The Goodson Blogson

The Law Library now has electronic access to Constitutions of the Countries & Territories of the World , available to the Duke University community via the Legal Databases & Links page. This database provides the text of current and historical versions for the constitutions of countries, dependencies, and territories.

If you missed the annual “DLSIS Day” celebration last November, take heart. “Law Library Olympics” , the “mockumentary” which was filmed for the Law Library portion of the multimedia event, is now available for viewing as part of the iTunesU initiative ( http://www.itunes.duke.edu/ ). This nine-minute video takes you behind the scenes of the Library as three departmental representatives prepare for a rigorous national competition. Will their new coach motivate them to win after a humiliating defeat by their archrivals at UNC? Coach Dunshee says it best (”Probably not”), but these intrepid staffers prove that the real prize comes from striving to create the best law library that they can. To download the video, you will need to have iTunes installed on your computer. Visit http://www.itunes.duke.edu/ and select “Browse” to enter “Duke on iTunesU”. Select “Law” from the box of available schools in the right-hand side. The Law Library Olympics video is available under “Other Offering...

If you missed any of the Law Library’s “Research Refresher” workshops last month, visit the new Library Workshops & Instruction archive ( http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/workshops/ ). Slides are available in PPT and PDF; most classes also include a link to listen in MP3 format. Available classes include Cases (which also features a downloadable, narrated version), Free & Low-Cost Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw, and Putting It All Together: Taking a Research Assignment from Start to Finish.

The 2007-2008 renovation project will require the majority of the Law Library’s print collection to be placed into storage. To help law review cite-checkers and other legal researchers obtain original pagination in electronic sources, the reference staff has prepared a new Research Guide to Finding Legal Materials in PDF ( http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/researchguides/legal_materials ). The guide includes tips and tricks for locating books, articles, cases, court documents, legislative history materials, and international law documents in PDF.