Library Hours for Fall 2011 Final Exams

The Gould Law Library will be open as a 24-hour study hall beginning on Sunday, November 20th until the last day of finals on Friday, December 23rd, with a few exceptions. The library will be closed on Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 24th) & will be open on Friday, November 25th, as a study hall (i.e., no library services will be available), from 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. Also, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath, the library will close on Fridays at 3:00 pm and will reopen on Saturdays at 5:30 pm.

Library services (Circulation, Reference & Technical Services) will not be available during the extended hours, although a security guard will be on duty. Students using the library after midnight must sign in and out at the security desk.

The library (with the exception of the Circulation Desk, Reference Office, and enclosed study rooms) becomes a “silent study” area during the final exams period.

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

This post is a continuation of a series that I began last year regarding online legal research databases other than Lexis and Westlaw. The purpose of this series is to increase our law students’ awareness of other useful and cost-effective alternatives or additions to Westlaw and Lexis. Although 1Ls have only just received their training in Westlaw and Lexis, law students continue to receive extensive training on these two databases throughout their law school years. Many databases offer low cost alternatives to primary source materials, such as Fastcase* & Loislaw*, while other databases are excellent sources of secondary materials such as HeinOnline* and SSRN.

Whether you are conducting research for Law Review, your Advanced Legal Research requirement, or for a Professor, you will want to check SSRN for the most cutting edge research.

SSRN’s mission is “rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research.” SSRN contains the most current research papers; many of which have not yet been published in journals. Some of the disciplines covered by SSRN that may be of interest to our students include: accounting, economics & corporate goverance; cognitive science; social insurance; political science; and, of course, legal scholarship.

On SSRN you will find abtracts, working papers and downloadable PDFs of full-text articles. You can also add your own research paper to the network. SSRN’s elibrary is fully searchable or you can browse by topic and journal name.

Access to SSRN is free but you will be required to set up an account, entering your email as your username.

Also, check out SSRN’s iPhone/iPad app.

*Please see my previous blog posts.

Law School Survival Tips

We at Gould Law Library are excited to welcome the 1L students who are beginning their law school journey at Touro Law Center this week. To aid you in your transition to law school, we have compiled a list of links to information that will help you navigate the first year of law school.

Both Westlaw and Lexis have guides to law school survival as well as outlines for first year courses. The Westlaw guide is entitled “Law School Life” and the Lexis guide is called “Get a Head Start on Law School.” Westlaw provides Black Letter Outlines and Lexis has Area of Law Outlines.

The American Bar Association has also published an informative law school survival guide, “How to Survive the First Year of Law School.”

Finally, a Study Guide for 1L Courses is posted on our website. It provides links to all of the study aids and treatises for 1L courses that are available at Gould Law Library.

We wish you the best of luck and much success in law school and your legal careers!

Bar Exam Study Aids

It’s down to the final stretch for Bar Exam study. So at this juncture, I thought you might be interested in perusing our collection of Bar Exam Study Aids. Most of these study aids are in the Reserve Room, although a few can be found on the shelves in the main collection. I didn’t include everything we have, only the most current and appropriate. These are obviously no substitute for your current bar review course of study, but they may be of some interest.

Reserves:

Acing the Bar Exam: A Checklist Approach to Taking the Bar Exam by Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus

Strategies & Tactics for the Finz Multistate Method by Steven R. Finz

MBE Survival Kit by Jeff Adachi with Solomon Wollack

Emanuel Confidential for the MBE: For Your Final Preparation by Steven L. Emanuel

Scoring High on Bar Exam Essays by Mary Campbell Gallagher

Scoring High On Bar Exam Essays (videorecording) by Mary Campbell Gallagher & Co., Inc.

Multistate Performance Test (MPT): Core Concepts and Key Questions by T. Leigh Hearn

Emanuel Multistate Performance Test Review: Rigos Bar Review Series

Pieper Multistate Exam Book by J. Gardiner Pieper

Pass the Bar by Denise Riebe and Michael Hunter Schwartz

Multistate Bar Exam Review by James J Rigos

Strategies & Tactics for the MBE by Kimm Alayne Walton and Steven Emanuel


Main Collection:

The Bar Exam in a Nutshell by Suzanne Darrow-Kleinhaus

The Essential Rules for Bar Exam Success by Steven Friedland

The Zen of Passing the Bar Exam by Chad Noreuil

Bar Exam Study Hall Hours

Beginning Sunday, July 10 through Tuesday July 26, Gould Law Library will be open as a 24-hour study hall, with the exception of Friday evening through Saturday evening, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath. During these two weeks, the library will close on Fridays at 7:00 p.m. and will reopen on Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. Library services will not be available during the overnight period, although a security guard will be on duty.

Apps for Legal Research & Bar Exam Prep

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a plethora of posts about legal apps from iTunes. I thought I’d create a list of some of the most relevant apps for our law students. Some are free and some are rather pricey. This list is not exhaustive and I do not vouch for the accuracy or authoritativeness of these apps. They are just interesting…

Legal Research and Reference Apps:
WestlawNext
LexisNexis
FastCase
Black’ Law Dictionary
U.S. Government Apps
SSRN
New York Law Apps
Litigator

Bar Review and Law School Exam Study Aid Apps:
BarBri
Kaplan
Sum & Substance
MBE Timer

For a more comprehensive list of apps, including ones for Android, Blackberry and Palm, see the following:
Mobile Apps for Law ($49.99, special introductory rate of $25) is a directory of legal research and utility apps for all mobile devices.
The University of Akron Law School’s LibGuide, Mobile Apps for Law Students, features legal apps for iPhone/iPad and Android, as well as eBooks.
UCLA Law School’s LibGuide, Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers, features legal and nonlegal apps for all mobile devices. It is very comprehensive and frequently updated.

Library Hours for Spring 2011 Final Exams

The Library will be open as a study hall, beginning Wednesday, April 27, 2011(when the building reopens following the Passover/Spring Recess), and continuing through the final exam period which ends on Friday, May 20, 2011. In observance of the Jewish Sabbath, the library will close on Fridays at 7:00 p.m. and will reopen on Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. With this exception, the library will remain open 24 hours per day.

Students using the library after midnight must sign in and out at the security desk. Library services will not be available during the extended hours or overnight period, although a security guard will be on duty.

Also, the entire Library (except the Circulation Desk, the Reference Office, and enclosed study rooms) will become a "Silent Study" area during this time period in order to maximize quiet study space.

The Library Staff would like to offer their support and best wishes to our students!

National Library Week at Gould Law Library

Since the theme of this year’s National Library Week (April 10 -16) is “Create Your Own Story @ Your Library” I thought it would be apropos to tell a story about our library – the story of our move from Huntington to Central Islip. I conducted an email interview with Kimberly Barbato, who worked at the library before, during and after the move. Kim supplied the following story:

Q: When did you start working at Gould Law Library?

A: May 25th, 2005

Q: Describe what the library was like when Touro Law Center was located in Huntington.
A: Prior to our move to Central Islip in January of 2007, Touro Law School was located at 300 Nassau Road in Huntington, N.Y. The law school was situated between Nassau Road and Woodhull Road in the former Toaz Intermediate School built in the 1930s. The northwest wing included the main entrance, reception, cafeteria, classrooms, bookstore and offices. The auditorium was located in the southwest corner of the school. The library occupied the east wing. The library consisted of two floors.

The first floor included the main reading room, the reserve room & reserve materials, the main collection, the reference offices & collection, technical service, a “New York Room” containing the New York materials collection, an adjoining “International Room” containing the international collection, and rooms 109 & 110 which contained the periodicals and printers.

On the second floor of the library were the state materials and statutes, the Judaica collection, 3 study rooms, a study “wing” (located in the bridge between the 2nd floor of the library and the school) which contained individual carrel desks, and the computer lab.

Q: When was the move & how difficult was it?

A: The move took place at the end of the fall semester of 2006. A company specializing in transporting library collections came in and moved our collection into the new building. As with all moves, it took some adjustment. We now had more room and needed to rearrange, straighten, & shift the collection to fit within the new stack space.

Q: How is the library different in Central Islip? What are the improvements?

A: We now have a larger, more state-of-the-art facility. It is because of this that we are able to consolidate our collection, accommodate students with more study space, soft-seating areas and study rooms (14 rooms, as opposed to three in the old building), as well as two larger computer labs including a SmartLab with state-of-the-art technology. Our Judaica collection is kept in a larger room with display cases and additional study space. The rare books collection also has its own room with separate air and temperature controls, display cases and study tables.

Passover Exhibit

Come check out our new library exhibit, Celebrating the Customs and Traditions of Passover, created by Beth Mobley, Associate Director, Head of Collection Development and Special Collections Curator. This exhibit can be found in the display cases in the third floor atrium and the Judaica Room. It includes a variety of haggadot, as well as objects used for the Passover Seder . Books about Passover and the history of the Haggadah are displayed on the reference counter in the Judaica Room. For more information about this exhibit and the holiday of Passover, read this week’s Touro Times.

Check Out Sum and Substance CDs

Just in time for final exam prep… Gould Law Library has recently acquired more than twenty CDs from the Sum and Substance audio series. These CDs are in the Reserve Room and can be checked out for 48 hours. Topics include: Bankruptcy; Civil Procedure; Commercial Paper; Contracts; Constitutional Law; Corporations; Criminal Law; Criminal Procedure; Evidence; Exam Skills: Essay Writing; Family Law; Federal Income Tax; How to Succeed in Law School; Legal Career Management; Legal Research; Professional responsibility; Property; Sale & Lease of Goods; Torts; Trust; Wills & Succession; and Wills & Trusts.

Fastcase

Fastcase, an alternative legal research database, can be found on Gould Law Library’s Online Databases page. Fastcase provides comprehensive coverage of federal and state primary law, as well as access to federal filings, newspapers and legal forms. Fastcase offers many different ways to sort search results including by: relevance; case name; decision date; number of citations; jurisdiction and court hierarchy. These results can be sorted in the traditional list view or you can chose to see your search results displayed on a graph, called the Interactive Timeline (see photo below). The horizontal axis of the graph shows how the results occur over time and the vertical axis displays the relevance of the cases to your search query or may be changed to display results by court level. Cases are plotted as circles and information regarding the number of times each case has been cited by cases in your search results, as well as by cases in the entire database, and the summary of the cases is available by hovering over these circles.


Fastcase also has another innovative tool, available from the list view, called Forecite. Forecite identifies additional decisions that may be relevant for your issue, even if your search terms do not retrieve them. Forecite performs an integrated citation analysis on cases retrieved in your search result, locating additional cases that are frequently cited by these retrieved cases, and then suggests those additional cases to you. Further, Fastcase’s Authority Check provides a list of later cases that cite the retrieved cases.

Finally, you can also download Fastcase’s free legal research app for iPhone (or iPad), which won the American Association of Law Library’s (AALL) 2010 Best New Product of the of Year Award.

For more information about using Fastcase (and to see the Interactive Timeline in action), check out the tutorials at: http://www.fastcase.com/support/.

Digital Commons

What is the Digital Commons, you ask? It is a digital repository which is a digital archive for Touro Law Center. From the Gould Law Library's home page you can click on the link or go to http://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/. From here you can look for articles written by your favorite professor or check out some student films from Professor Post’s class. If you click on SelectedWorks, you will see web pages for your Professors.

Remember, items are being uploaded every day, so please visit the DC early and often!

You don’t want to be the last one to know what has been posted on the DC!!

Loislaw

Gould Law Library provides access to a comprehensive legal research database called Loislaw, published by Wolters Kluwer, which also publishes CCH. Unfortunately many law students, as well as attorneys, are unfamiliar with this database. Loislaw is a cost-effective legal research solution, as it offers an all-inclusive flat rate subscription. It is also quite user-friendly and intuitive. It contains a completely up-to-date Primary Law Collection, which includes case law, statutes, administrative regulations and court rules for all state and federal jurisdictions, as well as collections of public records, treatises and legal forms.

Loislaw also has two useful and innovative tools, GlobalCite and LawWatch. GlobalCite allows you to pull all of the citations out of a case or brief and read or print those cases and statutes. It also allows you to sort by document type or jurisdiction. All of the citations are hyperlinked to the full document at no cost, even if the documents are outside the subscription plan. GlobalCite also allows you to see all of the cases, statutes, and treatises that cite to the case that you are viewing. LawWatch allows you to save your research trail. You can choose simply to save it or you can have LawWatch continue to run that search automatically.

For a more detailed explanation of Loislaw, check out their tutorial at: http://image.loislaw.com/prosite/flash/gettingstarted/

Next month I will detail Fastcase, another legal research database available at Gould Law Library.

HeinOnline's YouTube Channel

Every law student is familiar with Westlaw and LexisNexis, however, Gould Law Library has access to so many other databases that are excellent resources for legal research and scholarship. In an attempt to familiarize more people with these databases, the following article is the first in a series of posts that will profile these databases.


A database many law students are already acquainted with is HeinOnline. HeinOnline contains a tremendous assortment of law journals, government documents and historical legal documents. It is a great resource for legal research and analysis, as well as for compiling legislative histories. I recently discovered HeinOnline’s Channel on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/HeinOnline08.

Both beginners and experts will appreciate this website. Visitors can view more than 30 “how to” videos that will help them navigate HeinOnline and utilize all of the resources this database has to offer. For beginners, there are videos entitled “Quick Start Guide to HeinOnline” and “How to Find an Article in the Law Journal Library.” For advanced researchers there are videos entitled “Subject Compilations of State Laws” and “Cross-Library Searching for Legislative Histories.” This website also has videos detailing recent changes and enhancements to HeinOnline, such as, “Faceted Searching Available in the Law Journal Library” and “Browsing Legislative Histories by Public Law Number or Popular Name.”

Also, check out the HeinOnline wiki at http://heinonline.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page, which includes quick reference guides, training videos and FAQs.

In the next installment of this series, I will be profiling Loislaw.