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Keywords – August 29, 2024

KEYWORDS: Law Library Weekly Newsletter

To our new incoming 1Ls and LLM students, welcome to Cornell Law Library! To our 2Ls and 3Ls, welcome back! Keywords is your bi-weekly newsletter from the Law Library letting you know what resources and events are available to you from the library world.

Law Library News:

Some reminders for those of you returning and some announcements for our newcomers!

  • Please do not eat food in the Reading Room. There are spaces specifically dedicated to eating in the law school, and while we love how enthusiastic you all are about studying, it can be nice to leave the library once in a while to nourish yourself. We say this in the kindest way possible – go touch grass.
  • Drinks that are in a container with a lid are allowed in the Reading Room! We care about your hydration and caffeination, but please make sure that your container has a lid on it. It turns out that open containers of liquid don’t mix great with books when spilled.
  • If you have research questions or questions about accessing certain resources or databases, please email lawref@cornell.edu and a law librarian will get back to you as soon as we can.

Law Library Resource Highlight: Course Reserves

Many of you are already using our course reserve system to check out books for your classes, which is great! Law Library Reserves are books we have behind our circulation desk that are assigned for most of your classes. Reserves are a shared community resource – so please be mindful when using this system. For those of you who are less familiar, here is a rundown:

  •  The law library has most of the books that are mandatory readings for your classes. To check to see what we have, you can search for your book in our catalog by going to our website and using the search bar: Law Library (cornell.edu). Search for the book you need using search terms such as portions of the title of the book and an author’s last name (don’t include punctuation like commas or semi colons). If we have the book on course reserve, it will say Law Library Reserve in the Availability box. DO NOT CLICK ON REQUEST ITEM if it is in Law Library Reserve. This will not work because our course reserves are a shared physical resource, so it requires that you come in person to the law library to pick up your item.
  • Another way to find out if we have the book you need for class on reserve is to physically come to the circulation desk. You will need to do this whether or not you search in our catalog in advance.
  • To find and check out a book on reserve:
  1. Come to the circulation desk in the Reading Room where you will find a binder that says Course Reserves on the cover. The cover of the binder also has a cat floating in space on it.
  2. The binder is organized by Professor. So, for example, if you have Professor Johnson for Constitutional Law, flip the pages of the binder to “J” for Johnson and you will find the Constitutional Law casebook she has assigned.
  3. Show the library worker behind the desk what book you are hoping to check out and ask them kindly for the book.
  4. If we have the book available, the library worker will ask for your Student ID and will check the book out to you for a 2-hour loan period.
  5. If you need to renew the book, you must do so by coming back in person to the circulation desk. You cannot renew the book remotely.
  6. If the book you are hoping for is checked out to someone else, you may ask the library worker to put the book on hold for you a later time.

Some things to consider about Course Reserves:

Course Reserves are a shared community resource – meaning that when you have the book checked out to you, no one else can check out that book to do their class reading. Please be mindful and try to get your class reading done in your allotted time and return the book before it is due so the next student can use it.

Copyright law governs how much a book can be “copied” or scanned. Please do not scan your entire syllabus worth of readings because that would almost certainly be a copyright violation and could lead to other legal and policy issues.

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Best of luck with your new semester and congratulations on almost finishing your first week of classes!

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Take care of yourselves, and each other!

The Law Library. Myron Taylor Hall. Ithaca, NY 14853. lawlib@cornell.edu