ACCT 248 McDermott

Look at the assignment questions to identify relevant information for queries:

• Parties involved
• Laws involved
• Legal doctrines

And identify relevant information for refining results:

• Dates
• Courts/Legislative bodies involved 
• State or Country
• Section Type

Boolean operators tell the search engine how to connect your keywords together, and significantly affect the search results. Note: when using the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT, you should type them in all capital letters.

"Quotation marks"

Use quotation marks around a phrase you want kept together. For example to search for "Organizational behavior," you will want to include quotation marks around both words.

Asterisk*

Use at the end of a word stem to search all possible endings of a word. For example if you search organization* using an asterisk at the end of the word, your search will include terms such as organizational, organizations, organization, etc. Mange* with an asterisk at the end will search management, manager, manage, manages, etc.

AND

Use the word AND typed in all capital letters between keywords or phrases when you want every result to include them. For example, search the words "Organizational behavior" in quotation marks, then include the boolean AND followed by the search term stress.

OR

Use the word OR typed in all capital letters between keywords or phrases when you don't care which term is included in a result, so long as at least one of them appears. This is most often used when you string together words of similar meaning to capture more search results, or if you aren't sure which research area to focus on. For example you may search diversity OR inclusion OR discrimination. Another example might be the search word stress OR strain OR "emotional distress", with emotional distress in quotation marks.

NOT

Use the word NOT typed in all capital letters to designate specific words or phrases you do not want included in your search results. Useful if you need to refine your search after getting too many irrelevant results. For example, stress AND workplace NOT diet.

(Parentheses)

To prevent misreading your search, use parentheses to enclose OR strings. For example, (stress OR strain) in parentheses AND (workplace OR employer OR organization) in parentheses AND "management practices" in quotation marks.

The goal of your search is to find specific, relevant results. Pay attention to the number of results your search returns. 

Consider these questions:

1. Given my topic, is this too many/few results?
2. To get more specific, relevant results, can I make my search terms more/less specific?
3. Does my search include a term that may not fit the date of the case (hint, if you're looking for a case involving a Towson University Professor in 1972, Towson was called "Towson State College" at the time and your search term "Towson University" won't yield any results)?

In legal research, you often look for very specific issues. Consider the difference between terms like "guns" and "Second Amendment"

1. Which is going to return more results
2. In a legal context, which is more likely to provide more specific, relevant results?

Note: If using Hein (and many other databases) make sure to put search terms in quotes!