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Library

Services for Law Faculty


Contacts

Library Director: Taylor Fitchett (4.7725)
Reference Questions: Refdesk (4.7465)
Faculty Research: Kent Olson (4.4734)
Acquisitions: June Campbell (4.3877)
Circulation and Routing: Cathy Palombi (4.3519)
Course Reserves: Tim Breeden (4-0940)
Government Documents: Marnita Simpson (4.3504)
International and Foreign Law: Xinh Luu (4.3970)

Reference, Research and Instruction Services

The Law Library provides a full range of services to support faculty research and teaching, from answering complex reference queries to supplying legal and nonlegal books, journal articles, and photocopies. Law Library staff retrieve and copy materials from other UVA libraries and place interlibrary requests for items not available at UVA.

The major service point is Refdesk, an e-mail address for the exclusive use of UVA law faculty. Refdesk can help with any inquiry about the library, including reference, acquisitions and circulation inquiries. It is the first and only point of contact you need to know in the library. (Refdesk service is limited to UVA law faculty. Other patrons should click here for e-mail reference service.)

Refdesk requests are answered by one of eight reference librarians, and copying and other services are handled by a number of people on the library staff. The reference desk can also be reached by phone, at 924-7465. Please contact Kent Olson if you have questions about the scope of Refdesk service.

The reference librarians generally have research expertise in American legal and nonlegal materials. Experts in particular areas include Jon Ashley (business and empiracal research), Xinh Luu (international and foreign law), and Marnita Simpson (government documents, including congressional materials).

Reference librarians would also be happy to provide research instruction for you or for your students. We can visit your class or arrange special sessions in the library to teach your students how to conduct research in specific areas. Contact Kent Olson to discuss these programs.

Major Databases

The library subscribes to numerous online databases and services that may be of use in your research. The major subscriptions are listed here on the Law Library's web site, and hundreds more are in the University Library's database list.

Law faculty should have passwords to LexisNexis and Westlaw, the two comprehensive online systems. If you have questions concerning your password or would like to arrange for training, please contact Micheal Klepper or Refdesk.

Besides LexisNexis and Westlaw, two of the most useful databases to law faculty are HeinOnline and JSTOR. Both provide PDF copies of journal articles in their original format (instead of unsightly, hard-to-read computer printouts). Articles can be retrieved by citation or searched by keyword. HeinOnline focuses on legal journals and has complete retrospective access to more than 1000 law reviews. JSTOR is a broader collection of scholarly journals, with only a few dozen law reviews, but many other titles of interest to legal researchers in areas such as economics, history, and political science. Coverage generally begins with the first volume and extends to a moving wall of three to six years from the most recent issue.

HeinOnline and JSTOR can be accessed from home offices through the UVA proxy server or Uva Anywhere. Contact Refdesk for more information.

Current Awareness

The Law Library facilitates current awareness of scholarly and legal developments through several means.

The major current awareness source for new legal literature is the Current Index to Legal Periodicals from the University of Washington. Some people receive the entire CILP by e-mail, but most faculty members subscribe to a customized program called SmartCILP which provides automatic e-mail notice of specific subjects and/or journals. An authorization code is required to register for SmartCILP; contact Kent Olson for details.

The Law Library subscribes to several SSRN networks: Legal Scholarship Network, Economics Research Network, and Financial Economics Network. Each of these networks has numerous e-journals providing abstracts of working papers and other current scholarship. The SSRN website provides information about subscribing under the Law Library's site license.

The Law Library also provides abstracts or contents of new journal issues in other disciplines. Several faculty members receive abstracts of articles in a dozen major economics journals, and a few get updates of new philosophy journal issues. Some individuals receive abstracts of specialized journals such as Addictionor Urban Studies. If you have a particular interdisciplinary interest or need to keep abreast of developments in journals we don't receive, contact Kent Olson.

Bear in mind that Google, LexisNexis and Westlaw all have services which can automatically run saved searches on a regular basis. These services (Google Alerts, Lexis Alerts, and WestClip) are powerful tools for monitoring developments in areas of interest. Contact Refdesk for more information about these notification services.

Resources for Authors

The Law School has an account with ExpressO for electronic submission of manuscripts to your choice of law reviews. For shorter opinion pieces, submission criteria and procedures for op-eds in more than 100 U.S. newspapers are available from the
Communications Consortium Media Center.

Law Journals: Submissions and Ranking, from Washington & Lee Law School, classifies and ranks law reviews based on subject matter, impact, and number of citations in journals and legal opinions, and also provides manuscript submission instructions. The LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews provides addresses for more than 600 journals in PDF, spreadsheet and Word label files.

Acquisitions

We are always interested in hearing what materials are needed to support your research. Purchasing these will help you and will strengthen our collection. Contact Refdesk or June Campbell with your recommendations for the library collection.

We also welcome faculty gifts to the library, including casebooks, hornbooks, texts, and journals. Please contact June to arrange a contribution.

Circulation and Routing

Every faculty member is registered upon arrival for borrowing privileges at the Law Library and other UVA libraries. Most books can be checked out to faculty for an indefinite loan period, although they are subject to recall if needed by another patron.

The Law Library delivers material to faculty offices daily, including both requested items and new issues of regularly routed journals and newsletters. If there are law reviews or other materials you would like to see on a regular basis, send Refdesk a request to be added to a routing list. Popular journals are routed to numerous people, so speedy turnaround of routed material is appreciated by all.

One of our staff members travels daily to the other UVA libraries for books and articles for faculty. For non-rush items, we use the University's LEO document delivery service, and offer interlibrary loan through the University Library. ILL materials are generally checked out for one month; it is important to return these items on time to maintain borrowing privileges. For questions, contact Cathy Palombi.

Course Reserves

Each semester we ask you if there are books or other materials you would like to put on reserve for your students, and send you (if applicable) a list of items previously on reserve for each course. Please contact Tim Breeden if you have any questions about reserve procedures or policies.