From the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. Hi this is Robert Brammer, and with me is Barbara Bavis.
We are legal reference specialists here at the Law Library of Congress,
and today we are going to talk about Google Scholar.
Google Scholar is a database of state and federal case law
that is available for free on the Internet.
To use Google Scholar, navigate to scholar.google.com,
and click on the ?case law?
button, and then type in a citation or a keyword.
Next, we will show how to search Google Scholar by citation.
Click on the ?case law?
button. In the search box, we will put the citation for a case.
We are going to choose Brown v. Board of Education,
and the citation to it is 347 U.S. 483.
Next, you will receive a results page.
Brown v. Board of Education is cited by a lot of cases,
but you will not always see those citations on your results page.
I am just going to click on Brown v. Board of Education,
and now we are going to view the case.
Now notice there is a difference here between Google Scholar
and your typical, commercial legal research database,
like Westlaw or Lexis.
The main thing is you will notice there is a lack
of editorial enhancements.
Specifically, you will not see a synopsis of the case, headnotes,
or other such information here at the top.
Now I am going to show you how to search by keyword.
I am going to search for ?hostile work environment.?
Ok, now you see the browse screen.
Over on the left, I am going to show you how to narrow down your results.
I am going to search for cases from the United States Supreme Court.
I am going to click on ?select courts?
on the left.
Now you see all of the courts available to you,
and they all have check marks by them.
This means they are included in the search.
I am going to uncheck all of them,
except for the Supreme Court, and then click ?done.?
Now I am getting all of the results for ?hostile work environment?
just for the Supreme Court.
Ok, next we are going to look at the How Cited feature in Google Scholar.
I am just going to choose a result in this list
to demonstrate the How Cited feature.
I will choose Harris v. Forklift Systems.
You will notice at the top of each case page, there is a ?How Cited?
link. If you choose that link, you will receive a list of the cases
in the Google Scholar database that cite your case.
I want to note a few things about the How Cited feature.
First, on the left-hand side, it gives you a few cases
and tells you how they have cited your case,
but there are a few downsides to the Google Scholar feature.
First, you cannot quickly tell how these cases affect your case,
whether they support it or whether they did not.
Another problem is you are only receiving cases contained
in the Google Scholar database, not necessarily every case
that has ever cited your case.
To make up for these shortcomings,
you will want to visit your local public law library
and use a citator, such as Shepard?s or Keycite.
The good thing about the How Cited feature is it gives you a general
idea of how your case has been dealt with by other cases and directs you
to some of the cases that have cited your case.
On behalf of Barbara Bavis and myself, thank you for joining us.
If you have any followup questions, please go to www.loc.gov,
and click on ?Ask A Librarian?
at the top-left.
Next, click on ?law?
under general collections.
At the bottom of the screen, you will see ?Ask A Librarian Online.?
Click on ?online form,?
fill out the form, and we will respond to your question
within five business days.
Thanks again.
This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov