At Marshall-Wythe College of Law, the librarians give first year students
an introduction to the law library in the middle of September. This
introduction includes locating cases with a citation, using a case name
table in a digest to find the citation to a case, an introduction to the
difference between official and unofficial case reporters, locating law
review articles from a periodical index, and how to locate a treatise in
the library using our OPAC. We also integrate into this library
orientation an introduction to CALR. In this introduction we discuss
the advantages and disadvantages to using CALR, the costs of online vs.
manual research, using "scope" and "guide" features to understand what is,
and what is not included in a particular database, and how to locate a
case on both systems from the citation and the case name. This not a full-
fledged training session (first years get full training in the spring). Our
intention is to provide first year students with a background understanding
to CALR and to point out possible uses and abuses of online systems early in
their law school careers. I believe we are trying to get students to think
critically about the research choices they have in the law library. To
paraphrase a line from a popular movie and commercial, we hope we can teach
them to "choose wisely."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03/07/00 PST