The Goodson Blogson

In honor of Open Access Week , the Goodson Blogson is highlighting another free research resource. Last week, we brought you the news that HeinOnline and the Law Library of Congress had teamed up to provide free public access to historical federal legal materials like the U.S. Code and U.S. Supreme Court cases. Today, we're featuring a new free resource for historical doctoral dissertations . Earlier this month, EBSCO announced the release of American Doctoral Dissertations 1933-1955 , a free digitized index of nearly 100,000 doctoral dissertations which were accepted by American universities during those three decades. The database, available at http://opendissertations.com/ , includes scans of a print index set, Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by American Universities , which is also available in the Duke University Libraries' off-site storage facility . Searching this free database does not include the same features as other EBSCO-produced subscription databases, but...

The Law Library of Congress has just announced an agreement with legal publisher William S. Hein which provides free public access to historical federal publications, including the United States Code , U.S. Reports , Code of Federal Regulations , and the Federal Register . While neither as complete nor searchable as the HeinOnline subscription libraries which are available to current Duke University community members, these collections linked within the Law Library of Congress's Guide to Law Online help fill in the historical gaps for these important legislative, judicial, and executive branch publications, which have long been available back to the mid-1990s on the federal government website FDsys . Generally, the free Hein libraries begin with the first edition of the publication in question, and end when free access via FDsys begins. The free collections have been added to the Goodson Law Library's handy list of Federal Law Links , and will be added to subject-specific...

Effective on October 6, North Carolina Bar Association members can no longer access the state's Pattern Jury Instructions (PJI) online through the Fastcase research service . Private vendor CX Corp is now the exclusive online source for North Carolina Pattern Jury Instructions , and is offering direct individual subscriptions after 11 years of providing access through the state bar association's member research service. Goodson Law Library users can continue to find print copies of the North Carolina Pattern Jury Instructions , compiled and updated by the state's Conference of Superior Court Judges and published by the UNC School of Government, in the Walker North Carolina Alcove on Level 2 . There are separate volumes for civil, criminal, and motor vehicle instructions. The library's research guide to North Carolina Practice includes information about these PJI publications as well as other state legal research tools. What's all the fuss about Pattern Jury In...