Via its public website, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service provides abstracts of publications across the entire field of law enforcement and criminal justice. Publications indexed include books, journals, magazines, and government documents. Subject areas include corrections, courts, crime prevention, criminology, drugs and crime, juveniles, law enforcement, statistics, technology, and victims of crime. The NCJRS also offers separate access to the full-text of numerous government publications relating to criminal justice. This guide covers searching the abstracts database only.

Access:

• From the Library Home Page (http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/index.html):
• In the Quick Links to Databases section, click on NCJRS Abstracts.
• Alternatively, go directly to the NCJRS Abstracts Search Page  (http://AbstractsDB.ncjrs.org).

The search screen consists of the following options and fields, beginning with the option to choose the type of search you wish to perform.

CHOOSING A SEARCH TYPE

The default search type is Boolean, however you may also perform Concept or Pattern searches.

Boolean: A Boolean search will find abstracts containing the exact terms entered.  Use AND, OR, and NOT to connect terms; quotation marks to identify phrases; and parentheses to connect concepts.

Example: To find abstracts dealing with HIV in prisons, your search might look like:


      (HIV OR AIDS) AND ("correctional facilities" OR prisons OR jail)

Concept: A Concept search will find abstracts containing the words or phrases entered, as well as related concepts. For example, a search for "death penalty" will also retrieve abstracts which contain the phrase "capital punishment".

Pattern: A Pattern search will find abstracts containing the words entered, as well as words with similar spellings. This is useful if you are not sure of the exact spelling of a word, phrase, or author's name. It will also help in searching for terms spelled in British/Canadian style.

PERFORMING A SEARCH

After choosing the search type, you may search by one or more of the following fields: Title, Subject, Author, NCJ Number, General Search, and/or Date Range.

Title Search: If you know the title of a publication (or part of it), enter it in this field. Enclose phrases in quotation marks. In the case of magazine or journal articles, Title refers to the title of the article not the title of the magazine or journal.

Subject Search: Looks for index terms taken from the National Criminal Justice Thesaurus.  See Using the Thesaurus below for information on finding and searching with index terms. Index terms can also be used in the General Search field.

Author Search: Looks only for authors' and editors' names, including the names of people and organizations. Some records include the authors' full names and others include only the first initial of the first name, users need to search for both.

Example: The name Paula Rubin should be searched for as:



NCJ Number Search: If you know the serial number assigned to a document by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, enter it in this field.

General Search: Allows you to search for terms across all fields at once, as well as within the text of the abstract.

Date Range: Use this field to limit your search to materials published in a certain time period. You must specify the month and year for both the beginning and ending date.

Example: To limit to materials published since 1995, enter 01/1995 - 05/2003

ADVANCED SEARCH TECHNIQUES

Truncation: Use an asterisk (*) to retrieve any words beginning with a string of letters.

Example: correction* will retrieve corrections, correctional, etc.

Proximity operator: The pattern is word1 word2 within N, where N is a number of words.

Example: incarcerated mothers within 10 will retrieve records that contain the words incarcerated and mothers within 10 words of each other

Result List

Results from your search are listed as brief citations in order of NCJ Number. You may re-sort the list alphabetically by title, or by date.

• Records in the result list provide the title, NCJ Number, and the document's publication date. To view the complete record, including abstract, click on Abstracts.
• If the item is available in full text through the NCJRS, the record will contain a link to view the full document as an HTML File, PDF File, or ASCII File.
• Records are displayed in groups of 25 at a time. If your search results in more than 25 records, use the Next Page link at the bottom of the list to see the next group of 25. Use the Display on Page function on the search screen to dictate the maximum number of hits returned. (Default is 50).

Saving and Printing

To save or print abstracts:

• Check the box at the top left corner of the record. This can be done from either the result list or the full abstract screen.
• If not already there, return to the result list page when you have selected all the abstracts you want to save or print.
• Click on Download.

To Save: Choose File from the menu bar and select Save As. Give the filename an extension of .txt.

To Print: Print the page using your browser's print function

The NCJRS Abstracts database uses a controlled vocabulary to assign subject and index terms to documents indexed in the system. The thesaurus should be consulted to determine the appropriate index terms to use in your search of the NCJRS Abstracts. The thesaurus can also be used to find synonyms and related terms in order to broaden or expand your search. You may also perform searches for abstracts from within the thesaurus.

ACCESSING THE THESAURUS
At the main NCJRS Abstracts page click located above the search box. The thesaurus provides the option to Browse an Alphabetical List of index terms, or to Search for a Term.

To Browse, click on the link. You will be presented with an alphabetical list from which you can select and/or expand terms.
To Search, enter a term and click . The result list will display any matches, including terms to use in place of those you entered. For example, a thesaurus search on Death Sentences returns the term Capital Punishment. In addition, you will be provided with broader, narrower, and related terms.

Clicking on a term allows you to expand the term and see its full entry in the thesaurus. This may include a scope note which briefly defines the term and makes suggestions for its use. The expanded entry will also include those terms for which the selected term is the accepted substitute, as well as broader, narrower, and related terms. These can be used to refine, re-direct, or broaden you search.

SEARCHING WITH TERMS

When you encounter a term you would like to use in your search, select it by clicking in the check box to the left of the term.

Click Add Terms at the bottom of the screen to add selected terms and return to the thesaurus search to find more.
Click on Finalize Terms to refine your search terms and apply boolean operators.
Click on Execute Search to perform a search and retrieve a result list as described above.

http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/ncjrs.htm

Page Maintained by Oliver Zeff

Last Updated August 22, 2006