The Goodson Blogson

As the spring 2019 exam period approaches, the Goodson Law Library has implemented some important changes based on user feedback, in order to improve your experience. Restricted Access in Effect During the Law School's Reading & Examination period (April 19 – May 3) , access to the Goodson Law Library for study purposes is restricted to current Law School students, faculty and staff. Others who need to access the library for research purposes may visit the library when service desk staff are on duty (Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.; contact the Circulation/Reserve Desk for assistance during staffed evenings and weekends). Quiet Study in the Library During the reading & examination period, the entire library (including the Reading Room on Level 3) will be converted to quiet space . Excessive noise and inadequate quiet space were the top themes in our Spring 2019 student survey. Please be quiet in the library and take all phone calls outside. New Seating, Ta...

Even the most responsible library users can find themselves incurring the occasional late fee. Maybe you just needed one more day to finish that recalled book, or you were traveling, or the item was buried under a pile of other stuff. However that fine got there, if your Duke Libraries account shows an unpaid balance in the Fines/Credits/Fees section, we have some good news for you. From Wednesday, October 10 through Friday, October 26, every library on East and West Campus at Duke University will accept "Food for Fines" to benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC . Each unopened, unexpired, non-perishable food item (or household good) donated will remove $1 from your library fines (up to a $25 maximum per account). You can bring the items to any campus library during the food drive – no need to travel to the specific library that charged the fine. The chart below details the most-needed food and household items for the Food Bank: Food Drive Most Needed Items...

The following guest post was written by Rachel Gordon , Head of Access and Collection Services. You probably know by now that the Law Library keeps copies of Law School textbooks on Reserve, but did you know that we have other items as well? We have many current study aids , including selected subjects in the Examples and Explanations , Questions and Answers , Nutshell , Glannon Guides , Understanding , and Mastering series. For more information on available study aids, see the Law School Success guide, linked in the JD and LLM orientation packets. We also have selected dictionaries, multiple copies of The Bluebook , popular legal movies and TV shows on DVD, and various Mac laptop chargers. New to the Reserve Collection this year are calculators , noise-cancelling headphones , and (coming soon) bookstands . Reserve items are available on a first-come, first-served basis and can be checked out for up to four hours, or overnight if checked out within four hours of closing. (Aft...

While Duke Law students, faculty and staff have long enjoyed 24-hour access to both the Law School and Law Library, the Duke Law community didn't have a 24-hour service desk…until now. A Self-Checkout Station is now available at the Circulation/Reserve desk. If you need to check out a Law Library item after hours – or just feel like bypassing a line during the day – bring your items to the iPad kiosk at the service desk. Follow the instructions on the touch screen to log in with your NetID and password, use the camera to take photos of the item barcodes, and verify that the system has logged you out when you are finished. Need to borrow items even faster? With the Duke Self-Checkout smartphone app , you can borrow Standard Loan library items right at the shelf. MeeScan Duke Self-Checkout apps for iPhone and Android devices are available at the App Store and on Google Play . Note that this station offers checkout service only – to return items for check-in after hours, use th...

Late last week, the Lilly Library announced that its extensive collection of videos and DVDs can now be requested by faculty, graduate students, and library staff for delivery and pickup at staffed library service points across campus, including the Goodson Law Library. (Previously, Duke users needed to visit the East Campus library in person to borrow these items.) Lilly videos and DVDs may be borrowed for one week at a time, with a one-week renewal possible for items without a recall or hold list. Up to 3 DVDs from the regular collection, as well as 1 devilDVD (a collection of recently released popular titles) may be borrowed at one time. This new option to pick up Lilly videos and DVDs at the Law Library is in addition to the Goodson Law Library's own DVD collection in the Leisure Reading area on Level 3, featuring law-related movies and TV shows. Items in the Law Library DVD collection may be borrowed for 3 days at a time by bringing the empty case to the Circulation/Re...

It may be hard to believe now, but in just a few weeks your final exams and papers will be a distant memory as you begin your summer job. Starting in May, many commonly-used legal research resources restrict student access over the summer , to help avoid the use of nonprofit educational passwords at paid summer employment. However, each service treats summer access a little bit differently, and there may be further variations for continuing vs. graduating students. Here’s your guide to summer database access. Bloomberg Law accounts are valid between school terms and for 6 months after you graduate. Your Law School Bloomberg account may be used for both academic and employment-related purposes, including full access to federal court filings from PACER (see our research guide ). If you do not already have a Bloomberg Law account, you may Request A Law School Account with your Duke email address. LexisNexis will provide unlimited access this summer to Lexis Advance , its next-genera...

Are you curious to see what all this iPad fuss is about before committing to buy one of your own? Or are you an experienced iPad user who just needs temporary access to a device? Either way, the Duke Law School's new iPad Loaner program may be able to help. Duke Law students can check out iPads and selected accessories from the Academic Technologies Help Desk. Why is this potentially useful? According to Digital Initiatives Librarian Hollie White , "There are many reasons to check out an iPad. On an iPad, notes can be taken , either by hand or using the keypad. Being very portable, iPads can also be used to store important documents using cloud applications. Four of Duke Law’s classrooms and the Digital Initiatives Lab have Apple TVs , which can be used with an iPad to project relevant content in meetings or with a study group." The loaner iPads come pre-loaded with a set of standard productivity, video, and legal research apps , such as Pages, Skype, Kindle, ...

Welcome (or welcome back) to the Fall 2012 semester! Effective at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 19, full evening and weekend library services have resumed. See our updated building access hours , and remember that you'll still need a current DukeCard to enter the Law School building after 5:00 p.m. and any time on weekends. Those just returning to Duke from a summer away will notice a few changes to the Goodson Law Library. In May, work began on a renovation project designed to create new spaces for eight of Duke Law's student-edited journals on Level 1 of the library. As part of this project, other study spaces throughout the library were also improved. While some work will continue into the fall semester (check the Renovation Updates page for details), here is your floor-by-floor guide to the changes so far. LEVEL 1 The most dramatic transformation can be seen at the back of Level 1, where the bank of study carrels was removed in July. (Don't worry - the carrels ha...

Congratulations to our newest graduates! If you plan to remain in the Triangle area this summer for bar exam study, please note the following information about Duke Law building access, library services, and access to electronic resources. More details can be found on the library’s page Services for Law Alumni . Building Access : Although your law student IDs (which provide 24-hour access to the Law School and Law Library) are deactivated shortly after graduation, you are eligible for a free alumni card from the DukeCard Office . E-mail your alumni card number to the Law School's Building Manager, Catherine Hall , in order to activate 24-hour access for the summer. The access will continue until August 15. If you are leaving the Triangle area, and hope to visit another law library for regular bar exam study, be aware that many private law schools require a letter of introduction from your "home" institution in order to grant access. Chec...

A new year always brings new changes, and 2012 is no exception. This year, there’s a Presidential election, and (some say) maybe even the end of the world . But before that Mayan calendar runs out, we can enjoy some small-scale changes closer to home: the New Year will ring in the return of the library's evening and weekend services (on Sunday, January 8), and also an extension to Standard Loan borrowing periods for Duke Law students, other Duke graduate students, and non-Law Duke faculty/staff. The new year also often brings changes to the library's electronic subscriptions, as newly acquired content is added to databases and the full-text of titles from expired licenses are removed. (This generally happens behind the scenes, but if you encounter outdated links to e-resources which no longer work correctly, be sure to report them to library staff for investigation.) One database making some big additions for 2012 is NC Live, or North Carolina Libraries for Virtual Educatio...

It's reading & examination period at the Law School, and that means our students are busily preparing outlines and reviewing class notes. As stress levels rise and preparation time grows short, the Goodson Blogson wants to review some of the most common questions at the service desk lately. Library Access As previously reported (both here and in certain other legal blogs of note), exam time brings a temporary change to the library’s access policy, most notably in the evening hours. From now until the end of exams (Saturday, December 18), access to the Goodson Law Library for study purposes will be limited to current Duke Law students, faculty and staff. Card-swipe access to the library entrance will be required after 5:00 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends. Members of the Duke University community who require access to the library for research purposes should contact the library service desk for assistance. Additional study space is available to all throughout the bui...

The end of fall semester classes will bring some changes to the Goodson Law Library’s access and service hours. To ensure that adequate study space is available for law students during the reading and examination period, the library will implement a new access and use policy from December 2-18. During the reading and examination period, use of the Goodson Law Library will be restricted to the Duke Law community at all times (including when the entrance doors are unlocked). Exceptions will be made for other students who are currently enrolled in Law School classes, or researchers with a demonstrated need for use of the law collections. All others may be asked to leave. (Please contact the Reference Desk during normal business hours about access under the above exceptions, or assistance with researching legal materials.) The Law School and library entrance doors will be locked (with card swipe access restricted to the law community) after 5:00 p.m. on weekdays, and on weekends from D...

In September and October, the library tested new reservation calendar software for its eight private study rooms. After making some improvements to the system based on user feedback, we are ready to relaunch the online reservation calendar . (For example, no longer will you need to puzzle over making a 210- or a 240-minute reservation – we’ve adjusted the time display based on the #1 complaint about the software.) Law students may log in at http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/studyrooms with a NetID and password to reserve one of our study rooms up to 72 hours in advance . The link is accessible on the Law Library home page as well as the Library & Technology page. If you experience access problems where the system does not recognize you as a law student, please submit a feedback form and include your NetID so that we can resolve the error. We welcome other comments and suggestions about improving the calendar software, as well. Although not every suggested change will be possible in...

Over the weekend, the N.Y. Daily News published an exposé of what must be a world record for library late fees, from a most unlikely scofflaw: the first President of the United States. In October of 1789, President George Washington borrowed the treatise Law of Nations , along with a volume of British parliamentary debates, from the New York Society Library . A handwritten ledger, unearthed in 1934, seemed to prove that the books were never returned. Earlier this week, librarians stumbled upon the rest of the British parliamentary debates, and sure enough, the volume Washington borrowed was still missing from the set. Adjusted for inflation over the last 220 years, the current fines for these two books would be a whopping $300,000. Washington’s death in 1799 may provide the ultimate affirmative defense, but current residents of Earth cannot so easily side-step the library due date. For Duke students, the end of the semester is an excellent time to double-check your library account (...