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Law: Undergraduate Support Services

This guide highlight key resources which can be used to support your research in law. Use the tabs to find information about different types of sources, legal skills guidance and referencing.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a subset of Google.

It is an international index to scholarly literature listed in Google.

It contains mainly journal articles but also reports and formal documents from organisations, some theses and particularly useful are references to books that are listed in Google Books. You can choose to search case law but the collection is not good.

Unlike databases, all references in GS initially have the same ‘look’.

Not everything is available freely on GS in full-text format– only items that are freely available can be accessed full text. However, publishers work with GS and if the UWC library subscribes to a journal, you can access the full-text articles via GS so, you are able to access free full text plus full text for items UWC library subscribes to.

Where full text is available, GS links you to the place where this item lives, so you will see different screens. Look around for the download option.

GS is simpler in look, searchability and has far less functionality than databases.

3 Ways to Use Google Scholar - wikiHow

  • From the Library’s webpage (https://lib.uwc.ac.za/) go to Google Scholar at the bottom of the uKwazi box. Type search words into the search box and click the search button.

 

Results are in RELEVANCE order but you can change to date order and also limit by date or date range.

The first piece of information is the title of the item. In green on the next line is the author and if the item is an article, the next detail will be the title of the journal, followed by the date and the database or site where the journal is kept.

In black print is a sentence from the article that tells you about the article.

The last row of blue options has a useful cite option – for those using non-law referencing styles!

To see if the full text is available, click either on the title or the blue wording on the right-hand side eg in the example above: [pdf] jstor.org. Right-hand side wording usually means accessibility via UWC but not consistent.

The screenshot below shows a book from Google Books. To see if the book or parts of it are available online, click on the book title. You will be taken out of GS into Google Books. Scroll down through the text to see what is available.

 

 

Click on Library search. You may be taken straight to the Library’s Catalogue or you may encounter the screen below:

If you get this screen, simply click on ‘Continue’.

You will then see the book in the Catalogue. Scroll down past ‘check availability' to see if the UWC library has the book.

 

If the double blue arrows do not appear you can set up your PC to see this:

  • Click on settings in GS 
  • At the settings page, from the left-hand column under Search results, click ‘library links’
  • On the next page type in the University of the Western Cape and tick the box below this as well as ‘open-world cat library search’.
  • Click on save.

 

UWC LIBRARY & INFORMATION SERVICES

University of the Western Cape,

Robert Sobukwe Road,

Bellville,

7535

Tel: 021 959 2946