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RESEARCH GUIDES

ENSP 330: Introduction to Environmental law

research guide for ENSP 330

News Sources

Greenwire Search Strategies

Use the following search strategies to retrieve relevant articles when using Greenwire.

  • Phrase searching: Use quotation marks or hyphens to search for an exact phrase, instead of a single word.

  • Operators:

    • "AND": For some topics using "AND" between words is the best search strategy. You may end up with a large number of results and some may not be relevant. AND must be capitalized in this database.

  • Within your search results you can limit by date and/or topic.

Examples:

Using the topic, "Does the Migratory Bird Treaty Act apply only to intentional actions only or does it apply to incidental actions as well?", enter the following examples into the database and see how your results change with each search.

  1. "migratory bird treaty"
    • This searches migratory bird treaty as a phrase, instead of migratory and bird and treaty as separate words.
  2. "migratory bird treaty" AND incidental
    • This search links the keyword units.

Search Strategies:

Use the following search strategies to retrieve relevant articles when using Nexis Uni.

  • Limit results to news articles: Select the "News" tab at the top of the screen or under “All Content Types” on the search bar.

  • Truncation: The asterisk (*) searches for a string of characters, no matter how the word ends.

  • Phrase searching: Use quotation marks or hyphens to search for an exact phrase, instead of a single word.

  • Operators:

    • "And": For some topics using "and" between words is the best search strategy. You may end up with a large number of results and some may not be relevant.

    • "/s": limits keywords to the same sentence.

    • "/p": limits keywords to the same paragraph.

    • "hlead": limits keywords to the headline and lead paragraphs

Too many results? Try:

  • limiting by date
  • adding more words
  • searching within results
Examples:

Using the topic, "Does the Migratory Bird Treaty Act apply only to intentional actions only or does it apply to incidental actions as well?", enter the following examples into the database and see how your results change with each search.

  1. "migratory bird treaty"
    • This searches migratory bird treaty as a phrase, instead of migratory and bird and treaty as separate words.
  2. "migratory bird treaty" and incidental
    • This search links the keyword units.
  3. "migratory bird treaty" /s incidental
    • This search finds migratory bird treaty within the same sentence as incidental.
  4. (incidental OR intentional) /p "migratory bird treaty"
    • This search finds incidental or intentional within the same paragraph as migratory bird treaty.
  5. hlead ("migratory bird treaty" and incidental)
    • This search finds migratory bird treaty and incidental within the headline or lead paragraphs of articles.

Note: If you want to search the Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and the Wall Street Journal, you will need to use the National Newspapers Core database.

Search Strategies:

Use the following search strategies to retrieve relevant articles when using National Newspapers Core. This is also a full-text database.

  • Select the Advanced Search option, once you are in the database. It will allow you to control your search a bit better.

  • Truncation: The asterisk (*) searches for a string of characters, no matter how the word ends.

  • Phrase searching: Use quotation marks or hyphens to search for an exact phrase or an exact word.

  • Operators:

    • NEAR or N/# operator: Finds documents where the search terms are separated by up to a certain number of words of each other (either before or after). NEAR finds records with the words separated by up to 4 words. N/# will find records where the words appear with a maximum of # intervening words.

    • "And": For some topics using "and" between words is the best search strategy. You may end up with a large number of results and some may not be relevant.

Too many results? Try:

  • Limiting by date
  • Adding more words
  • Changing the search field from "Anywhere" to "Anywhere except full text" or "Abstract"
Examples:

Using the topic, "Does the Migratory Bird Treaty Act apply only to intentional actions only or does it apply to incidental actions as well?", enter the following examples into the database and see how your results change with each search.

  1. "migratory bird treaty"
    • This searches migratory bird treaty as a phrase, instead of migratory and bird and treaty as separate words.
  2. "migratory bird treaty" and incidental
    • This search links the keyword units.
  3. "migratory bird treaty" N/10 incidental
    • This search find results with migratory bird treaty within 10 words of incidental.

Use the following resources for information on how to cite news sources in the legal citation format.

Newspapers (From above link):

"Rule 16.6(f) states that an online version of a newspaper can be used to replace print. Cite according to Rule 18.2.2.

The citation should have: Full author(s) name, Title of the Article, Newspaper title in small caps(abbreviated according to T. 10 and T. 13), Full Date (and time, if there is one), followed by the URL."

Example: Reuters, Trump Questions Lawmakers’ Efforts to Curb Asset Seizures by Police, N.Y. Times, (Feb. 7, 2017, 2:57 PM), https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/07/us/politics/07reuters-usa-trump-police.html?_r=0.

Newspapers (From above link):

"Rule 16.6(f) governs citations to online newspapers, which may be cited instead of the print versions. Rule 18.2.2 also applies to these citations."

Example: Evan Halper, Coronavirus Threatens the November Election. Can Vote by Mail Save It?,  L.A. TIMES (Mar. 19, 2020), https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-19/calls-mount-making-november-mail-in-ballot.