Home Page for Kent Olson

E-Mail:
kco4f@virginia.edu

Phone:
(434) 924-4734

Office: WB233

Kent Olson

Director of Reference, Research and Instruction
Lecturer
J.D., University of California at Berkeley School of Law, 1985
M.L.S., University of California at Berkeley, 1980
B.A., Wesleyan University, 1977

Kent Olson directs the library's reference, research, and instruction services for faculty and students and teaches Advanced Legal Research. He earned his B.A. in art history from Wesleyan University and his M.L.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and then worked as a librarian for Fordham University at Lincoln Center before attending the University of Minnesota School of Law and the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California. He joined the Law Library in 1985.

Olson has written several texts on legal research, most recently Legal Research in a Nutshell (9th ed. 2007, with Morris L. Cohen). His earlier book Legal Information: How to Find It, How to Use It (1999) won the American Association of Law Libraries' annual Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award, recognizing "a significant contribution to legal bibliographical literature," and was selected as one of Library Journal’s Best Reference Sources in 1999.

Olson prepared the Law section of the American Library Association’s Guide to Reference Books (11th ed. 1996), and his work has also appeared in several journals, including Green Bag, Legal Reference Services Quarterly, and Virginia Lawyer. He is a member of the California Bar.

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