Join us on Thursday!

Please join us live on Thursday, March 29 at 5 pm mountain time, 6 pm central, 7 pm eastern, & 4 pm pacific time to meet and discuss the law sources spotlighted in our blog. It will also be a time when you can bring forward your favorite law resources if you choose.

To be with us, go to: http://breezep.suu.edu/eye and log in as a guest with your first and last name. At the top will be a "meeting" drop down menu where you can adjust your audio and microphone settings, no camera is necessary in order to save bandwidth.

Don't miss out! It will be a good time!

Westlaw

Like LexisNexis, Westlaw is a major player in legal research. It provides access to case law, statutes, and various other information sources accessible through a variety of means. Unlike LexisNexis, however, non-law school students at Wayne State do not have access to Westlaw. But thanks to Beth Applebaum, a reference librarian at Wayne State's law library, you can look at Westlaw yourself by using the temporary login information found in the discussion area of Blackboard. Be informed, however, this temporary access is only available through April 6 and is intended only for members of this class.

As you log in, don't hesitate to take advantage to the "getting started" tutorial available on the first page.

Online Law Resources for Librarians

Public and academic librarians may be called on to gather information regarding legal matters. Keeping up with blogs and websites intended for librarians can alleviate anxiety when answering those tough questions. Below are descriptions of a few helpful resources you might want to bookmark for future reference.  

Law Librarian Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/

Edited by Joe Hodnicki, County Law Library Director (Butler County Law Library) &

Mark Giangrande, Reference Librarian and Lecturer in Law (DePaul University Law Library)

This blog is edited by an extensive list of law librarians and covers a variety of topics related to current events, topics, and trends in law libraries including job openings throughout the country. Regularly updated and maintained, this blog is the place to go for librarian opinions regarding current court cases and/or decisions, well known people in the law community, and even issues in international law. With postings nearly everyday, the weekly archive located on the right hand side of the page is helpful when searching for a specific event or case that was relevant at a particular time.

LibraryLaw Blog: http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/

Edited by Mary Minow, J.D., A.M.L.S. & Peter Hirtle, M.A., M.L.S.

Updated semi-regularly, checking this blog approximately once a month should be enough. While they are infrequent, the posts are well-written and deal with hot button issues like pornography, loaning ebook readers, copyright, and occasional book reviews. Articles are contributed by lawyers and librarians and comments from readers keep the conversation relevant and interesting. The format of the blog is very basic with a list of categories, a word cloud containing keywords, and an archive by the posting date. This blog is great if you don't have time to check a blog daily and can help keep you in the loop on important topics.

SCOTUSblog: http://www.scotusblog.com/

Sponsored by the private, law research firm, Bloomberg Law. 
More of a website than a blog, this is written by a variety of reporters and law students, and is presented in an excellent format with quality searching tools. While the authors are varied, biographies of each one are listed giving their credentials for contributing to the blog. One excellent feature on the website is a tab called Plain English that essentially "translates" what happened that week. If you don't have time to hassle with the legalese, check Plain English for the simplest explanation. Along the right hand side are several features like the court calendar, recently decided cases, community discussions on the cases, and a very brief explanation of what happened in court that week. For the most current information on Supreme Court cases, this website is the place to go!

The Avalon Project: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp

Created by Yale Law School's Lillian Goldman Law Library

This is a fascinating website related to law, history, and diplomacy including ancient and medieval documents up through the 21^st century. Intended to digitize historical legal documents across a range of topics, this website offers everything from the Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) to the Magna Carta (1215) to the Agreement Rescue of Astronauts left in space (1968), the content is thorough and compelling. The website itself is very basic with a single keyword search tool, but the content is unparalleled in its diversity and coverage. Complex documents contain definitions of outdated words as well as index of phrases within the document.This page might be particularly helpful for reference questions regarding ancient documents or people interested in how laws have changed over time. No opinions or explanations are written regarding any of the material; it is quite simply a unique gathering of legal documents throughout history.

An annotated resource list for law libraries

The American Association of Law Libraries:  http://www.aallnet.org/

The AALL is the oldest organization for legal librarians in the United States.  Though it’s meetings, workshops, newsletters, and publication, the Law Library Journal, it advocates and informs the librarian community.

LexisNexis:  http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/home.page

LexisNexis, as profiled on our project site, is the largest online provider of searchable legal material.  Started in 1970 by the Mead Data Corporation, Lexis pioneered both online database design and the concept of searchable legal resources.

Legal libraries in Michigan: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-54504_50206_18639-52451--,00.html

A reference source of legal libraries in the state of Michigan, broken down by region, and containing a guide to resources available at each library.

Using an American Case Digest: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-54504_50206_18639-52436--,00.html

A primer on the search methods for an American Case Digest.  This indexing system allows users to search by law topic.

THOMAS: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php

THOMAS, named for Thomas Jefferson, is a portal for searching legislative information from the U.S. House and Senate.

The Library of Congress Law Library: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/index.php

This page offers guides to the user on searching the LOC collections.

National Indian Law Library: http://www.narf.org/nill/triballaw/index.htm

As the name implies, this resource allows searches on Native America tribal laws.

Law Libraries

Legal Libraries

The first law library in the United States was established by Harvard University in conjunction with the law school in 1817 (Harvard, 2012).  The collection was, at first, very limited but grew to over 8000 volumes by 1840 (2012).  In 1870 the first librarian was hired to manage the collection.  Today Harvard boasts the largest legal collection of any academic institution in the world.   With the growth of law schools in America, legal libraries soon sprang up at universities.

With this growth, law librarians soon found the need to provide an organization to serve their common needs.  Although the American Library Association, founded in 1876, would have seemed the logical choice, these legal librarians deemed their profession too specialized for the broad umbrella of the ALA.  Instead they formed, in 1906, the American Association of Law Libraries.  In an article in the Law Library Journal, Morris Cohen outlined the conceptual goals and philosophy of the legal librarian and the profession in general (Cohen, 1982):

• • A clear preference for association with lawyers and the legal profession, rather than with other librarians and with the total library profession.
• • A deep involvement with providing access to both the primary and secondary sources of legal literature.
• • An obligation to be the primary and constant teacher of the materials and methods of legal research.
• • A primary commitment to providing the maximum service to readers.
• • A pragmatic rather than a scientific approach to the problems of library ad- ministration, particularly in technical services.

As can be seen from points one thru three, the legal library sought to provide its own identity apart from general of other specialized libraries.  Point one in particular clearly states their preference for collaboration of the role of the library.  This made, at the time, some sense.  Their entire client base consisted of law school students, lawyers, judges, and legislators.

Law libraries have not remained static repositories however.  Cohen point out in the same article the changes that have been made since the inception of the AALL (p. 195):

• • The change from a concept of service primarily to the legal profession to a much broader notion of service to all who may need legal information.
• • Change from the law librarian's focus on the traditional book as the central tangible object of our work, to a wider concern with legal information
• • The literature which we administer, and which our readers need, has grown beyond traditional legal sources
• • Technology and technological change have become daily concerns affecting most of the basic functions of the library.
• • There has been a striking increase in interlibrary dependence and cooperation

The first point shows how the clientele of legal information has changed.  Other professions rely on legal research, as well as the general public.  The change from books to legal information is both a function of technology and the growing availability of resources in other media formats.  Technology has had a huge impact on the traditional law library.  The advent of Lexis and digitization of material has moved the printed book format to a minority of some institution holdings.  Lastly, interlibrary loan has seen a tremendous upswing in usage; no one library can hold all of the resources now available.

References

Cohen, M. (1982). Tradition and change in law library goals. Law Library Journal , 75, 

192-197.

Harvard. (2012). History of the Harvard Law School Library. Retrieved March 17, 

2012, from law.harvard.edu: http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/about/history/index.html

Video Book Review: Print Law Resources

Here is a video of a couple resources in print that might help you feel more confident about answering reference questions regarding law.

References

Black's Law Dictionary. (n.d.). Black's law dictionary. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://www.blackslawdictionary.com/Home/Default.aspx

Bryan A. Garner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_A._Garner

Garner, B. A., & Black, H. C. (2009). Black's law dictionary (9. ed.). St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West.

LawProse.org. (n.d.). LawProse.org. Retrieved March 16, 2012, from http://lawprose.org/bryan_garner/about.php

Lehman, J., & Phelps, S. (2005). West's encyclopedia of American law (2nd ed.). Detroit: Thomson/Gale.

Stanford University's Copyright & Fair Use website

On the more obscure and specific side, Stanford University's Copyright and Fair Use website provides a wealth of information associated with intellectual property rights, especially for those in a position to exercise fair use. A very unique and useful collection is the Copyright Renewal Database where you can look up renewal records to find out if a copyrighted work has been renewed. This is useful for those interested in tracking down whether a work may still be under copyright protection.

Evaluation assessment: This site exhibits a high level of authority, accuracy, and currency as evidenced by the following:

• hosted and sponsored by a recognized authority on intellectual property, Stanford University
• contact information is provided
• accuracy testing is described openly
• written to inform rather than to entertain or persuade