Washington and Lee University LibGuides: W&L Law Library Resources and Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Overview

Assistant Dean for Legal Information Services and Professor of Practice

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Overview: General Policy

Welcome Back!!

The Law Library practice follows the current Washington and Lee University policy and guidelines regarding the Coronavirus outbreak. We will adapt our practice based on the guidelines if there are any changes in the future. This guide will be updated as frequently as needed. Please do not hesitate to email us at lawref@wlu.edu for questions, comments or suggestions.

The Law Library will be open to the W&L Law students, faculty, and staff only in Fall 2020. The Law Library is open for studying whenever the Law School building is open. A mask or face covering is required at all times, and social distancing must be observed. Library furniture has been rearranged to promote social distancing. Please do not move library furniture. Study rooms are available by reservation only. Please use the sign-up sheets posted on the doors of the rooms to make a reservation. No sign-up using 25Live is available.

Please disinfect a library space before and after use. This includes workstations, tables, chairs, study rooms, lockers, carrels, etc. The overall Law Library space will be cleaned by the custodial staff following the University Facilities' cleaning protocols.

Circulation Desk is staffed with limited hours, Monday-Sunday. Please continue to use self-checkout machines to minimize physical contact. Please disinfect the self-checkout machines before and after use. Please return books and library materials to the book carts at the Circulation Desk. All returned books and materials will go through a 72-hour quarantine. No electronic devices or accessories will be available for circulation from the Law Library. Please contact Law IT Help Desk (540.458.8021; hamiltond@wlu.edu) to check out a laptop.

All normal reference and research services continue to be available to students and faculty remotely. For W&L Law Students, we do encourage you to contact us by emailing lawref@wlu.edu for reference assistance. For W&L Law faculty, we continue to provide document delivery services to faculty members. If you need to get materials from another institution (i.e., Interlibrary Loan), we will be able to access PDF scans of articles or book chapters for other libraries. We will no longer be able to receive books from other institutions until further notice. If you have questions about accessing any materials, please contact Franklin Runge (frunge@wlu.edu). For other reference and research assistance, please contact Franklin Runge or Alex Zhang (azhang@wlu.edu).

All our e-resources will be accessible remotely as usual. Please check out our e-resources page for further instruction. If you have trouble accessing any resources remotely, please contact Andrew Christensen (christensena@wlu.edu ).

New Resource Highlight

Positivity Board for W&L Law Comes Back!

As a tradition, our positivity bulletin boards will be up again during the final exam period. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we encourage all W&L law students, faculty, and staff to upload positive messages and words of encouragement to Box at https://bit.ly/positivityboard2020 in advance. Our library staff members will then print the messages out and post them on the bulletin boards for you! The boards will be up early next week (week of November 16th).

Professor Andrew Christensen has updated the 1L study guide, Beyond the Text: Study Guides for First-Year Classes. Please feel free to send your suggestions to Professor Christensen (christensena@wlu.edu) at any time!

Please continue to follow all Covid-19 related guidelines for the rest of the semester. Our staff has made sure that we continue to have sufficient cleaning supplies (cleaning wipes and hand sanitizing stations) in the library for you to use to clean a shared space or an equipment before and after use. If you notice supply shortage, please do not hesitate to let us know immediately either by speaking to a the circulation desk staff or by emailing us at lawref@wlu.edu, so that we can restock them in a timely fashion.

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W&L COVID-19 Testing Dashboard

W&L Daily Attestation Website

A Research Guide on Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism Resources (Created and Maintained by University Library in collaboration with the Law Library). For comments or suggestions, please contact Professor Andrew Christensen (christensena@wlu.edu).

A Research Guide on Federal and State Docket Research. For questions or comments, please contact Professor Alex Zhang (azhang@wlu.edu).

West Academic Study Aid offers easy online access to the full text of hundreds of study aids, treatises, and audio lectures to help you succeed in law school, including hornbooks, nutshells, Sum and Substance audio, Gilbert guides, Black Letter Outlines, and more. It has just launched a new series on its platform, the Office Hours series. To access all titles available on the West Academic Study Aids, log in here. Make sure to create an account using your wlu.edu email first if you have not done so.

Law.com provides news articles and commentaries on important legal issues covered in multiple ALM publications. Access is available to current WLU law faculty, students, and staff only. WLU law users may register for an account using valid and active wlu.edu email address to access W&L off-campus and receive newsletters and searches directly by email.

10 Legal Writing Tips for Law Students (Slaw)