Two New Sites for UK Legal Information

Check out these two new sources for free online access to UK legal materials: The UK Statute Law Database and the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII).  The UK Statute Law Database is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online.  BAILII provides access to a comprehensive set of British and Irish primary legal materials.  As of September 2006, BAILII included 74 databases covering 7 jurisdictions.

Library Offers Bar Study Room

Room 1417 at 40 Worth St. has been designated as a study room for NYLS graduates who are preparing for the Bar exam in February.  The
room is intended as a quiet enclave; we ask that its users maintain the strictest silence.  The Library administration welcomes our  graduates, and wishes them good luck on the exam.

Asian Legal Information Institute

The Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII) provides free online access to more than 100 databases from more than 20 Asian countries.  It also includes approximately 140,000 full text cases and more than 15,000 pieces of legislation.  AsianLII was developed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute, a joint facility of the Law Faculties at the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of New South Wales, in cooperation with partner institutions in Asian countries and other legal information institutes belonging to the Free Access to Law Movement.

More Exam Advice Via CALI

In addition to the three exam advice podcasts announced earlier this week (here, here and here), CALI  has posted a collection of tips and advice (offered by both faculty and students) on preparing for and taking exams.  The material, from a variety of web sources, is definitely worth a look.  Check it out.

New library Service for Finding Journal Articles

It’s often said that the best technology is simple, intuitive, and does just one thing well.  The Mendik Library has just initiated a new Web-based service that fits this description to a T.  We call this new service Journal Titles, A-Z.  Here’s what it does:

When you click on the “Journal Titles, A-Z” link in our Online Catalog, you get a screen with a field that says “Find e-journals by title.”  The default setting is “Title begins with…”  If you type in some words from the beginning of the journal title you’re looking for, you get a screen that tells you where you can get articles from the journal in electronic form through services that our library subscribes to.

Let’s say you were looking for a 1991 article from the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review.  Using Journal Titles, A-Z if you typed in <buffalo human rights> you’d find out that Lexis has issues of this journal from 1995 to present, but HeinOnline has them from 1988 to 1999.  You could then click on the “HeinOnline” link, and you’d be taken to that service, where you could identify the specific article you were looking for, and download it in PDF format.

There are other ways of searching Journal Titles, A-Z.  For example, you can search by typing in words that you know appear somewhere in the title, without knowing the exact title.  But we think most of our users will use it in the way we’ve just described.

Journal Titles, A-Z can’t take you directly to the article you’re looking for.  Nor can it be used to find journals that our library holds in paper.  It does just one thing:  It identifies journal titles for which we have electronic access.  And it does it well.  It keeps track of new content added to the various services to which we subscribe.  It includes all journals found on Lexis and Westlaw.  And it’s updated frequently.

Try it out yourself. [http://lawlib.nyls.edu]  You’ll probably be surprised at the number and scope of titles that we subscribe to in electronic form, both in law and other disciplines.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask us.  But this service is so simple, we’re not really expecting many inquiries!