Health Science 414: Health Law -Library Research Tips

Contact Information

California State University, Northridge
Oviatt Library (http://library.csun.edu)

Librarian Speaking today:Marcia Henry, Health Sciences Librarian (http://library.csun.edu/mhenry)
Eric Garcia is CSUN Library's Law Librarian - He offers several Library research guides for doing legal research-For example U.S. Law Research Guide at http://library.csun.edu/egarcia/uslegal.html

Professor:Gerry W. Jackson, M.S., J.D.

The URL of this webpage is http://library.csun.edu/mhenry/tipshs414.html

Goals of today's library session:

Learn How to do Library and Internet research: determine information need, choose best resources, develop a search strategy, understand keyword and subject searching, how to use boolean operators and truncation symbols, how to cite sources, and more.
Learn how to use Information Sources: Health Sciences to identify useful databases, and work with Health Sciences Multisearch to search up to ten (10) databases simultaneously. Also consider Law Multisearch . Note: Not all databases are multisearchable-e.g. LexisNexis is NOT in Multisearch.
Learn about the controlled vocabularies in PubMed, CINAHLPlus with FullText, Health Reference Center (see find Text menu for article on Class action lawsuits we own full text in several databases
Learn about Lexis Nexis Academic -which is a full text database
Learn about link most of our databases offer- sample menu for item we do not own
Register for CSUN's Interlibrary Loan
Cite - Style guides

LexisNexis Legal

Legal research:

The legal section of LexisNexis includes legal news, law reviews, and the full text of state, federal, and international laws. It also includes the full text of all published state and federal cases that have made it to the appellate level.

Finding court cases:

It is best to start in the “law reviews” area. Searching these publications first can help you identify specific court cases. The Area of Law by topic section is also a good beginning point.
Once you know of a specific court case to look up (e.g. Rowe vs. Wade), use the Federal or State Case Law sections to pull up the text.

Note that when searching for a specific court case (state or federal), you do NOT have to have both parties. Also, you can use search commands.

Finding laws:

If you are looking for general legal information, use the law reviews section.
If you want to see acts or bills as they progress through Congress, use the Federal Regulations- Federal Register section.
If you want to see the entire written law, use the Federal Regulations -Code of Federal Regulations section or the Federal or State Code sections.

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Last updated: Monday 22-sep-08 11:33 AM
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