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Step One: Don’t Panic (A guide to legal research for non-law students)

[The following post was written by Christine Anne George, faculty services and reference librarian at the Charles B. Sears Law Library.]

There’s no way to sugar-coat it—legal research can be scary. (Even law students will back me up on that one.) Even if you’ve never stepped foot in the Law Library, follow the steps below to get a jump on your research.

Step One: See blog post title

Step Two: Consider your Topic

As with any other subject, if your legal research topic is too broad, your results are going to overwhelm you. Interested in the First Amendment? Prepare to be buried. It’s the equivalent of saying that you want to research World War II. If possible, try to narrow down your topic with what you know. Don’t know what you know? Not a problem…

Step Three: Double Check the Assignment Details

Your professor may have given you a couple of instructions to narrow down your search. Reread the assignment instructions and look to see if there’s any mention of:

Case Law or Statutes: In the legalverse, case law and statutes are our primary sources. If you need to find case law, that means you’re looking for opinions that were issued from courts. If you need to find a statute, that means you need to find the law that came from the legislature. Both case law and statutes are explained through secondary sources such as treatises (books that explain a particular area of law in depth), legal encyclopedias (think the legalverse’s answer to Wikipedia), and law review articles.
Jurisdiction: The American legal system is complicated. There are a lot of different courts and a variety of different legislatures. But if you know where the law you’re interested in came from, that can help narrow your search. Did your professor mention the Supreme Court of the United States? Or that you only need to be concerned with New York law? Those are ways to cut down the results.
Parties: Think about the people affected by the law you’re researching. Is there a particular group that you’re going to be writing about? Students? Teachers? Prisoners? If you know that you are trying to find something about journalists and the First Amendment, you’ll run a better search.

Step Four: Think Basic

What do you do when you don’t know something? The answers I hear most often are either Google it or go to Wikipedia. We’ve got a legal equivalent. Legal encyclopedias—American Jurisprudence, for example—provide a quick overview to different areas of law. You can read an entry and find direction towards more resources, like another entry or law review articles. American Jurisprudence is available online through LexisNexis Academic or in print at the Law Library.

Step 5: Don’t be Afraid to Piggy-Back

Legal scholars don’t just like to footnote—they love it. So if you find an article on your topic, congrats, you just struck research gold. Check the footnotes and you’ll find the different statutes, cases, and articles the author used for his or her research. Don’t be afraid to use those sources to direct your research. You can find law review articles through LexisNexis Academic, JSTOR, or legal specific databases such as HeinOnline and Legal Trac.

Once again, I cannot stress enough—don’t panic. If following these steps doesn’t work for you, the reference librarians at the Law Library are more than happy to help. Just stop by—or call, email, and IM—the reference desk. For the sanity of all involved, it’s probably best to do that at least a week before the assignment is due.

EasyBib App Review

[The following post was written by Natalie Bennett, a graduate student in the Department of Library and Information Studies.]

Looking for an easy way to get a bibliography started? EasyBib.com, the free bibliography and citation manager now has an app that can be used on smartphones and tablets! I’m always willing to try out a new app and this one is especially cool. It uses the camera on your Android or iPhone to scan the ISBN barcode located on the back of a book.

Simply put the barcode at the center of the screen and tap to capture it:

Image Source: EasyBib, iTunes App Store

The app will automatically retrieve the citation for you and keep a list of all of the books that you scan:

Image Source: EasyBib, iTunes App Store

When you are done researching, you have the option to create a citation list (in MLA, APA, or Chicago) and then email yourself the citations. It is that easy! Once you open the email, you can save the list to your EasyBib account.

I had very good success with this app. The downside is that some books don’t have an ISBN on the back, especially here in the library. Remember, you can’t scan a library barcode, it has to be the ISBN! If the book you are looking for doesn’t have an ISBN, there is an easy to use search feature built into the app.

Have you used any citation management apps? Share your favorites in the comments below!

What the Frack?

[The following blog post was written by David J. Bertuca, Map Librarian.]

Please excuse the pun… Less than a year ago, I was assisting post-graduate students trying to locate decent maps that showed the Marcellus Shale region of the Northern Appalachians. Virtually no maps could be found that provided the data needed for their research. Six months later, maps and GIS data became available covering many aspects of this area.

The shale layers in the World are becoming important as they hold oil and gas reserves that have been, until recently, uneconomical to harvest. Now that methods have been developed that make for economic production, the issues surrounding the effect on the environment are creating great interest and concern. This interest has created a wealth of maps and data that we can collect to assist our studies.

Below are some websites that provide maps, GIS data, and other resources that are for and against hydraulic fracturing. Many more organizations, companies, and public interest groups are developing resources; the selection below are among the more notable.

“Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, is the process of taking millions of gallons of water, mixing it with tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals – including known carcinogens – and pumping it all underground at extreme pressure to break up rock formations and release oil or natural gas. New techniques and technologies used in the process are more intensive and riskier than conventional drilling, making fracking more dangerous than ever.” —Research/Facts page, Americans Against Fracking website.

Map the Movement (Americans Against Fracking)
http://www.americansagainstfracking.org/map-the-movement/

Americans Against Fracking is comprised of a number of organizations dedicated to banning drilling and fracking for oil and natural gas to protect shared vital resources for the future. Based on Google maps, this web map shows each of the groups involved in anti-fracking efforts. Each push-pin is a group and may be selected from the map to locate organizations areas of interest.

The map is designed to aid organizations to work together, and to encourage more organizations to join and combine their efforts. The map would be most useful to professionals, municipal and government agencies, and to local public organizations working to raise awareness to the threat of fracking on the environment. This is also useful for high-school through adult learner as it offers a chance to promote citizenship and provides an example of what maps can do to assist such efforts.

Fractracker
http://www.fractracker.org/

“The FracTracker Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the public’s understanding of the impacts of the global shale gas industry by collecting, interpreting, and sharing data and visualizations through our website, FracTracker.org. We partner with citizens, organizations and institutions – allied in a quest for objective, helpful information – to perpetuate awareness and support actions that protect public health, the environment, and socioeconomic well-being.”—Mission Statement

The Fracktracker site includes an organizations list, publications, media resources, and other materials.

Stepping into the Utica Shale (by Sam Malone)
http://www.fractracker.org/2012/03/stepping-into-the-utica-shale/

Visit this page to view a map showing shale layers across America and supporting documentation from a presentation on shale-gas production.

FracMapper Mapping Tool
http://www.fractracker.org/maps/

On this page is an index of the most requested maps of unconventional well data, produced by the FracTracker Alliance. These maps are good for showing in presentations, in papers, and for other uses where visuals can help state a position.

U.S. Shale Gas Basins
http://maps.fractracker.org/?webmap=50eae16139e647908253913d6530f2cf

Interactive GIS showing shale basins and various layers relating to gas production.

Find a Well (FracFocus Chemical Disclosure Registry)
http://www.fracfocusdata.org/fracfocusfind/

This interactive map allows you to search for shale gas wells that are operating in the U.S. it allows you to search down to a specific well, then download a report and data on that well. the map also lets you see how many wells there are in your search (e.g., Pennsylvania = 2,457 wells). On the map, clicking on a numbered marker immediately expands to the next level of markers, and so on until individual wells are shown (as drops). Clicking on this marker brings up an ID for the well and offers a pdf brief report to download.

The only down-side to this database is that the entries are voluntary by the drilling company so some wells may not be registered.

The issues surrounding oil and gas extraction are becoming greater than ever before. These and other resources will be useful for research and for activist-related activities.

Primary and Secondary Sources: What’s the Difference, Anyway?

[The following post was written by Amanda Morrison, a recent graduate of the Department of Library & Information Studies.]

The Libraries can help you find the best materials available for your research and projects. As you prepare to start a writing or research assignment, it’s helpful to be clear on what you are looking for. Usually, two kinds of sources are necessary: primary sources and secondary sources.

What’s the difference? Primary sources are the materials, documents or texts that you are studying or commenting on. They can be recordings of particular events, photographs or even manuscripts of literary works. Examples include: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, Civil-War era photographs, or recordings of political events or speeches. A full description can be found at http://library.buffalo.edu/helpAZ/PrimarySources.html. You can find many primary source resources available through the UB Libraries here:

http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/history-us/ (look under the tab called “Primary Sources”).

Secondary sources are materials that analyze, comment on or respond to primary sources and artifacts. Examples include: scholarly articles about the Constitution, the introduction to a facsimile edition of Finnegan’s Wake, or the catalog notes to an exhibition.

Other blog posts highlight some of the excellent databases you can use for secondary sources: JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, and Project Muse. These are all available from the Libraries database page. For help understanding what secondary sources are and finding the right ones for your work, ask your librarian. We are here to help!