This page will help you find information sources for your research. The library gives you access to a ton of high-quality information. The rest of this page provides links to sources on topics related to criminal justice, organized by type of source:
Encyclopedias can be a good place to start researching a new topic. They offer short guides to the current research and often include lists of other recommended sources.
Journal articles are the type of source most commonly used by social scientists, including researchers in criminal justice. They are shorter than books and typically focus on a specific topic. They take less time to publish than books and usually provide more current research on a topic. Journal articles are often peer reviewed, which means they have been vetted by other experts on the topic. As a student researcher in criminal justice, you are most likely to cite journal articles in your own assignments and papers.
Try searching these library databases to find journal articles on topics related to criminal justice.
Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text contains nearly 500,000 records selected from important sources within the discipline. This resource includes full text for over 315 magazines and journals.
Comprehensive database supporting research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends. Includes U.S. and international scholarly journals, and correctional and law enforcement trade publications, dissertations, crime reports, crime blogs and other material relevant for researchers or those preparing for careers in criminal justice, law enforcement and related fields.
NCJRS is a federally funded resource offering justice and substance abuse information to support research, policy, and program development worldwide.
Most are included in their Virtual Library, some may only be available on microfiche in GIMMS (2nd Floor of the IUB Wells Library), and yet others may only be available from NCJRS.
NCJRS services and resources are available to anyone interested in crime, victim assistance, and public safety including policymakers, practitioners, researchers, educators, community leaders, and the general public.
These library databases contain journal articles from other subjects related to criminal justice. You can use these databases to expand your search.
Bibliographic records covering essential areas related to family studies, including marriage, divorce, family therapy, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline.
Records are selected from many of the top titles within the discipline, including Journal of Family Studies, Journal of Marriage & Family, and Family Relations.
Abstracts to journal articles and citations to book reviews in the international literature of sociology, social work, and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Includes abstracting and indexing of articles and book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications, plus books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers, and working papers.
Bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services and related areas, including social welfare, social policy and community development. Abstracts and indexes serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations and citations to book reviews.
Major areas of coverage include crisis intervention, family and social welfare, gerontology, homelessness, policy, planning, professional issues in social work, social development, social work education, and support groups/networks.
Databases like Google Scholar and Academic Search (EBSCO) are great for researching across a variety of subject areas. Use these databases if you want to do the broadest search possible.
Provides full-text coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles for most academic disciplines.
This multi-disciplinary database provides full-text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
Special version of Google's index to scholarly content on the web. Connects to full-text resources available to IU users.
oogle Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
Connecting to Google Scholar from off-campus? The IUB Libraries already provide access to many of the journal articles indexed in Google Scholar. Look for IU-Link, which will lead you to information about full-text content you can access via the Libraries' subscriptions.
While books may not be used as often as journal articles in social science research, they are still valuable and play an important role in research. Books are much longer in length than journal articles and tend to cover more aspects of a topic. You might not have time to read an entire book for your assignment, but you can cite a particular chapter or section of a book.
You can use the library's online catalog, IUCAT, to search all IU libraries for books and media on topics related to criminal justice. Watch the tutorial below to learn how to search IUCAT. Check out the box below the video to tutorial to search IUCAT directly from this guide!
Ways to access IUCAT: