Getting Started & Using This Site

The following guides (pdf) aim to help you quickly get to know our law collections and how to access them:

First Steps

Finding Law Books

Where To Find Legislation

Where To Find Published Law Reports

Find A Law Report Or Statute (Westlaw, LexisLibrary)

Westlaw UK
Contains the full-text of The Law Reports from 1865, as well as legislation dating back to 1267. Use your Keele login to access the service.
Click here for guide on how to use.

Please note, if you are using this link to access Westlaw from off campus, at the Westlaw site (under "Login") click on the link "Academic - Home Organisation" and follow the instructions to login. At the next screen, select or type "Keele University" where indicated, to obtain the Keele login screen, from where you can login using your Keele username and password.

LexisLibrary
Our other paid-for source of case reports and UK legislation, but it also contains material relating to tax cases, consumer law, local government, and trading standards. Titles include the Butterworths Employment Law Handbook, Trading And Consumer Law, Halsbury's Laws and Local Government Reports.

LAWTEL
UK-based legal information service, tracks current developments in legislation and case law and provides handy digests. If using this link off campus, click "Log in via UK Federation" and log in using your Keele username and password. A user guide can be downloaded from here.

Legal Journal Collections

HeinOnline is a journal database containing full-text international and US journals, over 400 titles, almost all of which date back to the first volume. If using this link from off-campus, Click "Log in to HeinOnline", then click the link "UK Federation and Open Athens Login". Select Keele University from the list and then "Authenticate". When prompted type in your Keele login to access the service.
Detailed instructions are available from here.

EBSCO Academic Search Complete contains the full text of over 4500 journals covering almost every area of academic study.
You will need your Keele login to access the EBSCO databases from off-campus.

Jordans Family Law Online - connect here to the Family Law Journal, Family Law Reports series and the Child and Family Law Quarterly, all published by Jordans. Use your Keele login to access this website.

JSTOR
A searchable full text archive of over 130 important journals. JSTOR is not specifically a collection of Law journals but does include some titles that may be of interest.
You will need your Keele login to access JSTOR from off campus.

SwetsWise
Another searchable collection of electronic journals with full text access to over 3000 journals, including some titles relevant for legal studies.
You will need your Keele login to access Swetswise off-campus. View the Quick Guide to Using Swetswise.

Find An Electronic Journal In Keele's Collection
Use this website to search for a journal, and where possible a paper from within a journal. Note: Some Westlaw and LexisNexis titles are not yet included in this index, and it is recommended you follow the links provided above and search the journal collections on these services individually.

Westlaw UK has some full-text UK law journals and "abstracts" for many others, i.e. it will give you a reference but not the full text.), and LexisLibrary (which has different UK journal titles, covering areas such as consumer law, tax law and economics).

Newspapers

Newspapers

The following services provide full-text access to a large number of newspapers.

ProQuest UK News Stand
Provides the searchable full-text of articles published in around 30 UK newspapers including The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and The Independent.
You will need your Keele username and password for off-campus access.
View the Quick Guide to Using ProQuest UK News Stand.

Nexis UK
A news and business service which includes around 12,000 publications, including worldwide, national and local newspapers.
You will need to use your Keele username and password for both on-campus and off-campus access to Nexis UK.
View the Quick Guide to Using Nexis UK.

The Times Digital Archive
Search the complete digital edition of The Times from 1785-2006. The entire newspaper is captured with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos.
You will need your Keele username and password for off-campus access.
View the Quick Guide to Using The Times Digital Archive.

E-Book Collections

Some legal texts are available from these e-book services; read the book in full online.

Dawsonera

An expanding collection of ebooks purchased by the Library which includes some titles relating to Law.

You will need your Keele login for on and off-campus access.

netLibrary

Collection includes the whole of Pettet's Company Law, MacIntyre's Business Law, and Ashworth's Sentencing and Criminal Justice.

MyiLibrary

Includes titles on contract law, employment law, and international law.

UK And European Law Sources

Legislation.gov.uk
Part of the UK's National Archives, providing access to legislation, statutory instruments, and command papers. This has replaced the old OPSI (Office of Public Sector Information) website.

EUR-Lex: the Portal to European Union Law

The whole body of European Community Law: All Treaties (with related Articles, Protocols, Annexes, and Declarations), International Agreements, Preparatory Documents, Parliamentary Questions, Secondary Legislation (Regulations, Decisions, Directives, Opinions, Statutes), and Case Law.

European Court of Justice
Free access to full text judgments since 1953.

European Court of Human Rights
Free access to the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. Use the "HUDOC" link to search for case reports.

BAILII - British and Irish Legal Information Institute
British and Irish primary legal materials available free.

Directgov
The UK Government's information service.

Hansard
The edited word-for-word report of proceedings in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

INTUTE: Law
Intute has a site devoted to law that provides links to higher quality legal information resources on the global web.

Law Commission
Reports and consultation papers from the Law Commission.

NATLEX
Site maintained by the International Labor Organization (USA). Has references to over 55,000 national laws on labour, social security, and related human rights, and over 300 laws in full text.

Help For Law Students

Abbreviations

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations
Use this site to search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications, from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States.

OSCOLA
Learn about the "Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities".

Westlaw

Library Westlaw Quick Guide

Westlaw UK Student Guide

LexisLibrary

Library LexisLibrary Quick Guide

LexisLibrary Legal Information Quick Start Guide
From the company's website.

Lawtel

Lawtel Guide
All things related to this legal information service.

E-Book and E-Journal Basics

Find An Electronic Journal In Keele's Collection
Short YouTube video on how to search for an e-journal title.

Keele E-Books - The Basics
Short YouTube video on finding and reading our e-Books.

Recommended Reading

Need a book on all this? The Law Librarian recommends the following:

Finch, E. and Fafinski, S. (2011) Legal skills, 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knowles, J. (2009) Effective legal research, 2nd edition. London: Sweet & Maxwell.

Internet for Law
A free, simple, interactive tutorial to improve online legal research skills.

Other Useful Online Sources

Legal scholars may find some of the sites below useful or interesting. Links to other social science websites which may be of potential use can be found here

Duhaime's Law Dictionary
Dictionary researched and provided free of charge by lawyer Lloyd Duhaime.

Eighteenth Century Official Parliamentary Publications Portal 1688-1834
Go back in time courtesy of BOPCRIS, to read Parliamentary papers from the 17th century onwards.

Global Legal Information Network
Database of laws, regulations, and other complementary legal sources.

Google Scholar
The most famous web search engine can search for academic journals and literature too.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
A collection of nineteenth century Parliamentary papers.

Infolaw
An established legal information gateway of interest to legal scholars and practitioners alike.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database - Proquest
Contains summaries of over 174,000 U.S. and international publications. You will need your Keele log-in to access Proquest from off-campus.

New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
Contains over 1,850 articles by more than 1,500 of the world's leading economists. May be useful for business law students.

NCJRS Virtual Library
NCJRS is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide.

PARLIT
Database of bibliographic references on the role, structure and working methods of national parliaments, and on electoral systems, constitutional law.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674 to 1913
Searchable digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913.

Refugee Caselaw Site
Website hosted by the University of Michigan. Aims "to assist judges, advocates, and policymakers around the world to access leading court decisions that interpret the refugee definition set by the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol".

THOMAS
Provides a number of databases of U.S. legislative information, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Web of Knowledge
This is a citation database (i.e. you will find journal references and NOT full text). It has a wide coverage though, and it is a useful tool to find references before you tackle the library's full-text journal services. Includes Web of Science, ISI Proceedings, Journal Citation Reports and ISIHighlyCited.com.

Zetoc
Use this site to set up e-mail alerts to your inbox when new issues of journals are published. Zetoc will send you an e-mail containing the new issue’s table of contents.

A Map Of Our Law Resources