Electronic Resources Beyond Lexis and Electronic Resources Beyond Lexis and WestlawWestlaw

Paul D. Callister, JD, MSLIS

Director of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library

& Associate Professor of Law

http://www1.law.umkc.edu/Faculty/callister/bootcamp/ppt/BeyondWexis.ppt

© 2005. Paul D. Callister

Why Go Beyond Lexis or Westlaw?Why Go Beyond Lexis or Westlaw?• Coverage

– Historical Material• Lexis (full-text journals-1982 to present)• Westlaw (full-text journals-1994 to present)• LegalTrac (abstracts-1980 to present for 875 journals)• Index of Legal Periodicals (abstracts-1981 to present for 1,021 journals)• HeinOnline (400 full-text journals from inception to present)• Making of the Modern Law (22,000 legal treatises from 1801 to 1927)

– Specialty Publishers• RIA (tax, accounting and financial)• CCH (tax. labor and securities)• BNA (tax, labor, ethics, biotech, ecommerce, securities, family law, criminal law,

U.S.Law Week)• Congressional Universe/CIS (legislative history)

• Abstracts– LegalTrac– Index to Legal Periodicals– EBSCO Academic Search Elite

• Indexing– Disintermediated v. Mediated Access (Man v. Machine) – Lexis and Westlaw generally do not copy indexes to looseleafs– IndexMaster

• Cost• Format (PDF vs. Electronic text)

Man v. Machine

Understanding Databases - What Kind of Understanding Databases - What Kind of Problem is It?Problem is It?

The table is based upon a similar taxonomy developed in Jean L. Sears & Marilyn K. Moody, Using Government Information Sources:  Print and Electronic 6-9 (2nd ed., 1994).

Library home page: htttp://www1.law.umkc.edu/library

General Rule

Research Bookmarks are freely available on the web.

Subscription Databases are items which are licensed for a fee.

The databases and services are listed in alphabetical order.

A few require passwords and may be restricted to law students and faculty, but most are licensed for “walk-in” use and may be accessed by anyone at the library.

Scrolling down . . .

Most of the databases may be accessed from home through a proxy server requiring your university email prefix (e.g., “callisterp”) and your password.

A few of the databases will only be accessible from home to law students and faculty.

Others require an individual password.

Scrolling further . . .

Note that the University of Missouri subscribes to many more databases than are listed here. A complete list of databases is available through the Subject Access and Alphabetical Listing of UMKC Libraries Databases links at the bottom of the page.

From the University Library Subject page . . .

There is a grouping of law databases (which has not been compiled by the law library). Many of the subject categories have relevant databases such as interdisciplinary journals, economic, industry and corporate information, the Oxford English Dictionary, Books in Print, and encyclopedias.

A Few Examples . . .A Few Examples . . .

From Copyright . . .From Copyright . . .

Is the historical origin of the conception of copyright as the privilege of a sanctioned state monopoly? Is there evidence that copyright was always viewed as a fundamental property right?

A Few Selections:

In addition to historical coverage of law reviews and journals, Hein Online provides access to a legal classics collection, the Federal Register (in its entirety) and treaty databases.

A Few Selections:

LLMC Digital Law Library Consortium is an ongoing project to digitize bout 9,000 titles. To date, historical materials from all three branches of the federal government, Canadian law, and military law have been digitized.

A Few Selections:

Making of the Modern Law contains 22,000 titles of 19th and early 20th century legal treatises. Legal treatises from this period are particularly important – perhaps supplanting reporters as the most important legal texts.

A Few Selections:

When US Cong. Serial Set is complete it will include all of the Senate and House Reports from 1817 to 1980 (but currently only to 1869).

International Broadcasting and International Broadcasting and CensorshipCensorship

You need to research the history of regulating international broadcasting, particularly with reference to censorship.

A Few Selections:

Hein Online includes full-text of about 350 journals back to their inception.

A Few Selections:

Indexmaster searches the indexes and tables of contents of contemporary legal treatises and looseleafs.

A Few Selections:

SSRN searches working as well as published papers on law, economics and other subjects.

The EndThe End