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The LOIS Professional Library is a suite of three individual titles: the
Wisconsin Series, the US Courts of Appeals 7th Circuit,
and the United States Supreme Court Reports. Each title contains
full text court decisions from its respective jurisdiction. In addition,
the Wisconsin Series also contains the full text of the Wisconsin
Statutes, the Wisconsin Administrative Code, Wisconsin Attorney
General Opinions, Wisconsin Jury Instructions and many of the
Wisconsin State Bar's CLE publications.
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Licensed resource limited to UW Law School and Law
Library connections only. |
Opening Lois Professional Library
- From an Internet browser, go to the Law Library home page at http://library.law.wisc.edu.
- Select "Electronic Resources," then choose "All Databases
by Title" (either annotated or unannotated). From this list of
databases, scroll to LOIS Professional Library.
- Open a title by clicking on: Wisconsin Series, US Court
of Appeals 7th Circuit, or United States Supreme Court Reports
Getting Started
- To search a book(s), click on the "book" icon next
to the name. A blue check will appear on the book for each selection.
A "lock" icon indicates that we do not subscribe to
that book.
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- To browse the table of contents for a book, click on its name.
The "book" icon next to the name will change to an "open
book." Contents will be displayed on the bottom portion of
the screen. Click on an item to open.
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Keyword Searching
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- Select "Search Form" in the Lois menu bar on the left
of the screen.
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- Enter search term(s) and connector(s) in one or more of the
field boxes. Use either caps or lower case.
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- In the example below, the phrase "eminent domain"
must appear within two lines of any word beginning with "municipal"
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- Click on "Run Search" button at the bottom of the
screen to execute the search.
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Connectors:
| And (&) |
All terms must be present |
| Or (|) |
Any term must be present |
| Not (%) |
Excludes term following connector |
| Near# (/#) |
Terms must be present within specified number of
lines (#) of each other |
| Truncate (?) |
Searches various word endings |
| Phrase (quotes) |
Retrieves terms appearing together |
Citation Searching
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Right |
Wrong |
| Enter citation with a space separating volume, publication,
and page. |
120 wis.2d 1 |
120wis.2d1 |
| Use a period after each abbreviated word in the publication.
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76 n.w.2d 541 |
76 nw2d 541 |
| Using a period after the publication abbreviation is
optional. |
233 wis 171
233 wis. 171 |
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Searching with the Word List
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- Use the "Word List" to browse words appearing in the
book or to find synonyms for search terms.
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- To open, click on "Word List" button at the bottom
of the screen. LOIS will display the Word List box on the left.
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- Type search terms in the field box(es). Notice that terms are
automatically highlighted in the word list (if they appear in
the book). The number to the left of the term indicates the number
of documents in the book in which that term appears.
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- Synonyms are displayed in the bottom portion of the word list.
To insert a synonym, double click on it and it will appear after
the initial term as follows.
search /1 seizure syn( forfeiture )
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- Click on "Run Search" at the bottom of the screen
to execute the search
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Viewing Search Results
- Records containing the search term(s) from each book are displayed
in reverse chronological order. Please note the following:
- Each book searched will open a new window.
- Record opens to the place where the search terms first appear.
- Search terms are highlighted in blue.
- Links to other LOIS documents are highlighted in red.
- The case name and citation appear at the top of the window.*
- Directly underneath are the document count and reporter page number.*
* Since the following example is from the Wisconsin Case Law Advance
book, it has not yet been published in the Wisconsin 2d. Therefore,
the citation and page number are not yet available.
Navigating Search Results
Refining Search
- All searches conducted in the current research session are displayed
in the top half of the "Saved Searches" screen.
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- To modify the search, select the search and click on "Refine"
button in the lower left of the screen to re-open it.
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- Make any changes to the search terms and re-execute the search
by clicking on the "Run Search" button.
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Quick guide prepared by Bonnie
Shucha
UW Madison Law Library, March 2000
Revised June 2001
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This page is printer-friendly