DULL News — No. 128
January 15, 2007
Headline
Back to Class
Welcome back! The Spring semester is underway, and the Law Library has resumed normal hours of operation (http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/hours.html). At the beginning of each semester, the Library staff hears a number of course-related questions. Here are a few of the most common.
- Where can I find Course Reserve items? If your professor has placed any course materials on Reserve, they will be available at the Library’s Circulation Desk. Reserve items may be borrowed for 4 hours during the day, or overnight if they are checked out less than an hour before the Circulation Desk closes (they will be due the next morning by 9 a.m.).
There is a binder on the Circulation Desk which contains an information page for each class’s reserve materials. Please note that this binder is kept current; if a reading is not listed in the notebook, it is not available for borrowing. Remember to also check your course page on Blackboard (http://courses.duke.edu) for readings which may have been posted there.
- I forgot my textbook; do you have a copy I can borrow? Casebooks change so frequently (often publishing a new edition every year) that it would be impossible for the Library to keep their collection current. As a result, the Library generally does not purchase casebooks. However, you can double-check for library copies of any class texts in the Duke University Libraries catalog (http://catalog.duke.edu).
- Where can I find old exams for my class? This is one of our most common questions – so common, in fact, that it is now posted on the Library’s home page. “Exams on File” (http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/exams.html) is an archive of past finals for selected classes. The username and password is available at the Reference Desk. Please note that some professors do not wish to be included in this archive, so there may not be an exam on file for your class.
The remainder of this issue will focus on resources, both print and electronic, to help you navigate your classes.
Get to Know
The Unclassified Collection
Everyone knows that it can be easy to become lost in the lower floors of the library (although printed maps are available on Level 3 for the perpetually disoriented). If you have ever wandered through the maze of compact shelving on Level 1, you may have noticed a mysterious section of shelves labeled “Unclassified”. History buffs may wish to spend some time exploring the Unclassified Collection, which contains interesting legal miscellanea such as the first editions of American Jurisprudence and Corpus Juris (now known as CJS), various court reporters, and a compilation of historical government publications titled “Miscellaneous Documents”.
The most interesting series featured in the Unclassified Collection, however, is labeled simply “Pamphlets”. The Pamphlets consist of various documents which the Library owned in paperback and later bound together to save shelf space. The arrangement was purely random; for example, Pamphlet volume 37 contains documents ranging from a 1934 guide to the bankruptcy law, to a statistical report on youth crime in New York City, to the 1921 last will and testament of philanthropist Cornelia Warren. This is one part of the Library where it can be fun to get lost.
Web Sites and Blogs
Declassified Documents
The Library’s Unclassified Collection should not be confused with declassified materials, or previously secret government publications which have been made public. Declassified documents made headlines at the end of last year, when it was announced that hundreds of millions of pages would be declassified effective December 31, 2006.
- This news results from Executive Order 12958 (http://www.epic.org/open_gov/eo_12958.pdf), which President Clinton signed in 1995. The order created a uniform system for declassifying documents more than 25 years old. After a decade of extensions, due to agency concerns about document backlog, the materials are finally being made public. Although all of the materials are now officially “declassified”, it will take months for them to be processed (see “The Figures” below).
- Until documents are scanned onto agency Web sites, curious readers will have to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The government publishes a biannual guide, Your Right to Federal Records (http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/fed_prog/foia/foia.htm), which details the history of the Act and describes how to use it. This guide was last updated in May 2006.
- Individual federal agencies also maintain pages with specific procedures for requesting their documents. The U.S. Department of Justice maintains a page of links to Other Federal Departments’ FOIA Web Sites (http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/other_age.htm), as part of its own FOIA section.
- As documents become available, many of them will end up archived on other Web sites, such as the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1409), or the National Security Archive maintained by George Washington University (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/).
The Figures
Declassification, By the Numbers
- 270,000,000: pages of secret FBI documents which have been “automatically declassified” under Executive Order 12958
- 400,000,000: current processing backlog, in pages, at the National Archives and Records Administration
- 13.53: median number of days to process a “simple” FOIA request (“complex” requests averaged 252.44 in 2005)
- 9: possible reasons for an agency to withhold a requested document under FOIA
[Sources: Slashdot.org; the National Archives; Commondreams.org]
Research Tip
Start Classwork With Library Guides
Taking an advanced legal topic this semester? Be sure to check the list of available Research Guides (http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/research_guide.html) for a helpful overview of the major publications and electronic resources. Each research guide is written by a Duke Law reference librarian, and available topics range from the United Nations, Federal Taxation, Intellectual Property, and much more. Guides are revised on an ongoing basis.
Paper copies of most library research guides are also kept behind the Reference Desk on Level 3.
Library News
Temporary Reference Service Changes
As DULL News reported in the previous issue, librarian Joy Hanson left Duke Law in December to begin a position at the U.S. Supreme Court Library. Until our new librarian arrives in March, the evening reference desk hours this semester will be altered slightly. For the months of January and February, reference librarians will be available at the following times:
Sunday 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Mon – Wed 8 a.m. – 9 p.m.
Thu – Fri 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thursday evening reference will resume on March 8. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The chat reference service remains available at all hours the desk is staffed. Simply send an instant message to dukelawreference. The service is available with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Chat. Remember that you can also e-mail the Reference Desk with your questions at ref@law.duke.edu.
Research Stumper
Question: Where in the Library could you look up the spelling of the phrase facie lateralis digiti manus before submitting your brief to the court?
Answer will appear in next month’s issue.
Answer to last issue’s question: In the last issue of DULL News, we asked: “Where in the Library can you find a copy of the Puerto Rican constitution? Note that there are several possible sources.”
Sure, you can Google your heart out, and locate what looks like the constitution of Puerto Rico on Wikipedia and other Web sites. But is it the official text? Does it include any later amendments? The Law Library has a few more reputable sources, but it might take a bit of digging to find them.
Because of Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. commonwealth, it does not have an entry in Reynolds & Flores’ Foreign Law Guide, which is an excellent resource for locating references to published constitutions of other countries. Puerto Rico is similarly excluded from both Constitutions of the Countries of the World (Ref. K3157.A2 B53) and Constitutions of Dependencies and Territories (Ref. K3157.E5 C65), two loose-leaf collections which reprint other countries’ constitutions.
Locating the text of a commonwealth constitution generally requires the same approach as locating the constitution of an individual U.S. state. State codes often include the text of that state’s constitution, and the Laws of Puerto Rico Annotated (KGV40 1954; online in Lexis and Westlaw) also do this. In addition, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories are included in the loose-leaf compilation Constitutions of the United States: National and State (Ref. KF4530 .C65 1974). Finally, the Puerto Rican constitution has been published as a separate text, and can be located in the Duke Libraries Catalog with a title keyword search for constitution and puerto rico. The Law Library’s copy can be found at the call number KGV2914 1952 .A2 1964. Of course, you would likely want to look at one of the more frequently-updated sources, in case of any subsequent amendments.
D.U.L.L. Question of the Month
Question: Using what you have learned from this month’s issue of DULL News, which source could help you locate the text of the constitution of England?
- Foreign Law Guide
- Constitutions of the Countries of the World
- Both A and B
- Neither A nor B.
Answer: D. This question may have seemed a little too easy, since sources A and B were just discussed in the section above. But if you began with the English Law Research Guide (http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/researchguides/english.html), as was recommended in the Research Tip, you would see a note at the top which reminds you that “There is no written English constitution.”
Comments to Jennifer L. Behrens.
