Answer the following questions about what is in the report to ascertain its scope and content:
1. Who is responsible for the report?
2. Is it based on anecdotal evidence, statistical analysis, surveys, policy review, or some other research method?
3. What premise did the researchers seek to investigate?
4. What kinds of resources are referenced in its footnotes, bibliography, or text?
5. Who might your client be if you were an attorney using this report?
6. What legal research situations might cause a lawyer to use this report?
Answer the following questions about how to find the report:
1. Assuming that you know who produced the report:
- - Go to that entity’s Web site and figure out how to get to this report.
- Find the entity’s research mission or general explanation about why it conducts research.
- Look at the array of reports that this entity produces and compose a single sentence describing what they have available.
2. Pretending that you don’t know that this report exists but that you hope such a thing is available:
- - What might you want to prove by use of such a report?
- - In what sort of legal process or document or planning phase might you hope to use this particular document?
- - Compose a search engine inquiry based on your answers to the last two questions (i.e. Try to imagine that you truly had this information need and this expectation of use and think of a way to convey your research goals through a search engine inquiry.) If you have time, test your search strategy and note whether you found this report and also what other useful material you discovered by designing the search strategy with these questions in mind.
- - Use the research steps listed on the back of this page to identify an entity likely to have conducted and published the kind of research you need.
Identifying entities likely to have conducted and published the kind of research you need:
1. Look for a U.S. government agency that sponsors or conducts research in this field:
Agency list http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/All_Agencies/index.shtml
Topics list http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/All_Topics.shtml
Congressional Research Service http://www.llrx.com/features/crsreports.htm
Docuticker government reports http://www.docuticker.com/
2. Look for a foreign government that has an interest in the matter:
National statistical offices http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html
EU Joint Research Center http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
Nat’l Council of University Research Administrators http://www.ncura.edu/content/regions_and_neighborhoods/resources/international_resources.php
3. Identify research centers dedicated to this issue:
Economics http://edirc.repec.org/
Human Rights http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/links/centers.html
Environment http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/International_Environmental_Legal_Research.htm#Institutes
4. If it is a matter of public policy (something that involves the relationship between government and society) see what you can find from public policy think tanks:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/lehman/guides/ttanks.html
http://www.worldpress.org/library/ngo.cfm
5. See what the relevant international organizations have published.
Professional associations http://www.ipl.org/div/aon/
IGO’s http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/resource/internat/igo.html
NGO’s (from USAID) http://intranet.dimen-intl.com/usaid/index.html
