Epic databases – Legaltrac
One of the Epic databases available to you in the libraries and though your my.lawsociety pages is Legaltrac.
This database indexes a large number of legal journals from around the world and includes some New Zealand journals. It indexes law reviews, bar association journals and legal newspapers. Some of these are available in full text as well or even as spoken files that you can either download or listen to. The indexing starts in 1980 and has more than 1.6 million items indexed!
On the database front page you will see a simple search box with buttons underneath that allow you to limit the words you enter to subject headings only, keywords or the entire document (the default option). There are also three tick boxes that give you some preset limits. Underneath those the database highlights new articles on selected topics for your interest.
Searching. Use the box on the front page for most searching. I would recommend limiting searches to keywords first off to see how many results you get. Results come back to you with the most recent first. They are organised by article type – academic, magazines, books, news and multimedia. It is always worth looking at all categories. The orange bar at the top of the page also gives you other search options including browsing by subject, browsing by publication and advanced search which gives you many possible search options to try.
Results. Ticking the box to the right of the item saves it to a result list. After you have looked at all the results and selected ones you are interested in, you can go to this list by clicking “marked items” in the orange bar at the top of the page. You then tick which ones you want to keep and those results can be printed, downloaded or emailed to you.
Training sessions
There will be training sessions for the new branch library computers on Wednesday 14 September and Tuesday 20 September in the Wellington High Court library at 5.30 pm. To book for one of the two training sessions please go to http://bookwhen.com/nzlslibrary