Author Archives: lawlibrarian

Welcome to Week One!

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Hello, and if you’re a new student joining us for the 2023/24 academic year we look forward to meeting you in the Law Library soon!

We are Anna Richards and SarahLouise McDonald, and we are your Law Librarians. Anna works the first half of the week, SarahLouise the second, and you can reach us both by email on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk at any time.

Photos of Anna and SarahLouise (L-R). The background is formed of a white space with black and blue geometric shapes behind the photos.

You may have already met us at one of the several induction sessions we’ve been running over the past week or two. If you missed them you can find recordings on the Law Librarian Media Hopper Channel:

The slides for each session are added as ‘attachments’ to the videos above. Please note that captions are automatically generated and we’ll endeavour to get them corrected over the coming month.

One session which wasn’t recorded was the Diploma Welcome to the Library session which was delivered face-to-face. If you’re a Diploma student you should already have access to the slides via your Learn pages, but if not you can find them here: Law – Diploma induction 2023.

If you’re looking for information on using the physical library, we recommend you check out the Law Library webpages and take a look at our Virtual Orientation Guide (Microsoft Sway document – other formats are available by request). We hope that you’ll get in touch with either ourselves or our colleagues on the library helpdesk by contacting EdHelp if you have any queries. See you in the library!

New ebooks: Hart Law 2023 collection

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Welcome to the Law School to all our new students and welcome back to our returning students! You’ll be glad to know that the library has expanded it’s ebook collection ahead of the new academic year and we now have access to Hart’s 2023 Law collection.

Some highlights include:

If you have suggestions for books you’d like us to purchase for the library, students can use the Student Request A Book (RAB) service. Staff members can follow the procedure on the Library Support intranet page.

New trial: Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law

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Image showing Oxford University press logo. Text reads Introducing the Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law: new to Oxford University Press.

You may be interested to know about a trial we have currently running for the Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law. From the publishers’ website:

A year ago, the Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law (OEEUL) was launched as a new product within the Oxford Public International Law (OPIL) family. Providing high-level analysis of European Union law by specialized distinguished contributors, OEEUL articles define, explain, and analyze EU law’s key legal concepts in an accessible yet profound way. It is a source of great pride for the OEEUL team that in its first year, the encyclopedia has grown from the initial 100 entries to its current 131 articles – with the team dedicated to increasing this content by tenfold in the coming years to eventually cover the entire EU legal order.

This database is offered via the Oxford Public International Law (OPIL) platform, where we also subscribe to the Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law, and the Oxford Reports on International Law; both key resources for research and study.

The trial for the Oxford Encyclopedia of EU Law runs from 16th August to 16th October 2023, and the databases can be accessed via the E-resources trials page. Please have a look at the content provided and let us know what you think using the Trial feedback form. All comments will help us decide whether to subscribe to this resource going forward.

New Resource: Law Library of Congress Reports (HeinOnline)

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Image of the Law Library of Congress, exterior. A long white brick building with tall recesses indicating windows is shown on a sunny day. The avenue outside the building is lined with trees.

Recently HeinOnline has added the Law Library of Congress Reports to its online databases offerings. From Hein’s website:

The Law Library of Congress was established in 1832 as a separate department of the Library of Congress. Its mission is to provide authoritative legal research, reference and instruction services, and access to an unrivaled collection of U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law. To accomplish this mission, the Law Library has assembled a staff of experienced foreign and U.S. trained legal specialists and law librarians, and has amassed the world’s largest collection of law books and other legal resources from all countries, now comprising more than 2.9 million items, including one of the world’s best rare law book collections and the most complete collection of foreign legal gazettes in the U.S.

The Law Library produces reports on foreign, comparative, and international law in response to requests from Members of Congress, Congressional staff and committees, the federal courts, executive branch agencies, and others.

This database includes more than 3,500 reports from the Law Library of Congress on foreign, comparative, and international law—all in one easy-to-navigate collection. HeinOnline offer a helpful LibGuide which can help you explore the content further, and you can access the database itself via the Library Databases pages.

New resource: Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge

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In January the School of Law was fortunate to host the book launch event for Professor Folúkẹ́ Adébísí’s Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility. 

Cover image of the book Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge. The book title and author information is located in a blue box on the centre-left of the cover. Behind is an image of cracked earth meeting green branches and foliage which are growing from the right edge of the cover.

From the publisher:

The law is heavily implicated in creating, maintaining, and reproducing racialised hierarchies which bring about and preserve acute global disparities and injustices. This essential book provides an examination of the meanings of decolonisation and explores how this examination can inform teaching, researching, and practising of law.

It explores the ways in which the foundations of law are entangled in colonial thought and in its [re]production of ideas of commodification of bodies and space-time. Thus, it is an exploration of the ways in which we can use theories and praxes of decolonisation to produce legal knowledge for flourishing futures.

This text is now available via DiscoverEd: Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility.

If you’re interested in requesting material like this that you think would be a valuable addition to the Law Library, you can complete the Request A Book (RAB) form. Alternatively if you’re interested in the library securing access to subscriptions or expensive items that you think would benefit teaching or research, contact us by email (law.librarian@ed.ac.uk) to discuss your idea!

Law Library summer opening & support

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A sunrise shows over the horizon, dappling through the branches of the trees and over the grass of the Meadows in Edinburgh.

‘Sunrise, The Meadows, Edinburgh’ by Jeannette King via WikiCommons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Now that teaching and exams are officially over for the year you may be in the fortunate position of having a long summer ahead of you away from the University. If so, we hope you enjoy it!

For those of you still working or studying over the summer months rest assured that the Law Library is still open weekdays from 9am to 4.50pm. You can find more information about the Law Library and all our other campus libraries on the library opening hours webpage.

If you’re an academic looking forward to planning your next semester’s teaching we’d like to remind you to get your Resource Lists submitted before next Monday (3rd July) to be guaranteed to have your list processed and purchases made before we resume in September. Any lists received after this date will still be processed, but in the order received (so sooner is better).

You may be pleased to hear that your Academic Support Librarian team will also be available throughout the summer! Both Anna and SarahLouise can be contacted by email at any time, so please don’t be shy about getting in touch: law.librarian@ed.ac.uk

Would you like to be the next LexisNexis Student Associate?

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Each year our major databases recruit for a new Student Associate to fill the role of training and peer support. LexisNexis have announced they are currently looking for a student at the University of Edinburgh to fill this position for the 2023/24 academic year. Please see the attached flyer for more information:

LexisNexis Student Associate Job Advert

The closing date for applications is 17th July, applications can be submitted in the form of CVs at the following link: https://bit.ly/3IyxXDO 

Good luck!

 

New trial to Oxford Historical Treaties

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Oxford Historical Treaties (OHT) is the premier resource for historical treaty research and home to the full text of The Consolidated Treaty Series, the only comprehensive collection of treaties of all nations concluded from 1648 through 1919. Available via the Oxford Public International Law platform, OHT is cross-searchable with Oxford’s leading public international law resources and benefits from a modern, intuitive interface and sophisticated functionality.  

Access Oxford Historical Treaties 

The trial runs until 16 June 2023. Please provide any feedback on this trial via our feedback form: 

Complete the trial feedback form 

Hello from your new (part-time) Law Librarian

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Hi! My name is Anna and I am a new Academic Support Librarian supporting Law. SarahLouise and I are job-sharing – I take the start of the week and SarahLouise the latter but you don’t need to remember that. Just email us at law.librarian@ed.ac.uk if you have any questions.  

I am a third-generation librarian (!) and I moved here from De Montfort University in Leicester. Professionally, I am interested in the critical aspects of information literacy, particularly issues of bias and source reliability. I am also interested in how AI will impact all aspects of information literacy. Personally, I love walking and photography and can’t wait to explore all the beautiful Scottish landscapes.  

I look forward to working with you all in the coming months.

 

Bloomsbury Professional Ebooks: formerly on LexisLibrary

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We want to alert students to a change we’re dealing with regarding Bloomsbury Professional ebooks which were formerly offered on the LexisLibrary platform.. Unfortunately going forward these will no longer be available on this database, and we’re working on access to them via Bloomsbury’s own platform instead.

The courses affected are mainly Property, Evidence, Criminal, Employment, and Contract Law, and the book titles are as follows:

  • Walker & Walker: The Law of Evidence in Scotland
  • A fingertip guide to Scots Criminal law
  •  Commercial Leases
  • McDonald’s Conveyancing Manual
  • Conveyancing Practice in Scotland
  • Property Trusts and Succession
  • Mental Health, Incapacity and the Law in Scotland
  • Scottish Law of Leases
  • Scots Criminal Law
  • Employment Law in Scotland
  • Contract Law in Scotland
  • Missives
  • Scottish Planning Law
  • Scottish Older Client Law Service
  • Drafting Wills in Scotland
  • International Sucession Laws
  • Thomson’s Delictual Liability
  • Tolley’s Estate Planning
  • Tolley’s Inheritance Tax
  • Tolley’s Company Law Handbook
  • Style Writs in the Sheriff Court

While negotiations are ongoing with Bloomsbury (and until the end of May 2023) we’ll be able to access all of these titles using a trial they’ve given us to their own platform, providing students from 2022/23 access through the end of Semester Two exams. The procedure for finding these books is as follows:

  1. Visit the EResources Trials page
  2. Click on ‘Bloomsbury Professional Scots Law Titles’
  3. You will be prompted to log in with your usual username and password.
  4. You’ll arrive at a page that will give you the username and password to use on the Bloomsbury site
  5. Click the link to Bloomsbury (it helps to do this in a new tab or window so you can copy the log in details), then enter the username and password to log in.
  6. Use the navigation on the left hand side to access the title of the book you need.

This information has been added to the DiscoverEd records for these books, and I will also be circulating it via newsletters, blogs and other communication channels. Please do share this information with your classmates to assist them with their study or research if they require access to these books.

If you have any issues accessing these items please email us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.