Limit Your Search to Tables of Contents
Both Lexis+ and Westlaw Canada allow you to restrict your search to just the table of contents of a book. Restricting a search to just subject headings — rather than the full text of a book — can be an effective way of reducing the number of extraneous results.
To search the table of contents of a specific book in Lexis+, go to the title of the text you want to search and select Table of Contents (TOC) only below the search bar.
Similarly, to search the table of contents in Westlaw Canada, go to the title of the text you want to search and select Search TOC below the search bar. This will then give you a search bar for the table of contents.
It can be helpful to include synonyms in the search to ensure you don’t miss something.
CanLII allows you to search for keywords in the table of contents for a piece of legislation. Searching legislation this way (rather than using Ctrl+F) has the advantage that you can see the results list in the left-hand side tab while looking at the full text of the legislation on the right.
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