1. Getting started
Kate Jackson
Human Rights 2015

2. Checklist of places to start
What are you looking for - Secondary Sources?
Books SOLO – this will bring up both hard copy and ebooks.
Search using the ‘Collections’ search box.
Database You can find databases on SOLO (using the Collections tab)
OR you can use Oxlip+ or the Legal Databases page.
Journal article (by article
information)
Either SOLO - Articles and More tab. If this doesn’t work
then try Google Scholar if this doesn’t work then try by
journal title (see below).
Journal article (by journal
title)
The best thing to use is SOLO. You need the full title of the
journal (abbreviations do not work) then choose the
correct database for the year you are looking for.
Journal articles (subject
search)
Use a journal index (or more than one). Good ones to use
are SSCI, Google Scholar, Westlaw (world journals) or the
ILP, and the IFLP.
Guides and further help The Human Rights Libguide or the Library website

3. Checklist of places to start
What are you looking for – Primary sources?
Treaties and official
documents
Firstly look at the website (if there is one) of the
organisation that created the document.
Legislation Check the jurisdiction – then check the Oxford libguides
(jurisdictions) for information on relevant databases and
free sources (see guides below)
Cases As above
Guides to finding primary
sources
UN guides http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/un or
http://research.un.org/en/docs
Individual jurisdictions
http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/content.php?pid=151782
&sid=1288533
Other places to start your
research
Max Planck Encyclopaedia of International Law, Proquest
Theses and Dissertations (both available via SOLO or
Oxlip+)

4. Max Planck Encyclopaedia of
International Law
• Can be found on SOLO and list of legal
databases.
• Good overview of broad topic areas
• ‘Articles’ are updated (although some are still
a few years old)
• Very good select bibliography with links to
relevant articles and documents

5. Current Awareness
• Lots of tools available
• Different databases and journals have ways of
setting up alerts that email new results to you
• Another more efficient way is to use a RSS
feed reader and then subscribe to RSS feeds
• RSS feeds can be update to webpages, news,
journal table of contents
• Can learn more about how to do this in an
individual session