With the launch of Brooklyn Law School’s new website this past fall, came new and improved ways of searching and accessing the library’s broad array of resources. These new search capabilities, which include the ability to search across databases for both journal titles and articles, help to make research more efficient.
One new enhancement is the ability to search for an electronic version of a journal across all of the library’s subscription databases. To do so, click on the E-Journals link from the library’s main page. By doing so, you are taken to the E-Journal Portal. From this page, you can type the title of a journal in the search box and find a list of the different databases which publish that journal, along with the coverage dates. For example if you were to search for the title, Tobacco Control, your result list will show you that the databases, PubMed Central, JSTOR, Health and Wellness Resource Center, Health Reference Center Academic and Proquest Central carry the title. You will also see the coverage dates for the various databases. For example, JSTOR contains issues of Tobacco Control dating from 1992 to 2005. This new search capability will aid those researchers who need to cite check.
Besides being able to search for journal titles across the library’s electronic resources, researchers can search all of the library’s electronic resources for citations, abstracts, full text articles, and records in the library’s catalog. This new “360° Search” allows a researcher to further sort their results by date, author, title or source. It also gives users the ability to refine their search by a pre-populated list of topics, by date, by journal title or by author. To access the “360° Search,” go to the library’s main page and click on the hyperlinked text, “multiple BLS databases,” which is located near the top of the page, under the “Cross Searching” heading. This great new tool is a one stop shop that simplifies and consolidates the process of research. For example, if you were to do a keyword search for “’regional greenhouse gas initiatives’ or RGGI” combined with a subject search for “climate change”, you receive 209 results. You can then refine your search by one of the topics provided, such as “Auction” which then limits your results to 36 hits from a variety of databases including Proquest Central, LegalTrac, Business and Company Resource Center, and Custom Newspapers. This is a much more thorough and efficient way to research rather than searching within each individual database to determine what it contains on a given topic.
