This site has been designed to help you with researching for your law dissertation. The focus is on how to identify and search for legal, academic and other good quality literature. The guide includes links to other resources that will further help you.
Before you begin your research, it is worth planning your search. Consider your research question and any objectives you have and the different search words that relate to this. These are what we would call keywords. You can map these out in a way that helps you to carry out your searches and come up with different search strategies. Here is an example search table:
| Radicalisation | Higher Education | Free speech |
|---|---|---|
| Terrorism | HE | Freedom of expression |
| Terrorist | Education | Freedoms |
| Prevent Duty | Universities | Rights |
| Prevention of Terrorism | University | Human Rights Act |
From here you can develop meaningful search strategies e.g. Prevent Duty and Higher Education / Terrorism and Universities and Free speech
Use Google to search for useful reports and documents but be selective. You can employ smart searching techniques to help make the most of this search engine, such as:
You can use more than one filter at a time e.g. right to protest filetype pdf site:.gov.uk
Have a look at this video for more help with Google smart searching.
Your dissertation will need to include the relevant legislation for your research topic. We have three main databases, which you should already be familiar with:
There is some overlap with Westlaw and Lexis but they will contain some variations (for example, they will have different journals on them).
Make sure you are clear on how to navigate these properly and if you need any help, have a look at these videos.
Depending on your topic, it may be appropriate to explore the databases more widely. For example, Proquest, Sage Journals, Taylor & Francis Online and Wiley Online, contain journals on a range of topics. Use these if your topic includes a wider social aspect.
Use NELSON to carry out a broad search across the resources, particularly for books and journals. Sign-in with your University login to access the full-text and pin any items for later. Pinning is a great feature on NELSON because it means you can organise your reading for later. You can even label your pinned favourites, which will help with the writing up stage of your dissertation.
You will need to use good quality information to support your work. The following tutorial will help you to recognise different types of academic sources and their importance for research.
Use the arrows to navigate through the tutorial or click on the dashed lines to view the contents. It is recommended that you open the tutorial in full screen.
If you need anything we do not have in the library collections at the University of Northampton. please make use of Interlibrary Loans and the SCONUL Access scheme.
From the A-Z databases page you can filter by subject to see the key resources for Law. The top box shows the 'best bets' for searching but here is a full list of useful databases for academic research:
Links to videos are available at the bottom of this page to help you with some of these resources.
