Police Staff and Command

How to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

  1. From the NCJRS Virtual Library's homepage (https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library), select the "Search the Abstracts Database" option. NCJRS Virtual library banner with seach button.
  2. Scroll down and expand the "Use Search Filters" menu. NCJRS "Use search filters" menu
  3. Enter your search terms.NCJRS search interface.

Accessing documents located in the NCJRS Library

How do you access resources that you find in the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) virtual library? There are a few different ways that this can be achieved.

  1. Check the entry to see if the online full-text is available directly through NCJRS. In the screenshot below, you can see that this article is available for download. If this is the case, click the appropriate link to be taken to the full-text. Screenshot of NCJRS results showing full-text options available in system.
  2. Check Esearch to see if the full-text of the article is available through EMU. The easiest way to do this is to copy the title of the article from the NCJRS entry and run a search with it in quotes (see screenshots a, b and c below).
    1. Copy the title from the NCJRS record.Screenshot of NCJSR result with article's title highlighted.
    2. Put this title in quotes and search Esearch. Esearch search for NCJSR title.
    3. From the results screen, select the title of the article. Esearch results
  3. If the item is not available, you may request it via Interlibrary Loan. See the Library's How to Use Interlibrary Loan page for details.