Considering tackling your AWR soon? Join us on Wednesday, June 5th from 12-1pm in the Law Library's Teaching Lab, Classroom 1337, for a workshop titled Getting Started on Your AWR. This workshop will expose you to the pre-research process.  You will learn to identify research sources in order to narrow down topics and determine whether a chosen topic is practical - with enough accessible, available research.  This workshop will also include a discussion on setting personal research deadlines. Please feel free to bring your lunch!

Take a look at our library workshops page to view a list of workshop descriptions and a link to the workshop calendar.

New Graduate? Hanging a shingle? Need a low cost option for research support? 

The Phoenix School of Law (PhoenixLaw) Library is pleased to continue to support the research needs of our alumni. After graduation, any graduate can register for an Alumni Access Membership at the Library. In order to use the Library as an alumnus, you must complete the registration form and submit it to the Circulation Department; obtain a new "alumni" identification card photo from the Library or Facilities department; and pay the annual registration fee of $50.00 (along with the one-time $30.00 access card fee). Your membership includes access to:

 
 - A Public Access Westlaw terminal in a study room
 - Print Sources like statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, case law, treatises
 - Arizona CLE Materials
 - Arizona Practice Series
 - Hein Online
 - BNA
 - LegalTrac
 - FastCase
 - Oxford Scholarship Online
 - ProQuest Research Library
 - Help from the librarians at the Legal Research Help Desk
 - Library Workshops including those that may be CLE eligible

Join today!

The Arizona Association of Law Libraries recently presented a full day program on Congressional Information that   featured distinguished speakers from the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve Board, the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack.us as well as the Arizona State Library and the ASU Law Library.  This blog will cover two of the speaker presentations: The Federal Legislative Process and Finding and Compiling a Congressional Legislative History. Part 2 will feature GovTrack.us and Congressional bill tracking.

Ellen Sweet, Legislative Reference Specialist at the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice, led the audience through the legislative process using a federal Indian law (NAGPRA) that included detailed information about the documents produced from the process and which of those documents are the most likely to yield legislative intent information. Excellent flowcharts illustrated the process. Her materials can be found starting at page 37 of the conference materials.

The excellent, up-to-date Finding or Compiling Federal Legislative Histories Electronically was presented by Rick McKinney, the Assistant Law Librarian at the Federal Reserve Board Library. Mr. McKinney’s expertise is the electronic availability of legislative documents and the chart that he included in his materials is a timesaver for anyone who does legislative intent research.

Ms. Sweet and Mr. McKinney are co- authors of the indispensable Law Librarians’ Society of D.C. Legislative Sourcebook 

Need help with a legislative history project? Ask a Librarian!

Putting the final touches on your AWR? Need help finding additional sources? Well don’t worry about skipping lunch, we’re coming to you!

That’s right, for the rest of the semester professional research librarians will be available in the Student Lounge on the 20th floor from 12-1pm, Monday through Thursday, to assist you with any research questions you might have – big or small!

Also, if you want to learn more about mobile apps for legal research the roving librarians will be using iPads and can demonstrate some cool new apps and help you navigate them.

Speaking of iPads, did you know that the Law Library owns several iPads that you can check out? That’s right! Just visit the Circulation desk during regular hours and we’ll get you all set up!

Image from dreamstime.com.

Conducting a search in the catalog can produce an overwhelming amount of results.  The good news is that these results can be narrowed by selecting facets.  Facets are located on the left side of the screen and allow the user to narrow by areas such as format, location and publication date.  These are just three of the many facets you can select.  A user can narrow by one or more facets at the same time.  I ran a search on adoption which returned 228 results.  I decided to narrow my results by electronic format and records that had my search term in the subject.  I now have 14 results, which is much more manageable.  Next time you conduct a search in the catalog use facets to find more pertinent results.