Research Assistants Library Orientation Summer 2008
Congratulations on your new position as a research assistant. Your assignments this summer may require you to use different resources from the legal research materials with which you are already familiar. Many faculty members work on inter-disciplinary topics that will require non-law research, and clinic work may require more familiarity with Illinois law. This guide is intended to provide you with information about relevant resources available through the D'Angelo Law Library and the other libraries of the University of Chicago. If you need further assistance, do not hesitate to contact a reference librarian.
Checking Out Library Materials
As a faculty research assistant, you have three options for checking out books:
- Your individual borrower's account: You have access to and borrowing privileges at all libraries at the University of Chicago, using your Chicago card. University of Chicago law students also have access privileges to the Chicago-area law school libraries at Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, Chicago-Kent, and John Marshall.
- Carrels: As a faculty research assistant, you are eligible for an assigned carrel in the D'Angelo Law Library. Applications are available at the Circulation Desk. Books checked out to a carrel are subject to recall by another library user or by library staff, but otherwise may be borrowed for the duration of your use of the carrel. Interlibrary loan items may not be checked out to a carrel. Contact Michael W. Brown, Circulation Supervisor, with your questions regarding carrels.
- Proxy Borrowing: Proxy borrowing cards allow you to check out books to your faculty member's borrower's account. You may fill out an online application or pick up a print application at the Circulation Desk.
Locating Law Journal Articles
If you are looking for an article from a particular journal, use the e-Journals list to find all available electronic versions of that title, with dates of coverage.
For more in-depth research, you will most likely need to use a variety of law databases, in addition to Westlaw and LexisNexis. See the Library's complete list of available law databases.
- Westlaw and LexisNexis allow full-text searching of a large collection of law reviews. However, their coverage is not comprehensive and does not begin until at least the early 1980s and often not until the mid 1990s
- HeinOnline provides PDF files of over 500 legal periodicals. Unlike Westlaw and LexisNexis, HeinOnline’s coverage often begins with the publication’s first issue, which makes it the best place to find the full-text of older articles.
- LegalTrac and the Index to Legal Periodicals and Books each index over 900 legal publications, with coverage beginning in 1980 or later, depending on the journal. You may search for articles by subject, author, or title, and use the "Find It!" button to access the full-text of the articles.
- The Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective indexes older law review articles published between 1918 and 1981.
Locating Non-Law Journal Articles
If you are looking for journal articles on non-legal topics, you will need to use indexes and databases with which you may not be familiar.
- Periodical Indexes: See the Law Journals and Non-Legal Journals pages on the Law Library website for recommended indexes. Academic Search Premier (for the humanities or social sciences) or Ebsco Business Source Complete are good places to start.
- Electronic Databases: See Database Finder on the Library’s website for a complete list, either alphabetically or by subject.
- Web of Knowledge includes the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts and Humanities Citation Index, which allow you to find scholarly citations to particular authors or articles in a manner similar to Shepards or KeyCite. A tutorial for using Web of Knowledge, including cited reference searching, is available on its website.
- Google Scholar: You can set preferences in Google Scholar so that you can locate full-text articles at the University of Chicago Library.
Current Awareness Resources
- BNA provides topical newsletters that summarize recent case law and other developments in many different areas of the law, e.g. United States Law Week, which reports on the activities of the Supreme Court, those lower court decisions expected to have a broad and significant impact on the law, and other noteworthy legal news items. For a complete listing of all of the BNA databases and newsletters to which the D’Angelo Law Library subscribes, see the “Law Databases” page on the Library’s website.
- For electronic alerts of tables of contents for law journals, see Washington & Lee’s Current Law Journal Content. For alerting for non-legal journals, contact a reference librarian for more information.
Locating Books
- The University of Chicago Library Catalog provides access to over 7,000,000 printed works, with approximately 10,000 items added each month.
- Lens is a search engine that searches the Library catalog, e-journals, archives, and other materials. See the Lens FAQ for more information.
- Searching: If you are unable to locate a book on the shelves, notify the Circulation Desk staff or complete the online search form. This search form also may be used for books not found at other campus libraries.
- Paging: If you need a book shelved in one of the D'Angelo Law Library's closed collections (Law Storage, Law Annex North, Law Annex South, Law Alumni Collection, Law Chicago Collection, Law Special Collections), please inform the Circulation Desk staff or complete the online paging form. Additional information on paging from storage collections is available here.
- WorldCat: If you are unable to locate a particular item in the University of Chicago Library Catalog, search for it in WorldCat, which combines the holdings of over 50,000 academic, public, and special libraries throughout the United States and abroad.
- Making of Modern Law is a searchable full-text database of more than 20,000 books about British and American law published between 1800 and 1926. This is a valuable resource for locating often rare books that are not otherwise available to users of the University of Chicago libraries.
Interlibrary Loan
Items listed in WorldCat or another catalog and not held by the University of Chicago Libraries may be obtained through an interlibrary loan.
- CLAS Requests: For items held by one of the other Chicago law schools (Chicago Kent, DePaul, John Marshall, Loyola, or Northwestern) fill out an ILL Borrowing Request Form at the Reference Desk or contact a reference librarian. These items are usually delivered by messenger within a couple of business days. Items which are in the main university libraries can only be obtained through ILLiad.
- ILLiad is the University of Chicago's online interlibrary loan system. There is a tab for ILLiad at the top of the screen of the Library's main catalog Web page. To access ILLiad, you will need to log in using your CNet id and password.
- WorldCat allows you to link to ILLiad directly through the "Find It" button that appears as part of an item's catalog record. This function automatically completes much of the ILLiad request form using the information from the item's catalog record.
- The length of time it will take for the requested item to arrive will vary depending on the type of item and where it is coming from, but you should generally expect to wait about two weeks. Requests for items such as journal articles or chapters of books are usually filled faster, since they can be copied and transmitted electronically.
- Using other libraries: If you have an immediate need for an item at another library, you may be able to visit the other library yourself. Before doing so, check the other library's catalog to make certain that the item is available, and the library's web site to determine its hours and access policies. D'Angelo Law Library reference librarians may help you arrange access.
Law and Economics Resources
- Background Materials:
- Edmund W. Kitch, Chicago School of Economics, in 1 The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law (Peter Newman ed., 1998) 227-233.
XXK487.E3N49 1998 Law Reference
- Richard A. Posner, The Economic Analysis of Law (6th ed. 2003).
XXKF385.P652 2003 Law Reserve
- Eric A. Posner, Chicago Lectures in Law and Economics (2000).
XXK487.E3C553 2000 Law Stacks & Law Reserve
- Journal articles on law and economics topics appear in a wide range of legal and non-legal publications. The following journals all concentrate on this area. Current copies of all three publications are available in the Reserve Reading Room. Recent issues are available on the journals' websites, and back issues are in JSTOR.
IICLE SmartBooks
Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education (IILCE) practice guides and course materials summarize current Illinois law in many areas of law. While their coverage is not intended to be exhaustive, IICLEs present the fundamentals in a clear and straightforward manner, providing citations to relevant statutes and cases and sometimes sample forms.
- Print copies of the current editions of IICLEs are located in the stacks, with a small number shelved in the Reserve Reading Room, beginning with call number XXKFI. Search for specific titles in the Library catalog using “Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education” as the author. To ensure current information, use the publication date limits.
- Electronic versions of the IICLEs, also called “SmartBooks,” are also available. You can browse the list of titles or search by keyword, and print PDF files of relevant sections or chapters. Forms are usually included.
Helpful Links
