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HCLL Alert
March 2004
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ProQuest Newsstand Complete
Available Remotely To Subscribers
Search Over 550 Full-Text State,
National, And International Newspapers |
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A new subscriber receives his authorization code to access ProQuest Newsstand Complete remotely. | HCLL
subscribers now have another database they can access remotely (see
the others). ProQuest Newsstand Complete contains the full text
from more than 550 state, national, and international newspapers.
Newsstand Complete includes the Wall
Street Journal (from 1984), the New York Times (from 1999), and
the Washington Post (from 1996).
You may search for terms across all
publications, or you may limit any search to a particular newspaper title.
Results can be printed or e-mailed.
To access ProQuest Newsstand Complete you
will need an account number and password. Note: these are
not the same as your barcode.
Already have your account number and
password? Search Newsstand Complete at http://www.il.proquest.com/pqdauto.
Or:
Newsstand Complete is also available without an account number and password to
anyone who comes to the Law Library.
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| Focus On: State Law Surveys |
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| A frequent legal
research assignment is to conduct a survey of state laws on a particular
topic, for example, state trademark laws. Researchers soon discover
that online searches are risky because comparable concepts are embodied in
widely differing word combinations and legislative approaches. Law
librarians are often asked for assistance by researchers hoping to avoid
the tedious task of searching the indexes of the statutes of all fifty
states in order to locate relevant sections. Reference librarians
are aware that most comparative studies are made once, for a single
purpose, and are rarely updated. But even if the studies are several
years old, they provide a starting point and save the time required to
search through the indexes to the individual sets of statutes.
Following are the types of resources used most often by law librarians to
locate citations:
General Bibliographies
There are several valuable resources that
either provide charts of state statutes on numerous subjects or include
references to publications or Internet resources that summarize state
laws. Following are resources used frequently by the HCLL reference
staff:
- Subject
Compilations of State Laws, by Carol Boast and Cheryl Rae Nyberg
(Twin Fall, Idaho, The Authors) (Ref KF 1.S92). With coverage
dating back to 1960, this publication, which is updated annually,
includes references to law review and other periodical articles,
books, state and U.S. government documents, looseleaf services,
appellate court opinions, U.S. Supreme Court briefs, and
websites. The entries are arranged by subject and the subjects
are arranged in alphabetical order. Though somewhat tedious to
search because of the number of volumes that must be checked, it is
updated annually and provides excellent coverage of journals and
Internet resources.
- National
Survey of State Laws, 4th ed. ed. by Richard A. Leiter
(Thomson/Gale), 2003 (Ref KF 385.N37). Presented in chart
format, this reference allows users to make basic state-by-state
comparisons of current state laws in eight general legal categories of
interest to the general public, such as family, criminal, and
employment laws. It is published irregularly and not updated in
between (the third edition was published in 1999).
- Statutes
Compared: a U.S., Canadian, Multinational Research Guide to Statutes
by Subject, 2d ed. By Jon S. Schultz, 2001 (Ref KF 1.S35).
Though somewhat outdated, this resource is a good index to statutory
comparisons included in loose-leaf services and supplemented texts and
treatises.
- Martindale-Hubbell
Law Digest. (Lexis-Nexis/Martindale-Hubbell). The two Law
Digest volumes of the multi-volume Martindale-Hubbell legal directory
contain synopses of the statutory, common law, and administrative law
for each state that are prepared by major law firms in each
state. It is possible to gain basic comparative information by
reading quickly through them since the arrangements are similar from
state to state. Most of the synopses include citations to
authority. The Law Digest volumes are also useful for updating
and creating comparative data for both the Canadian provinces and for
a large number of foreign countries.
Texts and loose-leaf publications on
specific subjects located by using the library's catalog and then checking
the tables of contents and indexes of likely titles
Several titles are available which
include the text of the statutes of all 50 states in a particular area.
Updated annually, these titles are a goldmine for the researcher. Examples
that are either not included in the above bibliographies or are difficult
to find include:
Many texts and treatises include
extensive footnote references to state statutes, and it has been more
common among books published in recent years to find appendices containing
tables of statutes that are cited in the text. For example, the
multi-volume title Residential
Mortgage Lending: State Regulation Manual (KF 695.Z95.N44), includes
tables of statutes for all states on predatory loan laws, laws relating to
licensed mortgage brokers, and laws governing prepayment of mortgages.
HCLL has prepared a bibliography of texts
and treatises in the library's collection that include comparative
statutory information either in citation or full text form. View
the bibliography. |
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| Featured Web Site |
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 | At
the Hennepin County Law Library, we have recently received several
inquiries about online dictionaries. One of our favorites is the OneLook
Dictionary Search at www.onelook.com.
OneLook searches more than 900 online dictionaries. It indexes large
general dictionaries such as Encarta,
Merriam-Webster, and American
Heritage as well as small very specific dictionaries such as the Dictionary
of Carnivorous Plants and the Glossary
of Yiddish Expressions.
OneLook also includes several law
dictionaries, but none of them is anywhere near as comprehensive as a
Black's (24,500+ terms) or a Ballentine's Law Dictionary (30,000+ terms):
Another interesting feature on OneLook is
the reverse
dictionary. It lets you describe a concept and get back a list of
words and phrases related to that concept. For example, it's on the tip of
your tongue, but you can't think of the term for a landowner's rights to a
river bordering her property. Search the reverse dictionary for
"water rights" and find the phrase "riparian rights." |
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| Need
A Case, Statute, Or Article In A Hurry? |
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| For many years the
Law Library has offered a photocopy and fax service for subscribers who
need a copy of a case, statute, or journal or newspaper article and don't
have the time to make the trip to the Government Center.
Now HCLL staff, accessing a variety of
databases, is often able to provide electronic versions of these
materials. Cases, statutes, and articles can be sent as attachments
to your e-mail address. If you have a deadline and an electronic
version would make your research easier, call the reference staff at
612-348-2903. Registered subscribers at HCLL are eligible to receive
up to 20 faxed pages each week for no charge (e-mail attachments count as
5 pages, no matter how large they are). |
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