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Research Assistant Resources

This research guide is a survival guide for NYU Law research assistants (RAs), providing resources for all stages of their RA work.

Introduction

This section of the guide is a short introduction to interdisciplinary research. A more thorough how-to guide on non-legal or interdisciplinary research is available here.

Should you run into questions or concerns with your research, feel free to reach out to the librarian assigned to your faculty member for specialized advice. Please check this list to determine which librarian you should contact. 

Selected Interdisciplinary Databases

In addition to more traditional legal research, you may be asked to perform research outside of the legal sphere and more in other disciplines, like economics, sociology, or philosophy. Both the NYU Law Library and the NYU Bobst Library provide many databases geared towards this type of research. Your legal research skills are transferrable to interdisciplinary research: generate search terms, choose your database, and begin your search. As always, please reach out to a law librarian for assistance with this type of research. 

Below is a selection of the more commonly used interdisciplinary databases at your disposal:

  • Academic Search Complete (EBSCO). This is a multidisciplinary database containing over 3,000 journals on a variety of subjects like biology, chemistry, engineering, psychology, philosophy, and women's studies. Once within EBSCOHost, click on the link "Choose Databases." Selections include: Business Source Premier, Legal Source, ERIC & Environment Complete.
  • Brill Online, Books & Journals. This database provides full-text access to books and scholarly journals, focusing on the humanities and social sciences.
  • Cambridge Core. This database provides access to more than 380 peer-reviewed academic journals through the humanities, social sciences, technology, science, and medicine. 
  • DeGruyter Online. This database provides access to journals and eBooks for many disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, mathematics, engineering, computer sciences, natural sciences, and law. Many of the resources on DeGruyter are in German, but some are in English.
  • EBSCO Discovery Service. This database combines the content of 400 other databases and publishers, including the American Psychological Association, Elsevier (ScienceDirect), HeinOnline, JSTOR, and more. Sources include scholarly journals, conference papers, government documents, dissertations, news, magazines, industry/health/education reports, working papers, and more.
  • JSTOR. This database provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, eBooks, and primary sources in 75 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. 
  • ProQuest. This database is the largest multidisciplinary database, with over 8,000 full-text titles across 160 subject areas including business and economics, health and medicine, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences, and more. Once within ProQuest, click on "Change Databases" on the left hamburger menu to select databases to search. Selections include: EconLit, ABI/Inform, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts & Accounting, Tax & Banking Collection, PAIS index.
  • Sage Journals. This database provides online, full-text access to the SAGE Publications journals in business, humanities and social sciences, science, technology, and medicine. 
  • SpringerLink. This database provides access to resources from the disciplines of medicine, science, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and law.
  • Taylor and Francis. This database provides access to full-text articles in the social sciences and humanities.