Category Archives: Books

LGBT+ History Month: LGBT+ legal resources

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Photo shows the Progress Pride flag flying against a grey sky background with treetops in the distance.

It’s LGBT+ History Month in February so we wanted to highlight some resources in our collection that are relevant to anyone looking at the history of LGBT+ rights.

We recently purchased Justice After Stonewall: LGBT Life Between Challenge and Change, a new title published in January 2023 and edited by the School of Law’s own Dr Paul Behrens, along with co-editor Sean Becker. From the abstract:

Justice After Stonewall is an interdisciplinary analysis of challenges and progress experienced by the LGBT community since the Stonewall riots in 1969. […] This book breaks new ground by bringing together experts from politics, sociology, law, education, language, medicine and religion to discuss fields as diverse as same-sex marriage, transgender students, the LGBT movement in Uganda and LGBT migrants in the Arabian Peninsula, conversion ‘therapy’, and approaches to LGBT matters in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What emerges is a rich tapestry of LGBT life today and its consideration from numerous perspectives.

Based on thorough research, this book is an ideal text for students and scholars exploring LGBT matters. At the same time, its engaging style makes it a particularly valuable resource for anyone with an interest in LGBT matters and their reception in today’s world.

Did you know that legal database HeinOnline also have a database on LGBTQ+ Rights? From the title page:

This collection charts the gay rights movement in America, showing the civil rights codified into law in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the inequalities that still exist today. All titles in this collection have been assigned one or more title-level subjects relating to their scope, and are further divided into six subcollections, whose areas of focus constitute Marriage and Family, Employment Discrimination, Military Service, AIDS and Health Care, and Public Spaces and Accommodations. A separate subcollection, Historical Attitudes and Analysis, presents books, pamphlets, reports, and more from the 18th century through the mid-20th century. Content in this subcollection includes accounts of individuals criminally tried for their sexuality to attempts to find a medical cause for homosexuality.

This collection is rounded out by a curated list of Scholarly Articles selected by Hein editors, as well as a Bibliography of titles to launch your research outside of HeinOnline. Finally, an interactive timeline, incorporating documents from HeinOnline with other media from around the internet, plots out an overview of LGBTQ rights in America from 1950 to the present day, helping to demonstrate the relevancy of the content within the database to the real-world events to which they are connected.

If you are interested in finding out more scholarly resources for LGBT+ research you may be interested in our Gender and Sexuality Studies Subject Guide, which has been developed by the Librarian team along with one of our former EDI interns. The guide is separated into pages for Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Student Support, as we hoped to provide resources both for those looking to find academic resources and seeking local communities across the University of Edinburgh. While this guide is not law-specific it may provide resources for further reading to support the issues faced when dealing with LGBT+ rights in a legal setting.

As ever if you would like to discuss support for your research please contact us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk to make an appointment to discuss your topic and how we can help.

Getting resources not available in the Law Library Collections

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Image of books stacked on a small table in the foreground on the mezzanine of the Law Library, looking out across a room full of students studying in the Senate Room (out of focus).

Books stacked on a table on the Law Library mezzanine. Photo by Sam Stills, copyright University of Edinburgh.

We often get asked by students how they get access to a particular item that we do not have in the Law Library collection. So here are a few ideas about how and where to get access!

Online or in print?

Some items are available both online and in print, others are only available in one format. It is worthwhile searching to see if the item is available in another format.

It’s useful to check on the databases (especially Westlaw, Lexis and HeinOnline) to see if we have online access. Although some material from these databases is added to DiscoverEd- not everything is!

Some print copies of key texts are in other libraries across the university (as well as the law library) so it may be that the item you want is available in another location.

  • For items outside the central area you can place a hold and collect them centrally.
  • For items held in the central area you need to visit the holding library and borrow from there.

We do not add all print journal article details to DiscoverEd, so if you cannot find the article online then it’s worthwhile looking to see if we hold the print journal.

Scan and Deliver

If you cannot come on to campus (you are studying online or perhaps self-isolating) then you can request a scan of a book chapter or journal article be emailed to you. There are limits (due to copyright law and if it has been requested previously) but the service has been well used during lockdown periods.

The library does not post out books to users, so if you want a full print book you would need to come in and borrow the item. Full detail of the service are at:

Interlibrary loans

Interlibrary loans (ILLs) are where you request an item and we see if we can borrow it on your behalf from a partner library. On campus students can request journal articles and book chapter scans and also print books (which will be collectable from a campus library). Online students can request book chapter scans and journal articles.

For journal articles and book chapters we request a scan and send it via email. There is a limit per academic year about how many you can request, but usually the amount is sufficient. The library does not post out books to users. Full detail are at:

Borrowing locally from another library

If you are living in/near Edinburgh then joining the National Library of Scotland might be an option. The National Library has access to the Advocates Library collection, which is an extensive legal collection.  Full details of how to join are at:

Requesting a purchase for the library

Students can request that the Library purchases an book for research or study. The Request a Book scheme (RaB) has been running for several years and the majority of the items requested have been purchased. Library staff may get back in touch with questions or suggestions depending on the item and the cost, but more often than not items are purchased. Full details are at:

If there is a journal that you think the library should get then contact us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk to chat it over.

More details on each of these services and more are available on the Library webpages:

New resources: Cambridge University Press Etextbooks

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We like to keep our staff and students updated on any new items we have access to in the library. This month we bring news of several ebooks which have been added to our collection from Cambridge University Press:

Cover of Contract Law book    Cover of Foundations of taxation law book   Cover of Public international law book   

If you’d like to explore our collection further you can use DiscoverEd to search for books that interest you. A guide to using DiscoverEd can be found here, or alternatively there’s a video on searching here.

If we don’t have what you’re looking for, you could request new materials for our library using the Student Request A Book (RAB) form here, or if you are a member of staff you can use the CAHSS form to request materials for your research.

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion resources in Law

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This month the Academic Support Librarian team are highlighting resources linked to Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in the areas of Law and Social and Political Science. You may be aware that Justice Week 2022 is nearly upon us (28th February to 4th March), and we thought this would be an excellent time to shine a light on a number of legal materials which are free to access, and therefore help to make the understanding of law more accessible to a greater number of people. We list several useful resources on the Law subject guide under ‘More Legal Resources’, including:

  • Free legal dictionaries
  • Links to Scottish, UK and European court websites
  • Links to legal regulatory and advisory bodies
  • Links to resources that offer free case details e.g. BAILII
  • Human Rights – free databases from UN and IJRC

The University subscribes to even more databases which offer staff and students additional access to support their study and research. You can find these by visiting our Law Databases page:

  • Jutastat – containing legal content from Africa
  • Slavery and the Law – a collection of petitions on race, slavery and free blacks submitted to American state legislatures and county courthouses 1775-1867
  • China Law Info– also known as Beida fabao
  • Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800- 1926 – the world’s most comprehensive full-text collection of British Commonwealth and American legal treatises from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
  • Proquest Law Sources via the History Vault Platform – including African American Police League Records, 1961-1988, Law and Society since the Civil War

You may also be interested in our short video (9 minutes) which demonstrates how to access international legal resources via library services online.:

Thumbnail of the opening slide of the 'Finding International Legal resources via the University Library' presentation video

Video: Finding International Legal resources via the University Library

As well as databases we have some great books and eBooks including:

We hope this will inspire you to explore the library’s collections further when considering Equity, Diversity and Inclusion themes – so now over to you to take a look!

New resources: The Law and Practice of International Finance

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You may be interested in some of the recent items we’ve purchased for use by students and staff in the School.

Photograph of Philip R Wood, author of the series. He is an elderly white man wearing a black suit with white shirt and yellow tie. The background is white.

Philip R Wood QC. Author of Law and Practice of International Finance series.

The Law and Practice of International Finance series is your definitive guide to international finance. It considers the full range of topics across nine volumes, setting out the law and practice of trading assets on the international markets. This essential work, by one of the leading finance specialists of a generation, provides a simple, unified and distilled account of the whole topic. It sets out complex products in simple terms, alongside providing practical guidance on the structuring of deals and agreements, negotiating points and sample precedents. Over 321 jurisdictions are surveyed, providing the broadest possible perspective on the international financial markets.

While we have previously had access to some editions of these individual titles, we now hold the complete series with the most up to date editions of each text in both print and ebook:

  • Volume 1: Principles of International Insolvency (3rd edn)
  • Volume 2: International Insolvency: Jurisdictions of the World 
  • Volume 3: Comparative Law of Security Interests and Title Finance (3rd edn) 
  • Volume 4: Security Interests and Title Finance: Jurisdictions of the World 
  • Volume 5: International Loans, Bonds, Guarantees and Legal Opinions (3rd edn) 
  • Volume 6: Set-off and Netting, Derivatives and Clearing Systems (3rd edn) 
  • Volume 7: Project finance, Securitisations and Subordinated Debt (3rd edn) 
  • Volume 8: Conflict of Laws and International Finance (2nd edn)
  • Volume 9: Regulation of International Finance (2nd edn) 

For access to the print copies of these texts, please visit DiscoverEd to find out more about their location in the Law Library. These titles are also available as ebooks on Westlaw Books, which you can access via Westlaw UK.

For more information about the titles included in this series, visit the Sweet & Maxwell publisher website, which provides a synopsis of the contents of each volume.

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 resources: Elgar 2021 ebooks

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You may be interested in some of the exciting new ebook packages we’ve purchased recently for use by students and staff in the School.

Edward Elgar Publishing are a well-respected publisher who produce excellent books, textbooks and journals in many subject areas. We often purchase their annual Law ebook package, and this year is no different. Some highlights include:

Book cover for EU Copyright LawBook cover for Comparative Tort LawBook cover for Poverty and Human Rights

For more information about the books included in the Law 2021 package, visit the Elgar Online website, or search DiscoverEd for ‘Edward Elgar’.

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. 

Session Cases: Celebrating 200 years of Scotland’s prestigious law report series

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A row of leather bound books fills the frame from left to right. The title 'Session Cases' and the year are embossed on the spines. The leather is blonde and each spine has a red and black square.

Session Cases volumes 1971-1982, image courtesy of the Supreme Court Library team, SCTS.

This year the Scottish Council of Law Reporting celebrates 200 years of publishing Session Cases, Scotland’s most authoritative law report series. From the SCLR website:

The Session Cases law report series contains all the key appellate decisions, civil and criminal, from the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary in Scotland together with selected cases decided at first instance.

Also included in Session Cases are all decisions, as issued, on Scottish appeals to the House of Lords and to the Privy Council. All judgments are reported in full.

The judges who gave opinions (judgments) in each case have the opportunity to review the report before it is published – this gives Session Cases its unsurpassed authority in Scottish courts.

The first case ever published in Session Cases was Rev. Wm. Strang v Wm. McIntosh (1821) 1 S.5, dated 12 May 1821. You can access a copy of this case via our subscription databases Westlaw or Lexis Library UK, via the Law Databases page. If you’re not familiar with using these databases we have a recording of a session on Using Legal Databases available here (22 mins) There’s more information about SC and other law reports available via our subscription services on the Law Subject Guide ‘Law Reports’ page.

To mark this anniversary the Scottish Council of Law Reporting is running a poll to determine readers’ top three cases featured in Session Cases. They don’t have to be the most important cases, legally, but may be just a quirky case or one that has caught your interest. You can vote for your cases here: SurveyLegend Survey.

Another way SCLR marked this milestone was by creating a postgraduate research scholarship available to students in Scottish institutions studying Scots Law. The inaugural recipient of this award was Shona Warwick, a PhD candidate at Edinburgh. The scholarship will contribute to her tuition and living costs as she completes her PhD thesis on Leases and Licences in Scotland. From the SCLR headlines page describing Shona’s research:

For commercial landlords and tenants in Scotland, the common law, rather than legislation, is the source of most rules. Yet, despite its widespread practical importance, a lack of research has left the common law regarding leases and licences to occupy riddled with uncertainty. Through a historical study, this research sheds light for the first time on some of the most fundamental unanswered questions: it evaluates which occupancy agreements can be validly created, and how their formation requirements differ.

The announcement of Shona’s success featured in the Scottish Legal News bulletin in September last year. Shona is also the winner of one of the two Scottish Universities Law Institute (SULI) Scholarships. Congratulations Shona!

Three new things: Dissertations

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It’s around the time where many of our students will be planning and beginning the research for their dissertations. If you’re at the start of this journey and looking for a bit of help we’ve got three new things which we hope will help you on your way.

1: Llm Dissertation : How to Maximise Marks for Your Practice Focused Dissertation by Suzanne Reece.

Book cover, which features an orange background and a student sitting at a desk facing away from the viewer. Visible on the desk are a laptop and many open books, and there are number hovering around the student's head, implying they are surrounded by research data.

This book is brand new to the library and while it is focused on specifically LLM dissertations, it contains useful information about how to plan for any large research project in Law. Chapters include helping choose your topic, planning and timing, and #SurvivalTips. Reece identifies top tips and common mistakes in students’ work and suggests activities to help you explore your research thoroughly. As such it’s more of a handbook than a set of rules to follow, but we think it will help answer many of the frequently asked questions that students have early in the process.

We have this ebook on an unlimited user license, which means that there’s no waiting and no queue to take it out. Find access information via the DiscoverEd record for this item.

2: Dissertation Festival (Guide and Festival Bag)

You may have seen that Library Services ran our second Dissertation Festival for the year in March 2021. While the festival events don’t exactly line up with Law Dissertation timetable, the wonderful thing about hosting the festival online is that we can keep the resources around for you to access just when you need them most!

  • Are you looking for some inspiration for which of the library collections can help you with your research?
  • Do you need some support in constructing your search strategy, or managing your results?
  • Would you like some tips from students who’ve previously completed their dissertation work?

The Dissertation Festival subject guide has all this and much more available with the click of a button! Recordings are available for our live sessions and slides have been added.  Plus you can access my favourite part, the festival tote bag (not a real bag) via the link on the front page. We can’t furnish you with free pens and post-its for the next academic year, but we do have an image of a penguin and a bagpiper from our collection that you can use as your Zoom background…

3: A twitter thread on #EdLitSearchTips

Our Academic Support Librarian colleagues have been compiling a list of tips that will help you get started with literature searching. Although you may have used DiscoverEd or our Library Databases to find materials for your assignments before, click through to this series of tweets to get advice from information professionals whose business it is to help you find information!

A screen capture of a tweet which features a black and white image of the corner of a laptop, a mug containing many pens and other stationery, and another mug. The text in the tweet reads "The librarians often get asked for advice on literature searching - so over the next few weeks we will be tweeting some hints and tips! So look out for our #EdLitSearchTips".

Click this image to find a list of #EdLitSearchTips

If you’re struggling to get started with your research, why not arrange a one-to-one with one of the Law Librarians to discuss your research question and which direction you’d like to go? We can help suggest resources or even just provide advice on the best way to go about searching. Look out for the next available ‘Literature search clinic’ appointment using the MyEd Booking System and find the option for ‘Law’. Further details on how to book can be found on this earlier post on our blog, or just email law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.

Click & Collect comes to the Law Library

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The Law Library now is part of the Click & Collect Service!

The Click & Collect service has been expanding since it’s launch in Feb 2021. As of 29th March 2021 staff and students are able to place Click & Collect requests for print material from the Law Library collections.

The Law Library resources are in addition to those already available from the Main Library, New College Library, ECA Library and University Collections Facilities. Items based at other site libraries are not yet available for Click & Collect.

To order a book collection using the service:

  • Place your request through DiscoverEd.
  • You can order up 3 Click & Collect items at any one time. The maximum number of requests covers your total current Click & Collect requests.
  • All items requested should be collected from the Main Library as the Law Library remains closed.
  • Staff will undertake retrievals of items requested from the Law Library once a week (Tuesdays). So depending on when you place your request it may mean that it may take over a week for you to receive an email notification that your requested item is available for collection.
  • Once you have received an email notification that your requested Law Library item is available you should make a booking to collect your item from the Main Library.

Full details of the service are available on the main Library Click and Collect Service webpages:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/library-services-update-2020-21/click-and-collect

Don’t forget that the Scan & Deliver Service is also available to you!

https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/using-library/request-resources/scan-and-deliver%20

 

New Resources

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A poster stating 'Edinburgh Everywhere: your library online' and depicting people busy with stacks of books surrounding a half-globe. Statistic about library services are shown in colourful circles are written across the middle of the page, echoing the half-circle shape of the globe.

Throughout the year the Law Librarians purchase new materials – sometimes following requests, and other times to ensure that new editions of established and key texts are available to staff and students. This part of our work has been especially busy this last year as learning and teaching has gone online!

Requests are received from students, staff and colleagues from across the Law School. Some are related to specific courses, but many are to support the research undertaken by staff and students.

We thought we would take this opportunity to let you know about a few of the new items we have recently ordered and received in:

This last item is a 13 volume set comprising of around 9000 pages, making it an incredibly helpful resource on the topic of the history of the Kurdish people. Having access to this material makes Edinburgh one of a select number of universities who give access to their students and staff to this unique resource.

Staff and students can place requests directly using the online forms available on the Library webpages.

If we cannot purchase the item (may be it is an older edition, out of stock, or not available in the online format you want) then we recommend you use the Interlibrary Loan Request Service which allows us to try to source access from other libraries or academic institutions.

If you would like us to consider a subscription, or you want to discuss your request further you can email us in the usual way using law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.

Happy reading!