Spotlight
Database Palooza
The Law Library is pleased to announce six new online legal and non-legal research databases. Among other uses, these databases are invaluable tools for searching for legislative history, treaties, rules and regulations, administrative decisions and government documents, law review articles, non-legal academic journal articles in a variety of disciplines, civil and criminal justice statistics, and much more.
These research databases come chock full of full-text images of original documents, advanced search features, intelligent indexing, and links-out to our other online full-text holdings. All of these quality research databases are available on-campus, at your office, at home, or even at the many free Portland hotspots (if you have a wireless device that allows for web browsing…). Find out more about off-campus access here.
Links to all of these databases are available at the Boley Law Library's Databases Indexes page. Here is a quick rundown of what we now have to offer. Be sure to contact a reference librarian for assistance or to find out more.
Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set (1817-1877) and American State Papers (1789-1838)
In a major acquisition of primary source material, we have purchased the Readex U.S. Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers digital libraries. The Serial Set contains the journals, documents and reports of the U.S. Congress since 1817, along with Executive Department publications. The American State Papers are a retrospective collection of similar materials from 1789. The digital Serial Set will in time contain a complete Serial Set collection (not available in print in any single library) covering the years 1817 - 1980. Currently available through 1877, releases of new material are provided each month.
In addition to providing digital images of every page of every Serial Set and American State Papers publication, this digital library includes all maps and illustrations in their original color. Neither our microfiche collection nor the Library of Congress makes them available in full-color, making these documents much more useful and easier to read.
The documents in these digital collections are, also for the first time, full-text searchable. Advanced searching is possible, with results provided in chronological order. Clicking on a document's title brings up the first page of the document, full citation information, and a table of contents with the pages containing results highlighted. Documents can be printed, downloaded, or emailed.
Importantly, access to the documents is also available by publication number, allowing easy access to full-text from LexisNexis Congressional's results (see below), or by subject. Unlike LexisNexis Congressional's indexing, subject terms have been created by human examination and indexing of each publication, something never done before. Relevant subject terms are assigned each document, and these terms can then be used to pull up all related documents. Be sure to check the ""full citation"" link of any found document and expand your search using the subjects.
LexisNexis Congressional: Historical Indexes 1789-1969
LexisNexis Congressional (formerly Congressional Universe) has long been the first stop for federal legislative history researchers. By combining the comprehensive CIS Index with full-text documents from LexisNexis, LexisNexis Congressional has made it easy to track down the legislative history of U.S. Congressional actions since 1970.
The new Historical Indexes, now available on the LexisNexis Congressional home page, provide access to Congressional Indexes from 1789-1969, along with Indexes to Unpublished Hearings (previously largely unavailable) through 1980. Searching is available by subject, title, witness, bill or document number, or by committee name. Use these indexes to find Congressional reports, documents, hearings and prints.
- Find the full-text in microfiche We have a complete collection of U.S. legislative history materials on microfiche. Just bring your citation to a reference librarian or pull the fiche from the cabinets in the Library Reference Room. Or,
- Find the full-textonline Use the Readex Serial Set & American State Papers, two new digital libraries recently purchased for student and faculty research.
New HeinOnline Digital Libraries: Federal Register, Legal Classics, Treaties, Opinions
HeinOnline is best known for its invaluable Law Journals Library, providing digital images of every page of the full run of hundreds of legal journals. This comprehensive coverage - far beyond what LexisNexis or Westlaw offer in terms of access to actual documents and depth of content - has been extended to these five new databases:
The Federal Register is the official publication for all rules, proposed rules, notices of federal agencies and organizations, and executive orders and other presidential documents. HeinOnline now has full coverage of the Federal Register from its 1936 inception to the present, updated each month, in its original format. An extraordinary resource.
Treaties and Agreements Library
"The world's most-comprehensive online collection of image-based U.S. treaties and other international agreements," HeinOnline's Treaties and Agreements Library contains more than 18,000 records of treaties and agreements which the U.S. has been a part of. Included are the actual page images of all published in-force and no longer in-force treaties, thousands of unpublished treaties, and the important Kavass indexing, allowing access by country, party, description, treaty number, subject and related agreements, in addition to HeinOnline's full-text searching.
The following publications are included in the Treaties and Agreements database:
- United States Treaties and Other International Agreements (UST) 1950 to present
- Treaties and Other International Acts Series (TIAS) 1945 to present, published here in slip form prior to inclusion in UST
- KAV Agreements 1950 to present, publishes treaties before they appear in either TIAS or UST
- International Legal Materials (ILM) 1962 to present. Includes texts of treaties and draft treaty proposals
- Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties 1902 to 1971
- Bevans, U.S. Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America 1776 to 1950 (13 volumes)
- Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements Between the United States and Other Powers 1776 to 1937 (4 volumes)
- Miller, Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America 1776 to 1863
- Treaties in Force (TIF) 1932 to 2004
- Guide to Treaties in Force 1982 to 2003
- Current Treaty Index 1982 to 1999
- A number of guides and treatises
Digital library containing hundreds of ""the greatest works ever written on the law."" From John Adams' Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1794) to Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833) to Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law (1942), the library provides every page of every title, along with full-text searching.
The first online database to provide an image-based, fully-searchable backfile of all the official U.S. Reports, preliminary print volumes and current slip opinions, which will remain in the collection even after publication in the official volumes.
Also included in the collection: Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 1 (1995) and two periodicals on the court, Supreme Court Economic Review and Supreme Court Review.
U.S. Attorney General Opinions
Full access to the Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States (1791-1982) and the Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice (1977-1996).
LLMC Digital
LLMC, a non-profit cooperative serving law libraries, owns the world's largest collection of legal literature and government documents in microform. The LLMC Digital library, now available to the Lewis && Clark Law School community, is in the process of putting that complete collection online.
The LLMC Digital collection is made up of a large number of libraries and publications. Check out the full title list for complete details. Highlights include:
- Full run of U.S. agency decisions, reports and opinions (over 75 different titles)
- Presidential messages && papers, Proclamations && Executive orders, Public Papers of the Presidents (1929 - 2001) and Inaugural addresses
- Legislative materials including the Statutes at Large, Early U.S. statutory compilations, Commission reports, and the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress (1774-1989)
- U.S. Supreme Court Reports, the Supreme Court Journal, The Federal Cases, Reports of courts of special jurisdiction, and other judicial materials
- State court reports
- U.S. Military reports and opinions, Military law periodicals, British && European military law treatises
- Common Law Abroad collection of legal materials
New titles and extended coverage of existing titles are added each month.
EBSCOhost Databases (journal articles)
Through special arrangement with the Watzek Library we are pleased to be able to provide access to a collection of over 25 journal databases, many with full text, that should prove invaluable for interdisciplinary research.
Along with the Legal Collection of 250 law journals (1965 - present), the law school community now has access to Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, Newspaper Source, and a number of other specialized EBSCOhost journal databases in the fields of health, communication, computers, education, military and government affairs, religion and the social sciences.
View all the EBSCOHost databases now available to the Lewis & Clark community.
TRACFed Data Warehouse
TRACfed provides dynamic access to federal criminal justice and court data. Subjects covered include criminal, civil and administrative enforcement data; case load and performance statistics for U.S. District Court judges and Assistant U.S. Attorneys; and information on administrative staffing, federal expenditures and contextual data.
TRACFed is produced by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) out of Syracuse University. TRAC is an independent, nonpartisan data gathering, research and distribution organization dedicated to providing comprehensive information about federal staffing, spending and enforcement.
