Useful Sources for Information - CRIM 420 - Law Enforcement Academy

Find background/overview information

Online reference sources give you an overview of your topic, provide helpful background information, and often provide you with ideas for good search terms to try in article databases.

Credo This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference contains online versions of over 800 reference titles (encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, etc.). All titles included in Credo may be searched at the same time.
Facts on File This link opens in a new window
Use Facts on File to answer questions about events, issues, statistics, and people of the last 60+ years. The Issues & Controversies section delivers balanced discussions of both sides of controversial issues.

What are government documents?

All levels of government - international, federal, state, and local - produce a large range of documents, policy and research reports, and statistics. In fact, the federal government is the largest collector of statistics in the country.

Government document websites

Resources to locate government documents include:

USA.gov
more...less...
USA.gov searches only federal, state, and local government websites for the public. Its search box works like other search engines you're used to, but USA.gov only returns results from government web pages, most ending in .gov or .mil. This helps you be sure you’re getting official information you can trust--and there’s no advertising.
CRS Reports (about Criminal Justice)
Congressional Research Service Reports
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of Congress. This legislative branch agency works exclusively for Members of Congress, their committees and their staff. This collection includes CRS reports from the mid-1960's through 2018—covering a variety of topics from agriculture to foreign policy to welfare.

Find journal articles

Use FLITE's SmartSearch and other subject-specific databases to find magazine and journal articles on a particular topic. Many links in SmartSearch and the databases provide the full-text of the articles that you find; some may only provide a citation or an abstract.

Criminal Justice Databases

National Criminal Justice Reference Service This link opens in a new window
Full text of over 80,000 resources, including all known Office of Justice Programs' works. Also includes citations for over 230,000 publications, reports, articles, and audiovisual resources from 1970 to present.
SAGE Journals This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from over 1,100 journals, including over 200 open access ones, published by 400 society partners.

Business & General Databases

ABI/INFORM (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from over 3,000 business, marketing, and management journals from 1984 to present.
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from over 8,500 publications including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. Also contains citations for over 25,000 publications including white papers, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Academic OneFile (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from over 17,000 publications on every subject. Also includes complementary audio and video content.

SmartSearch

You can also try SmartSearch: