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!!