The Arizona Association of Law Libraries recently presented a full day program on Congressional Information that   featured distinguished speakers from the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve Board, the Sunlight Foundation, GovTrack.us as well as the Arizona State Library and the ASU Law Library.  This blog will cover two of the speaker presentations: The Federal Legislative Process and Finding and Compiling a Congressional Legislative History. Part 2 will feature GovTrack.us and Congressional bill tracking.

Ellen Sweet, Legislative Reference Specialist at the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice, led the audience through the legislative process using a federal Indian law (NAGPRA) that included detailed information about the documents produced from the process and which of those documents are the most likely to yield legislative intent information. Excellent flowcharts illustrated the process. Her materials can be found starting at page 37 of the conference materials.

The excellent, up-to-date Finding or Compiling Federal Legislative Histories Electronically was presented by Rick McKinney, the Assistant Law Librarian at the Federal Reserve Board Library. Mr. McKinney’s expertise is the electronic availability of legislative documents and the chart that he included in his materials is a timesaver for anyone who does legislative intent research.

Ms. Sweet and Mr. McKinney are co- authors of the indispensable Law Librarians’ Society of D.C. Legislative Sourcebook 

Need help with a legislative history project? Ask a Librarian!

Putting the final touches on your AWR? Need help finding additional sources? Well don’t worry about skipping lunch, we’re coming to you!

That’s right, for the rest of the semester professional research librarians will be available in the Student Lounge on the 20th floor from 12-1pm, Monday through Thursday, to assist you with any research questions you might have – big or small!

Also, if you want to learn more about mobile apps for legal research the roving librarians will be using iPads and can demonstrate some cool new apps and help you navigate them.

Speaking of iPads, did you know that the Law Library owns several iPads that you can check out? That’s right! Just visit the Circulation desk during regular hours and we’ll get you all set up!

Image from dreamstime.com.

Conducting a search in the catalog can produce an overwhelming amount of results.  The good news is that these results can be narrowed by selecting facets.  Facets are located on the left side of the screen and allow the user to narrow by areas such as format, location and publication date.  These are just three of the many facets you can select.  A user can narrow by one or more facets at the same time.  I ran a search on adoption which returned 228 results.  I decided to narrow my results by electronic format and records that had my search term in the subject.  I now have 14 results, which is much more manageable.  Next time you conduct a search in the catalog use facets to find more pertinent results.

Most patrons think of the Catalog as a resource to find a call number for a book located on a shelf.  While this is still the case the Catalog has so much more to offer.  A simple search on Adoption produced records with links to resources in databases like Lexis, HeinOnline, and Westlaw.  Records for additional electronic formats include websites that are both useful and credible.  Over 50,000 articles were located; an advanced search should be done to narrow results.  Finally, five eBooks and over 60 print books were found. 

The next time you begin a research project you may want to start with the Catalog.  You never know what you’ll find! 

(Image from Catalog)

Having trouble locating articles for your research project? Not sure how to focus your search? Wondering about library hours and services?

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