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Resource Center
Search Tips
Article by Emile Carreau published on September 13th, 2012Much has been written about the death penalty. Now it is just a matter of finding exactly what you need! Here are a few tips to help you sift through the mass of documents contained in the Resource Centre.
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General tips
- The Resource Centre aims to serve two main groups – those who are searching for information of the death penalty and those who are looking to take action against it (documents found in the “Tool” section). To these ends, it is useful to consult the category/sub-category drop down list find the most appropriate choice of document. This is particularly pertinent for those that wish to find documents in the “Tool” section. To search in the “Tool” section, it suffices to select the sub-category and then press the search button as there is a limited amount of documents in each sub-category.
- If you want to avoid wadding through documents in foreign languages, it is a good idea to type in your mother tongue or your strongest second language (if your mother tongue is not available in the list below) in the language field provided. The majority of documents are in the six official UN languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic), with very few documents in other languages (including; Italian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, Indonesian, Farsi, Vietnamese and Hindi). N.B. Make sure you write the language in that language.
- There are many documents that deal with specific states in the USA yet the country drop down list does not list each individual state. To get around this you can type the name of the state (e.g. Alabama) into the description field. By doing this all of the documents that contain the word Alabama in their abstracts will be found. The description and title fields can also be used in this way to find other specific words and phrases.
- When typing in one of the fields it is useful to note that it is not case sensitive. Also, you can type part of a title or the first or last name of the author and it will still bring up the result.
General Search (when you do not have a particular document in mind)
- A general search on a particular keyword, country or region, is relatively simple. If you are looking for information on one of these areas you should make the selection from the relevant drop down list and avoid cross referencing. For example, if you want information on Vietnam, select it from the country drop down list but make sure that you do not select Asia Pacific from the regions drop down list. This avoids your results page being clogged with all the other documents that mention countries and issues in the Asia Pacific region.
- If you want an overall briefing on the death penalty select ‘Statistics’ from the keywords drop down list. This will bring up some several key reports on the use of the death penalty throughout the world. Likewise, if you would like to glance at a list of reports and articles that give a thorough overview of a particular country or region click on ‘Country/Regional Profiles’.
- You can make your search very general by minimizing the number of items you select from the drop lists and fields you fill-in. In doing this there will be a greater number of results.
Searching for specific documents
- If you are looking for a document that you know exists, the easiest way of finding it is to search by title and author. N.B. For edited books/collections, you will not be able to search for individual chapter/essay titles, although you will be able to search for the contributing authors.
- Used independently, the date, place of publication and publisher fields will not be very precise in finding the document you desire. These fields are best used with one of the other remaining fields. For example, if you want all documents by Amnesty International on a particular country, you should type Amnesty International into the publisher field and then select China from the country drop down list.
- The United Nations and some of the larger NGOs (notably Amnesty International) give their documents codes. If you know the code of the document you are searching you can put it in the code field. This will bring up the document in all the languages that document is published. For example, a 2008 AI report called “The Death Penalty Worldwide Developments in 2007” has a document code of ACT50/002/2008. A code search of this document will bring up the document in English, French, Spanish and Arabic. Using the code field is a good way of finding a specific document in other languages. N.B. Make sure you do not leave spaces in the code.
- You can save yourself time by being as precise as possible and thereby pulling up fewer results. If the document does not come up at first attempt, you can gradually clear the number of fields you filled in or items you selected from the drop down list until it does. N.B. when you clear items from your search it is suggested that you do so in the following order: availability, place of publication, date, category/sub-category, publisher, code and then one by one of what remains. (This order is suggested as these are the items and fields that are most likely to block your search.)
Searching for tools
The “Tool” section was designed to help those who are looking to take action against the death penalty. To search in the “Tool” section:
- consult the category/sub-category drop down list
- select one sub-category
- press the search button
There is a limited amount of documents in each sub-category, but there are 28 sub-categories and it is easy to find what you are looking for if the document exists.
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