The library will be holding two orientation training sessions for new faculty research assistants.  In the orientation, RAs will learn about library services and policies and will gain an introduction to our databases and to best research practices.

The sessions will be:

• Thursday, May 30, 2013, from 11 am to noon
• Wednesday, June 5, 2013, from 11 am to noon

 All sessions will be held in EB Williams Library Room 520.

Research assistants should RSVP to Morgan Stoddard (mms237@law.georgetown.edu) and indicate which session they would like to attend.

Beginning this month, Bloomberg Law will hold training sessions open to all students, staff, and faculty here at Georgetown Law.

Also called “BLaw” for short, Bloomberg Law is a comprehensive online research platform that includes primary legal materials, detailed business information, helpful practitioner tools, and timely news and current awareness resources. On BLaw, you can search across databases for federal and state court opinions, dockets, statutes, and regulations, learn about areas of law in many major treatises, law reviews and other secondary sources, access real-life examples of litigation forms and transactional documents, and perform career research through company and firm news and people profiles.

If you haven’t already, visit http://about.bloomberglaw.com/lawschools to activate your free account and learn more. Also be sure to sign up for on-campus Bloomberg Law Introductory Training by clicking on any session below. If you have questions, please email bloomberglaw@law.georgetown.edu or contact a reference librarian.

Thursday, February 21:
11:30am-12:20pm (Williams CLC)
3:30pm-4:20pm (Williams CLC)
8:00pm-8:50pm (Williams CLC)

Friday, February 22:
10:00am-10:50am (Williams CLC)
11:00am-11:50am (Williams CLC)
12:00pm-12:50pm (Williams CLC)

Monday, February 25:
9:30am-10:20am (Williams CLC)
11:30am-12:20pm (Williams CLC)
3:30pm-4:20pm (Williams CLC)

Tuesday, February 26:
11:30am-12:20pm (Williams CLC)
3:30pm-4:20pm (Williams CLC)
8:00pm-8:50pm (Williams CLC)

On Tuesday, February 12 at 5 pm in the Williams Library CLC, Ben Snipes of Bloomberg Law will demonstrate the Bloomberg Law Tax Practice Center. This new feature of Bloomberg Law provides ready access to primary tax legal materials, Tax Court decisions and dockets, transactional forms and agreements, and secondary legal materials including the BNA Tax Management Portfolios and Practicing Law Institute treatises.

All interested students and faculty are invited to attend. If you have any questions, please contact Jason Zarin. Students and faculty interested in requesting an account on Bloomberg Law may obtain one by following the instructions available in the Library's catalog.

During this past summer, Georgetown Law reference librarians worked in tandem with the electronic services librarian to update the library’s Legal Research & Writing tutorials. The LRW tutorials, which are designed for first-year students, focus on:

• Statutory Research
• Case Law Research
• Secondary Sources Research
• Administrative Law Research

It’s also believed that upper-level students and non-U.S. trained LLM students will find these tutorials a useful review of the basics of legal research.

The newly released tutorials are found on the library’s website as embedded HTML5 videos that can be viewed by students on any computer or mobile device. Narration was also added to the tutorials, broadening their appeal to auditory, as well as visual learners.

As Lexis & Westlaw continue to introduce new research platforms, librarians worked to incorporate both WestlawNext and Lexis Advance demonstrations throughout the tutorials to familiarize students with the design of these new legal research platforms.

The LRW tutorials have been well received by students, faculty and fellow librarians. They have set a new standard for legal research tutorials. Librarians from other law schools have contacted the Georgetown Law Library reference department requesting advice on how to incorporate tools such as these in their law school community.

Would you like to improve your online legal research skills? The Library is offering two classes for any interested LLM or JD students. These are the same classes we provide to the first-year JD students in the Legal Research and Writing classes.  In the “Terms and Connectors” class you will learn the nuances of terms and connectors (Boolean) searching and how to execute an effective search on WestlawNext and Lexis Advance. In the “Research Strategies” class students will learn different research strategies and how to formulate and follow a research plan.

To sign up for a class, please click on a date and time below or visit our Legal Research Classes page.  Each class is offered 3 times to accommodate schedules. The sessions are held in the Williams Library CLC (Computer Learning Center) and last 55 minutes. If you have any questions, please contact the Reference Desk.

Terms and Connectors Searching Class:
• Wednesday Oct. 24, 5:00pm
• Friday Oct. 26, 10:00am
• Friday Oct. 26, 12:00pm

Research Strategies Class:
• Wednesday Nov. 7, 5:00pm
• Friday Nov. 9, 10:00am
• Friday Nov. 9, 12:00pm