ONLINE DATABASE SEARCHING
CHEAT SHEET

(07/03/13)


Click-Wrap Agreement: An online form that a user completes to acknowledge the terms and conditions of using a database. The user often clicks a “radio” button or box to accept.

Initial Choices:
General Search Options:

Find/Get a Document: typing the citation, the parties’ names, or a docket number

Browse a Table of Contents for a database: a Table of Contents can help put a topic in perspective

Natural Language: this is like typing a Google search in the main search box

Terms & Connectors (aka Boolean searching): using words and connectors to make searching more exact and search results more relevant. Examples include:

and (to find results containing both words)
or (to find results containing either word)
not (to exclude results which contain certain terms)
“ ” (to find results containing phrases)
/x (to find results where the search terms are separated by a certain number of words)
/s (to find search terms located in the same sentence)
/p (to find search terms located in the same paragraph)
(...) (Use of parenthesis as nesting for more complicated searching)
! (at the end of a word to catch alternative endings)
* (use in a word to catch alternative spellings)

Template Searching: filling out a search box to search by fields. Examples include:

Keyword
Citation
Title
Author
Docket number
Court
Judge or Attorney

Other Search Tricks:



Browsing Results by:
Sorting Results in order by:
Search History:
Citation Checking:
Created on: July 03, 2013 -
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