Secondary databases contain links to vast areas of information that are usually variously searchable by subjects, key words, individuals (e.g. authors), country or region, and so on. The databases signposted in these pages are selected either because they have a specialist subject focus relevant to criminal justice and community justice, or because they have a sound reputation with professional information and knowledge professionals. They enable you to mine information with less likelihood of retrieving huge amounts of poor standard, unreliable or completely irrelevant material. They are an excellent alternative to 'Wikipeditis'! Meta search engines have the advantage and disadvantage that they can be used to access the 'deep web' - this is good if you know what you are doing and have a clear and disciplined approach to what you are looking for, otherwise it can be frustrating and time consuming. If you are an academic or student, or your work organization has its own information service, you may have Athens (subscription) access to further specialized resources, some of which are listed below. Good Local Authority library services may also have search specialists able to help you in their reference sections.
Links to sources of legal and legislative information internationally and in the UK.
http://www.accesstolaw.com/site/default.asp
Cecil Greek Metasite (US based)
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/cjl-main.php
Prentice Hall Cybrary
http://talkjustice.com/cybrary.asp
University of California Riverside database. This link goes to criminology sources selected by experts - but you may wish to go to the home page to expand or limit your search in different ways.
http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/canned_search
Informaworld, host describes itself as a 'one stop shop' to all types of content and format.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/home~db=all
Ingenta Connect
http://www.google.com/search?q=ingenta+connect
Intute database includes links to social science resources.
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/
Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) database - this link is to historical data on crime and justice.
http://www.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/search.htm?nq=n&coll=y&item=y&q=crime&s=hist
Meta crawler good for specialists searching in-house research, theses and unpublished materials. Also provides breakdowns of results by contributor.
http://www.oaister.org/
Meta crawler
http://turbo10.com/
