The Goodson Blogson

Hard to believe that the fall semester is coming to an end! After the Thanksgiving holiday break, there's just one week of classes left to get your exam plans in order. Fortunately, the Goodson Law Library is here to help – and not just for quiet study space. Past exams , if your professor chooses to make them available, will be linked on your course's Sakai site. The library does not maintain a database of past Law School examinations from recent years. (We do have some in the archives dating from the 1930s to the 1990s, but those aren't going to help you by now.) However, help is still available if your professor opts not to share a sample exam. General law school exam-taking advice can be found by searching the Duke Libraries Catalog for the subject "Law Examinations – United States." Study aids can supplement your class material, clearing up any lingering confusion about a particular topic. West Academic Library Study Aids provides full-text access to ...

The start of a new semester is a good time to take stock of your Sakai course sites , which are listed as tabs at the top of the screen. The Goodson Law Library's Digital Initiatives Librarian, Hollie White , offers these tips to rearrange, hide, and/or change the number of displayed course sites in Sakai. To begin, log in to Sakai with your NetID and password . Make sure that the " My Workspace " tab is active. On the side bar, click Preferences . You should see a box that says " My Active Sites ." Inside that box is a list of courses to which you are assigned. To rearrange the order of tabs in "My Active Sites" Click and highlight the name of the course that you want to move. To the left of the course name are two buttons (one points up and the other points down). Click the up arrow to move the highlighted course to the left. Click the down arrow to move the highlighted course to the right. Click the " Update Preferences " butto...

[ On Saturday, June 30, Duke University access to Blackboard course sites will expire. Digital Initiatives Librarian Hollie White offers some advice to help students, faculty and staff prepare for the transition to Sakai , Blackboard’s replacement system. ] For Students: Although the last four years of Blackboard content have been migrated to Sakai for faculty access, students will not see these past courses in Sakai. If you want to save some of your work from a previous course (such as final products from group projects) which used Blackboard, sign on to Blackboard before June 30 and find the class(es) from which you want to save material . Please remember that handouts and slides are the property of the faculty member and you should not copy, save, or redistribute these without permission from your instructor. For Faculty: The last four years of Blackboard content has already been copied from Blackboard into Sakai. To explore your migrated classes, log in to Sakai . Class...