The 2018 Georgia Bar Exam will be administered on the 24^th and 25^th of July.  Which means test takers still have plenty of time to study. If you want to move beyond your test prep materials, the library has numerous resources to assist.

Good luck and happy studies!

The spring ALERT program topics and dates:

What is the Alert Program?

ALERT (Applied Legal Experience, Research, & Technology) is a non-credit program that provides law students additional opportunities outside of the College of Law’s curriculum to learn legal research and technology skills.

By completing the ALERT Program, students can demonstrate to potential employers that they have obtained practice ready skills. Students will have their entire law school term to complete the program.

Levels of Completion:

With Distinction: Complete 6 Topics
With High Distinction: Complete 8 Topics
With Highest Distinction: Complete 10 Topics

For more information, or to RSVP please see: http://lawlibrary.gsu.edu/services/alert-program/

Happy Studies.  Don’t forget your digital study aid and practice exam access.

In case you missed the puzzles being assembled at the library circulation desk: the Harley-Davidson is complete, the Harry Potter is under way, and the Pollock has been moved out of sight (due to deflating puzzle morale).

The power of habit.  Good habits can be created.  Bad habits can be changed.  It is never too early or late!

The mastery of law requires good study habits.  The library has tools to incorporate into your daily study practice.

Online Study Aids (via tech fee)

• West Study Aids:  popular titles include Sum and Substance Audio, Nutshells, Happy and Short Guides, and the Acing series.
• Wolters Kluwer Study Aids: including Glannon Guides, Crunch Time, and Examples & Explanations (my personal favorite).

Print Study Aids

• The Law Library’s collection of study aid resources and supplements (i.e. hornbooks) have varied approaches to helping you understand core concepts. The collection includes many notable series (some of which are not included in the supra online package).  They are available in the interactive learning area.

Audio and Flash Cards

• There are flash cards and audio CDs available on reserve.

CALI Lessons

• The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction maintains a collection of almost 1,000 interactive, computer-based lessons covering 33 legal education subject areas.

To access CALI lessons:

1. Go to www.cali.org
2. Enter the email and password you created at registration. (If you have not registered, you will need to create a new user account. Contact Patrick Parsons to obtain an authorization code.)
3. Select Lessons (from Quick Links) and then choose a specific lesson

Exam Archive

• The Law Library’s website provides an archive of sample past examinations from many College of Law professors.

Hopefully during your busy orientation week you had a chance to stop in the library.  Chances are you will be spending lots of time studying here.

Some resources you should know about:

Leisure Collection:  Because you are going to have so much free time. The DVDs, fiction, and fun non-fiction are all still available for you to check out and enjoy—they are located next to the reference collection.

Study Aids:  The Study Aid Collection can be found in the back of the collaboration space—just behind the Technology Support desk.  These can be checked out for 3 hours.  We also have online availability.  Older editions are available in the General Stacks.

Reserve Items: Course required books, book stands, lap desks, games, chargers, and more are available on request at the Circulation Desk.

Reference Collection:  Heavily-used resources and other reference materials, including the Official Code of Georgia (O.C.G.A.) are located just to the right of the Reference Desk.

Georgia Collection:  The Georgia state materials are located on the library 5^th floor behind the elevators, in free-standing shelves.  The collection includes Georgia primary sources including Georgia Laws and West’s Annotated Code of Georgia.  You will find secondary sources including past editions of Georgia treatises (current editions are in the Reference Collection) such as Redfearn Wills and Administration in Georgia and a wide variety of Georgia continuing legal education materials.

Core Practice Collection:  A number of our practitioner tools, such as legal encyclopedias, form books, and practice guides are located the Core Practice Collection on the 5^th floor behind the elevators, right next to the Georgia Collection

General Stacks:  Material in General Stacks are located on both the 5^th and 6^th floors (but mostly on the 6th).  Call numbers beginning with AC and running through KE will be found on the 5^th floor, starting behind the elevators.  If the call number starts with KF1 or comes later in the alphabet, you’ll want to start looking for the title on the 6^th floor, just as you walk off the elevator.

Law Periodicals:  If you want to look at a journal article that you can’t access online because it’s too recently published(cough cough, perhaps not very likely), you may want to try the 6^th floor behind the elevators.  The journal titles are in alphabetical order.

If you have any questions about finding our other special collections—state materials or the Young Adult Collection (yes, we have that too)—please stop by the reference desk and we will be happy to help you.

The 2017 Georgia Bar Exam will be administered on the 25^th and 26^th of July.  Which means test takers still have plenty of time to cram the necessary legal information to pass (cough cough).  The library has numerous digital and non-digital materials to assist in your summer bar quest.

While June is still young, you may consider getting meta:

Later on, as you crush studies, it may be time for movie therapy:

Good luck!

Spring is in the air.  Daylight savings time has begun and you can enjoy an extra amount of evening light.  Which also means, exams are just around the corner.

The library has digital study aids to assist in your exam preparation.

• Too many choices?  There is a research guide for that.
• Need off-campus access?  There is a link for that.
• Want to practice on an old exam?  There is a place for that too.

The Library of Congress  is sponsoring the historic newspaper database.  It consists of scanned and OCRed newspapers from 1789 through 1924 and bibliographic data from 1690 to present.

Just reading newspapers from 100 years ago is interesting in itself.  But what else should be done with this digital archive? Beyond advanced search options: proximity terms, phrase searching, and Boolean logic the dataset features an API.

An API (application programming interface) is a set of protocols that enables programs to easily talk to other programs. In this instance, a programmer can quickly pull a JSON (Java Script Object Notation) dataset from the archive for manipulation.

Why is this important?  Open archives and structured datasets invites new and creative research opportunities and insights.  For example, a researcher can track how newspaper word usage evolved over this time frame. Or a researcher could create tests for tracking the prevalence of “fake news” in the past.

What questions do you want to ask 125 years of newspapers?

Edit: As exciting as this dataset is, it is also a bit disappointing.  The archive stops in 1924 – no doubt because of copyrighted works not being in the public domain.  The wealth of research that could be done, and the data that could be created and linked is being stifled by copyright law. New laws could enable the information revolution to accomplish much more.

Welcome back!

What you have been awaiting: the spring 2017 ALERT schedule.

• Topic 1: Researching Ethics Decisions (1/18 @5:00 and 1/19 @1:00)
• Topic 2: Tech Tools (2/8 @5:00 and 1/9 @3:00)
• Topic 3: Fastcase! (3/1 @5:00 and 3/2 @3:00)
• Topic 4: Tools/Databases for Transactional Practice (3/29 @5:00 and 3/30 @3:00)

Sign up here.

And

Read more about the ALERT program here (ok, yes both links are the same).