Searching Tips

• Select UK only if you do not need to search the whole of the Web
• Use specific words if you know them as opposed to general ones
  e.g. "The British Journal of Criminology" would take you straight to relevant web sites more quickly than "Legal Journals"
• When searching for an exact phrase, enclose it in double quotes
  e.g. A search on Legal Aid returns all pages with either legal or aid in any order somewhere on the page (with pages containing all the words ranked higher). To find the exact phrase, enter:
  "Legal Aid"
• Use the "+" (plus) sign before each word that your results MUST contain
  e.g. If you want to search for Scottish Legal Aid, enter:
  +"Legal Aid" +Scottish
• Use the "-" (minus) sign before each word that your results should NOT contain
  e.g. If you want to search for information about the Woolf reforms, enter:
  +Woolf -Virginia, and you will be spared the literary articles.
  !! When using these options, do not leave any space between the sign and the following word.
• Use Boolean Operators - AND, AND NOT, OR, and parentheses
  Use these to make up more complicated queries to search for documents which contain exactly the words you are looking for, but not necessarily in any particular order.

  !! These operators must appear in ALL CAPS and with a space on each side in order to work.

  AND
  Documents found must contain all words joined by the AND operator

  OR
  Documents found must contain at least one of the words joined by OR

  AND NOT
  Documents found cannot contain the word that follows the term AND NOT.

  ( ) Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together

  e.g. to find documents that contain the word solicitors and either the word women or the word female, enter:

  solicitors AND (women OR female)

• When checking out the results, to find the words you are searching for in the document use Find (on this Page)

  Click on the Edit menu and select Find (on this Page). Enter the words again and click on Find Next..

Cutting and Pasting text from a Web Page

Often when you cut and paste text from a Web Page into Word it appears all over the place on your page. You can re-align the text by applying the Normal style to all of it. Select all the text you copied and pasted from the Web page Press Ctrl+Shift+n