This guide provides guidance on searching for materials to support your corporate crime study and research.
Further support and guidance on finding legal materials is available on the Law Subject Guide
You may also need to look at other subject guides for certain areas of research, such as Business, Criminology or Environmental Studies.
This book is available in full text online via Westlaw books and includes coverage of:
Library Search
Search across the print and online collections for books, chapters, articles, journals and lots more.
Library Search will help you discover books, journals, articles, audio visual material and more on your chosen topic. This is a good place to start when you are beginning to research a topic as you can draw on content from a variety of different sources.
For more in depth research in databases and archives, use the A-Z Databases List.
Use a range of search terms to find materials on the topic you are researching, e.g.
For support on developing and combining search terms for effective online searching, take a look at the search techniques guidance.
Legal research has been transformed by the availability of sophisticated online search services.
Not only can you quickly and easily access the full text of key cases, journals, legislation etc. but you can also explore the law in context by viewing a case, commentary and related legislation, all at a click of a button. It is worth building your research skills in the major legal databases so that you can take full advantage of this functionality. The key legal databases for case law, legislation and legal journal article research are:
Find out more about legal databases on the Law Database Guide
About Practical Law
Practical Law is an online legal know-how service which provides practice area overviews, practice notes, standard documents and current awareness services.
It works hand in hand with Westlaw UK, allowing you to combine its expert legal know-how resources with the primary law resources from Westlaw UK.
You can search and/or browse the practice areas (e.g. Corporate or Environment) to find resources relevant to your corporate crime research. The screenshot below shows some illustrative results for a search on health and safety and corporate crime
About Lexis+
You can search across Lexis+ for topics of interest.
You can also choose the Practical Guidance menu and then select the Corporate Crime Practice Area. This screenshot gives you a flavour of the breadth of materials available. Login to the daytabase to explore further.
News sources can be invaluable research resources. There are various types of news sources you can choose from, including:
They provide contemporaneous accounts of events as they emerge and unfold, affording a snapshot of developments at a point in time.
By using news archive services, you can also engage in historical research by tracing commentary on issues over time, to identify and track changing political, economic and social trends. For example, when did global warning first emerge as a 'hot topic' in the press? Who are the major pressure groups and organisations debating this agenda? How has terminology in this area developed and changed over time?, etc.
The availability of news resources online allows for very effective and comprehensive searching, in a way that was impossible with print or microfilm / microfiche editions of the newspapers when research could be a very long, laborious and somewhat haphazard process.
There is a huge amount of news research material available to you at the University. Explore the Using news resources for research Libguide to find out more and access the news resources via the A-Z Database List.
Official publications can be broadly defined as the documents and materials produced by the government and governmental departments during the course of government business.
Content ranges from statements of law and policy to government reports and statistics. These publications can be a valuable primary research source and are especially useful to those researching in law, politics and history. However, they are of relevance across all subjects as they address all aspects of governmental work such as science, education, law, agriculture, transport, health etc.
To find out more about finding and using official publications, take a look at the Official Publications LibGuide.
View the list of Official Publications databases in the Database A-Z List
