EXPERT LECTURE HELD ON 8 th & 9 th November, 2022 on LEGAL AND INTERNET RESEARCH
The Research and Publication Committee at DBRANLU hosted a Two-day Special Expert Lecture on ‘Legal and Internet Research’. The event took place on 8th and 9th November through Zoom platform. The session was guided by Dr. Abhik Majumdar, Assistant Professor at National Law University, Odisha. Dr. Majumdar is an NLSIU graduate and pursued his masters from National University of Singapore. The Major topics that were covered during the two day lectures included ; What is research? What is a research gap? How to select the right topic? How to use online search engines for legal research? among others. The first day began with explanations regarding the basics surrounding research, including definitions and its importance. Special emphasis was laid upon academic integrity, ethics and avoiding plagiarism. Dr. Majumdar elaborated upon the importance of choosing the right topic. Drawing a parallel to friendships in our lives, the speaker stressed that a researcher must feel comfortable with his or her choice of topic and be ready to spend a lot of time with it. Delving deeper into ‘research gaps’, which are problems that have not been addressed or answered in the existing literature, Dr. Majumdar explained how researchers can identify the same. The second day focused primarily on internet research. With the advent of the internet, we can find up to a million results in a matter of seconds. However, most of these results are not relevant to us. Thus a key skill in internet research is the ability to reduce the number of results being shown to those relevant to us. Dr. Majumdar taught the participants how to use ‘Search Operators’, which are special commands such as AND,OR,WITH among others. The speaker demonstrated how using these special characters can help filter out irrelevant search results. The speaker also showed how to use these commands across platforms like Google and JSTOR. The lectures proved to be insightful and enjoyable. It was a delight to host the very wise and witty Dr. Abhik Majumdar, who kept the sessions interactive and exciting. Finally, we would like to thank the university and Mr. Navneet Krishna for their support and guidance and the students of DBRANLU for their enthusiastic participation.