Faculty: Mike Esler, Department of Politics and Government
Librarian: Paul Burnam
In recent years electronic sources of information have expanded for undergraduate students interested in law. For instance, since September 2001 I have received numerous advertisements for "Westlaw Campus," a new online legal research tool designed for undergraduates. Other online research tools heretofore available only to law students, such as Lexus and Nexus, and the legal website out of Cornell, have recently become available to undergraduates. Similarly, online resources about government and politics, such as JSTOR and an online version of the "Annual Review of Political Science," have become available in recent years. The goals of this proposed project are to understand the similarities and differences between these sources, and the advantages and disadvantages of using them to track legal issues. More generally, the project seeks to integrate available online sources about law, government, and politics with traditional print sources to provide students with a comprehensive set of sources for studying law.
The primary beneficiaries of this project are my students in Judicial Process and Policymaking, P .G. 350. Their course term papers require them to analyze the evolution of a particular law, including the way in which it developed through the legislative process, administrative rulemaking, and judicial rulings. Having access to and knowledge of online as well as print sources of information will greatly facilitate their research. Accordingly, I request a stipend for revising a course.
However, the benefits of this project will extend well beyond P.G. 350. My students in Constitutional Law, P.G. 351, will be better able to find court cases, counsel briefs, and commentaries that are relevant to cases that we analyze in class. Information generated by this project should also benefit my colleagues in the Department of Politics and Government, who often assign projects that entail legal analysis. Of course, this information will facilitate preparation of my classes and the conduct of my own research as well.
The specific goals of this project are to:
I would like to spend 2-3 hours per week throughout the summer of 2002 working on developing this project, depending on the schedule of Paul Burnam, the librarian who will be working on this project with me. I plan to implement the results of the project during the teaching of P.G. 350, fal1 2002.
The project will include several information literacy sessions offered during the course of the semester. These might include sessions pertaining to print resources in the circulating, reference, and government document collections, resources on government websites and other legally oriented websites, strategies for searches, and citation form.