WEEKLY LAW REPORTS a user guide

Transcription

1 UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER LIBRARY WEEKLY LAW REPORTS a user guide COVERAGE The Weekly Law Reports database on the JUSTIS.com Web site contains the full text of the printed publication Weekly Law Reports volumes 1, 2 and 3 from 1953 to the present day. The database is updated every 2 weeks. Weekly Law Reports is a printed series of authoritative reports of cases which influence the application and development of the law in England and Wales. It covers judgments of the English courts (House of Lords, Privy Council, Court of Appeal, High Court, Ecclesiastical Courts and Restrictive Practices Court). Reports of cases are written by barristers and contain the full text judgments as approved by the Judge. ACCESSING WEEKLY LAW This database can be accessed both on and off campus using Athens user accounts, through any PC with Internet access. From the University of Ulster library home page Select Electronic Information Services. Click on Weekly Law Reports, and then on Log on now on the top left side of the Justis.com screen. A screen will appear asking for ID and password. Enter your Athens account details. Alternatively, for use within the University only you can use a User ID and Password available from Library Staff. Click Logon At the next screen select your database by first clicking on the words Case Law and then ticking the white box beside Weekly Law Reports. Click on Go! and OK on the copyright window that appears. Alternatively, enter this address (URL) in the location box of your Internet browser: and follow the instructions as above. SEARCHING You are now at the search screen, where you specify the terms for which you wish to search. Free text You can search using free text (text which appears anywhere in a report). Terms that you type here will be searched for in all fields. Limiting by fields You can also limit your search to the most common fields in the database: by court, parties, headnote (keywords appearing in titles only), catchwords (key words in the report), counsel and year.

2 You can change the assortment of fields that is available by clicking the Fields button at the bottom of the screen and selecting or de-selecting from an additional list of lesscommon fields searching by Judge or Solicitors, for example. (You can restore the default fields by clicking the Reset button). Using the Word Index If you are not sure what words to search for in a particular field, click the adjacent Word Index button (the icon on the right of the screen) and use the Word Index. This allows you to select a search term from an index of all the words in a particular field, and you can also see word variants that will help to make your query more comprehensive. There is also a Word Index for Free Text searching, which contains all of the words from all of the fields. When using the Word index, type the first few letters of a word in the Word Root text box, and then click the adjacent Browse button. A list of matching words will be displayed, with a frequency count for each word. To use one of the displayed words in your query, click the word, and it will be copied to the text box for the appropriate field on the Search screen. To return to the Search screen without choosing a word, click the Cancel button. Limiting using Search operators You can use search operators to combine terms within a field. For example, entering Pepper and Hart in the Parties field and clicking on Go! will bring up a list of reports referring to those cases. Operators can be used to control the relationship between terms in different fields, by clicking the appropriate And button on the left hand side of the screen to toggle it from 'And' to 'Or' and then to 'Not'. Boolean operators Boolean operators combine and exclude terms in a particular way. The three main operators are 'and', 'or', and 'not'. The 'and' operator is useful if you need to narrow a search. The 'or' operator widens a search so must be used with care. The 'not' operator can be useful for narrowing a search, but must be used with caution because some useful records may include a passing reference to a term you exclude. Parentheses Use parentheses to define the logical order in which a multiple-term query is performed. For example, in a case law database a search in the Judge field for russell and (stuart-smith or megaw) finds reports where L. J. Russell and either L. J. Stuart- Smith or Lord Megaw were present. Without the parentheses, JUSTIS would find reports featuring both L. J. Russell and L. J. Stuart-Smith or Lord Megaw alone. Proximity operators Use proximity operators to narrow a search, but with greater precision than the and operator. In order to be retrieved, not only must the documents contain both terms, but the terms must occur within a certain distance of each other. For example, A within 25 of B (where A must be within 25 characters of B), or A within 40 after B (where A must be within 40 characters of B, and must be after B) Wild Cards

3 Wild cards are used in place of one or more characters in a word when you are designing a search on the Search screen. Wild card *? Meaning Any number of characters anywhere in a word Any single character anywhere in a word - A space, no space or a hyphen Example liab* finds liability, liabilities, liable, etc. Compl?ment finds compliment and complement Data-base finds data base, database and data-base Wild cards can save you having to enter a number of different spellings of the same word. However they do widen the search and should be used with care, especially the * operator. When you have typed in all of the terms for which you wish to search, click the Go! button near the bottom of the window (NB pressing the Enter key on your keyboard will not start the search). If you want to clear all of the entries that you have made on the Search screen, click the Reset button near the bottom of the window. The Reference Tab From the Search screen click on Reference. This function allows you to enter the reference to a document. The database can recognise a string of characters as a reference to a document, locate the appropriate document and display it. Type a publication reference into the search box and click on Go! For example, typing WLR 345 into the box and clicking Go! or hitting return will bring up the full text of the case Ezekiel v. Orakpo. For more information on how to compose your citation, consult the Help screen page under Publication References for a list of formats. The Contents Tab This function allows you to browse through the records in the database using a hierarchical display of up to three levels: year; series; volume. Click on the Help icon for further guidance. DISPLAYING RESULTS If your search finds more than one record, you will be shown a list of profiles of documents on the Search Results screen. If your search finds only one record, it will be displayed on the Document screen. If your search finds no records, a message will be displayed informing you of this. To view one of the records, click one of the underlined document names to display the record on the Document screen. If your query retrieved too many records to display on one screen, you will see a row of page numbers near the bottom of the screen; click one of the numbers to see another page of profiles.

4 If you have linked to any records by clicking on the hypertext links within a document, you will be able to view a list of records in the Document Link tab. The document Screen The document you have chosen from the list on the Search Results screen is displayed here. To the left of the document you will see the outline. It shows you a list of the fields or sections that are present in the current document, and allows you to navigate through the document by clicking one of the field names. At the bottom of the window, you will see a row of buttons: The Document button allows you to browse through the records found by the last query. By clicking the < and > buttons you can move from one document to the previous or next. If you click the Document button itself, you can choose a record by its number within the sequence of records shown on the Search Results screen. The Page button allows you to browse through the displayed record one page at a time, by clicking the < and > buttons to move from one page to the previous or next. If you click the Page button itself, you can choose a page by its number. The Term button allows you to browse through the occurrences of the terms used in the last query, by clicking the < and > buttons to move from one occurrence to the previous or next. If you click the Term button itself, you will see your search query. Hypertext links to other documents or to other pages in the current document are indicated by blue underlined text. Click to jump to another page or document. If you see a reference for another document that you would like to see and it is not a hypertext link, highlight it and then click the J-Link button on the toolbar. JUSTIS will attempt to find the document and display it for you, even if it is a database that you have not selected. The Toolbar buttons allow you to jump quickly to other screens. The cross ref button, for example, opens the Cross Reference screen, which shows you lists of relevant previous or subsequent documents and allows you to display any of them. It is displayed on the toolbar only when there are relevant documents to refer to. The trail button opens the Trail screen, which shows you a list of all the documents you have viewed in the current session, and allows you to go back to any of them. You can also switch back to the search, results or document screens from the screen you are currently in. SAVING Preferred method: Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browsers allow you to export a document while viewing it on the Document screen, by clicking in the document with your right mouse button. This will display a pop-up menu from which you should select select all, and then copy if you want to save the whole document. If you want to save part of a document highlight the text you are interested in and with a right click of the mouse select copy in the pop-up screen. You can then paste the text you have copied in to a package such as Word. Netscape Web browsers allow you to export a document while viewing it on the Document screen, by using the Ctrl+S key combination. Click inside the document, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and then press the S key. Depending on the

5 version of your Netscape browser, you will probably be able to save the document in HTML format, and you may also have the option to save it as a plain text (or ASCII) file. If you save it as an ASCII file, you will lose the formatting. If you save it as an HTML file (with an extension of.htm or.html), you will be able to display the text (complete with formatting) in a Web browser, or import it into a modern word processor. Once loaded into a word processor, you will be able to save the document in the word processor's format, e.g. as a.doc file in Microsoft's Word for Windows. Alternatively, click on the download icon from the tool bar. Follow the on screen instructions to save a document to disk PRINTING If your PC is attached to a printer, highlight the text you want to print (or click in the text window if you want to print the complete report) and right hand click on your mouse. From the print window that appears choose what you want to print a selection of text, a page or the whole report. Alternatively, click on the print icon from the tool bar and follow the on-screen instructions. HELP There is extensive help available throughout the database by clicking on the Help button on the toolbar. EXITING When you have finished using the database click on the Log Off button on the toolbar. January 01