CJS - Criminal Justice: Find Articles

The best place to find articles is to search the Library's databases. They contain magazines, journals, newspapers, reference books, video files, audio files, and podcasts.

What databases will be the best for this project? 

You can search any of the Databases for Criminal Justice & Law.

Kirtland Librarians recommend starting with the Criminal Justice Collection:

Criminal Justice Collection

Opposing Viewpoints in Context

The Opposing Viewpoints in Context database provides lists of viewpoints, journals, statistics, audiofiles, newspapers, images, videos, reference books, magazines, and websites about current issues.

CQ Researcher

A few quick tips to help make your database searches more effective:

• Do not write a question in the search box. Instead, search for a term.
  • Ex:  FBI
  • Ex:  methamphetamine.
• Put quotation marks around words that you want found together and in that order. 
  • Ex:  "drug abuse" 
  • Ex:  "domestic violence".
• Use the advanced search option to search for multiple terms at once or to eliminate particular terms. Put your first search term in the first search box. Choose a connector, and put another term in the second search box.
  • Ex:  "mental health" AND "law enforcement"
  • Ex:  firefighters NOT wildfires
  • Ex: "gun violence" OR "active shooter"
• Notice what type of results you get. You'll probably want to skip letters to the editor and book reviews. Look under Content Types to see if you're looking at results from magazines, academic journals, or newspapers. Don't forget to consider who wrote it and when it was written.

For more about using databases, view the video on this page or click on the "Databases: How to Search Them" link shown below.

This video, from the Memoirs of a Modern Librarian provides information on how to best search databases.

(February 6, 2013)