Media Law JOUR 3633
QUERY: a word or group of words used for searches on the
Internet or in the library.
During your team meeting, your team will come up with a list of at least 10 query terms, or terms you can use to search for resources for your problem. Queries are the words you put in the search engine window.
IMPORTANT: This is just an exercise to get you to think about what search terms you can use for your research. DO NOT feel "tied" to this list. It could be that everyone on the team will use the same query, or you might find a new query term through your early research that will give you good results. You are not bound by this list.
The first items on your list are your cases.
Example: Developing queries for the case, City of Fayetteville v. Edmark.
Exact Phrases: When you are using your case as your query in a search engine on the Internet, you may not want to type it as it is shown above. Depending on how your search engine works,with that query, you could get every City, every "of", every Fayetteville, every "v." and every Edmark.
Some search engines help you out by letting you choose whether to
search for "exact phrase," "all the words" or other variations. Other
search engines let you search for only the exact phrase if you put it
in quotation marks:
"City of Fayetteville v. Edmark"
Note: For more advanced information about searches, look at the "Advanced Search" link on your search engine or read Advanced Searches on my Web page.
Other Queries: The remainder of the queries that you will use depend on what your case is about. The case cited above is about the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, so I might search for:
Arkansas "Freedom of Information"
or "FOI" or "FOIA"
Other Cases: The next thing I want to look for is what other cases my own case may have cited. I would follow the same suggestions about how to express the case names as are laid out above.
Most of the cases assigned will concentrate on one precedent, one case that the court has decided before that will be quoted over and over again in your case. That case is definitely one you'll want on your query list.
Go Wide!: Think of the name of your Media Law Report. For instance, searching for documents about regulations on casino advertising, I might use casino, gambling or advertising, combined with law, as search words.
Using the law-related search engines will help some of you keep
from getting too many useless hits. But if you have drawn a blank on
the law engines, try one of the all-purpose engines.
Get Help: Any search engine you choose will have a "Help" button that will give you ideas on how to do a better search.
For your assignment, your team reporter must send me a typed list of at least 10 words, phrases or cases that might lead your team to resources about your MLR.
In this example, my list might look like this:
MLR: Arkansas FOIA
1. City of Fayetteville v. Edmark
2. Arkansas FOI (Freedom of Information Act)
3. Laman v. McCord
4. attorney work-product exemption
5. city's retained attorney
etc.