencing," "sentence," "sentences," etc.
Keyword Tips:
- Capitalization generally does not matter
- Spelling counts!
- Use advanced searching to turn your keywords into SUBJECTS for more focused search results
- Try the same search in a different database