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Some of the Encyclopedia of Law’s entries are comprehensive from their inception, but most grow into well-written, comprehensive articles with the help of the readers.

Research

Use the Encyclopedia browse tools (including the indexes) and our search engine to find out what related material we already have. That way, you discover what already exists and can later create good links to and from other relevant articles.

Additional research is encouraged. Consider visiting a university or public library to identify and study the best sources. Consider looking at what search engines can bring up, and reading the relevant articles from treatises or other encyclopedias. The following sites may help you: Encyclopedia.com (free), AllRefer Reference (free), Factmonster, Encyclopedia Britannica School & Library Site (free in most libraries).
Finding relevant articles

There are several ways to find and retrieve articles online, without having to leave home. Google Scholar is an excellent source for finding sometimes-free online peer reviewed articles; note that the free articles’ entries are quickly identifiable for having a “View as HTML” link in the result page.

Many libraries have agreements with database providers under which library users with current library cards can connect free to the databases from their home computers—that is, the users do not need to be physically present in the library. Check with your local public or academic library to find out to which databases it subscribes, and whether they have a mechanism in place for remote access. Some high-end databases (like InfoTrac and ProQuest) even carry scanned versions of articles as they were originally printed.

Examples of comprehensive general interest databases that may be available through your local library are:

EBSCO – Full academic version (Academic Search Premier) has full text of millions of articles from over 4,600 sources. Full public library version (MasterFILE Premier) has full text coverage of about 2,100 sources.
Infotrac – OneFile database has full text of about 90 million articles from 1980 to the present. Widely available at academic and public libraries throughout North America. Operated by Thomson Gale (formerly Gale Group), a subsidiary of the Thomson Corporation.
JSTOR – Has complete text of articles from several hundred scholarly journals from their beginning to approximately five years ago. Operated by a consortium of universities. They include most of the “high prestige” journals in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
LexisNexis – Full version (mostly accessed by lawyers and journalists) has millions of full-text articles (from magazines, journals, and newspapers), court opinions, statutes, treatises, transcripts, public records, and more. Academic version (available at many universities) offers large subsets of the legal and news databases.
ProQuest – Full version (ProQuest 5000) has full text of millions of articles from 7,400 sources as far back as 1971. The ProQuest Historical Newspapers database has images in PDF format of all issues of the New York Times published between 1851 and 2001. Most libraries offer access to only part of the huge ProQuest database, through account types like eLibrary, Platinum, Silver, Gold, or Discovery.
Questia Online Library allows full-text search and reading access to all 64,000+ books and 1,000,000+ journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in their collection. Their strength is full text of recent academic books by major publishers such as Oxford University Press, University of North Carolina Press, and Greenwood Press, along with thousands of older academic books that are available only in larger university libraries. Unlike most other online services, they offer short-term individual subscriptions for students and researchers.

Finding relevant books

If you are doing in-depth research on a complex or controversial subject, you should obtain relevant books in addition to articles. If the subject is of historical interest, you may have to visit a library to obtain articles that were published before 1980, since few online databases contain such old articles.

To find books or periodicals stored as bound volumes, the best place to start is with the catalog of your local public library. If you have searched the catalogs of several local libraries without success, try searching library “union” catalogs. With one search in a union catalog, it is possible to determine what books are available on a subject in an entire county, state, province, or country. The largest union catalog is OCLC WorldCat, which claims to have worldwide coverage, though most of its member libraries are in North America.

Writing

Remember that, although you will be familiar with the subject you are writing about, readers of Wikipedia may not be, so it is important to establish the context of your article’s subject early on. The tone should always remain formal, impersonal, and dispassionate.