Help With Finding Criminology On The Internet

GoEureka

On the other hand for most purposes it is a good idea to use one search engine. One good search engine will usually produce the result you want. It is quicker to use one engine rather than several. And if you use one search engine you can build up experience and expertise in how to use its search system, which will get you quicker and better results than making poor searches on lots of engines. You will also build up experience in understanding the results you get.

I suggest that you use GoEureka (formerly Alta Vista Australia) for this purpose. It seems to have as comprehensive a coverage as any engine. Its search and report systems are well regarded by the experts. Perhaps more importantly the complete GoEureka engine is now available in Australia. As a result, you will usually get a quicker connection to the engine and a quicker download.

This guide sets out an introduction to searches. Use this introduction and, when you have mastered it, read the further information on searches on GoEureka itself by clicking on the Help link provided on GoEureka's front page.

Note: some sites have their own search engines. If they have it is usually far quicker and more effective to use them. Anyone wanting to search primary and secondary sources for Australian law should become acquainted with Austlii's Search system and use it.

Searching with GoEureka: general procedure

1. Go to GoEureka's front page at: http://www.goeureka.com.au/
   
   
2. Below the GoEureka title and the adverts you will see a long thin box titled "Find me this". You type your search term into this box by moving the cursor over the box and then clicking on the mouse button. A flashing I-bar appears at the left of the box. You then type and what you type appears at the cursor, in the same way as it would with a word processor. If you miss-type anything, you can use the backspace or delete keys to delete from right to left; you can drag over parts you want to delete and then hit the delete key; you can use the mouse to move the cursor and click on any point where you want to insert or delete.
   
   
3. GoEureka allows you to choose if you would like materials from around the world or Australia. This can be useful, but remember that the search engine can only tell the place of origin by the URL or internet address, which can be deceiving. The only Australian sites GoEureka will select have "au" at the end of the internet address. If an Australian site does not have and "au" at the end, it will be excluded from the results.

   When you are satisfied with your search terms and options, click on the "search" button.
   
   

4. Wait until GoEureka starts downloading the results. Note that you are told first how many items were found which matched your search terms. This gives you a good idea of how successful your search has been. If you get very few 'hits' you may need to use a more general search term; if you get vast numbers you will need to narrow down your search term. Also note that at the bottom of the page of results there is usually a row of numbers, from 1 onwards, which are links to the next page of results.
   
   
5. Each hit listed in the results has at least one link in it that you click to get to the site in question. You can use the 'Back' button or 'Go' menu bar item to get back from that site to your search results.
   
   
6. At the top of each page of results you will find a search box with your search terms in it. If you do not like your results you can use this line to amend your search or type in a new one (note: this starts an entirely new search - it is not a search within the list of retrieved hits).

Searching with GoEureka: choosing your search terms

1. Your search term can be one word. The word can be any combination of letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Even if you type in a nonsense combination, such as ab%^78gh|> GoEureka will solemnly search for it. If the one word you use is a very unusual word you might get none, one or only a few hits. But if it is an ordinary sort of word you will get so many hits that the result is useless. For example, if you use law as your search term, GoEureka will find about seven million items.
   
   
2. Your search term can also be two or more words that you type in simply with spaces between them. If you do this, GoEureka will dash off and find all the documents which contain the first of the words, then all those which contain the second of the words, then all those which contain the third of the words, and so on. For example if you use law courts as your search term GoEureka will report that it has found about two million items - which is fascinating but not much use. But if, for example, you type in two or more words the results, when displayed, will start with those documents which contain all the words, then those which contain all but one of the words, then those with all but two - and so on. So the first documents listed should be much more use than the later ones.
   
   
3. You can make GoEureka search for phrases. You do this by typing the phrase in "quotation marks". GoEureka will find only those documents which contain that phrase - those two (or more) words, in that order and next to each other.
   
   
4. You can make GoEureka search for documents which contain both of two or all of three or more words in any order and in any part of a document. You do this by putting a + sign before the first and second (and any third or later) words. Thus if you type in +law +courts you get a different result from typing in 'law courts'. The more words you put in, the more specific your result will be. So if you type in +law +courts +australia you will have fewer results to wade through and the results you get are more likely to be the ones you want.

   Note that if you type in law+courts GoEureka will treat this as a phrase and search for the phrase not the words.
   
   

5. You can make GoEureka avoid documents which contain a word you do not want. You do this by typing a minus sign before typing in the word you do not want. So if you type in +law +courts -australia you have a good chance of finding material on law courts outside Australia. Alternatively, you may type the word in the "exclude the words" box.
   
   
6. You can cover the possibility of the words you are searching for appearing in different grammatical form. You do this by typing in at least the first three letters and then typing in an asterisk. Thus a search term murd* will find murder, murderer, murdered. If you use such an abbreviation in such a way that an astronomical number of words might fit it, GoEureka will ignore the term altogether. For example inte* will be ignored.
   
   
7. All of these variations of a search can be combined. You might do a search which reads: 'supreme court' +austral* -usa. You can use several words with + and/or -.
   
   
8. Capital and lower case letters: if you use lower case letters when you type in a word, GoEureka will look for all occurrences of that word, with or without capital letters.

Based on a document by Frank Sharman.