New Stuff! – The Blackacre Times

At the library, the beginning of the academic year is always an exciting time. Everyone is eager to meet our amazing new students and welcome back our amazing returning students, so do make sure to come visit.

New students should have met their Personal Librarian during orientation this week. Along with your Research Methods professor, your personal librarian is a great resource when learning how to navigate law school. Don’t hesitate to reach out to them if you need help with anything library-related.

Returning students should come by and let us know about any exciting legal research you did this summer. We are also always trying to provide a better environment for the law school community, so don’t hesitate to let us know how we can help you have a successful year.

Law students are usually pretty busy, so here’s a very short guide to some of our most popular services:

Study rooms. Law students, get your study group together and book one of the library’s study rooms.
Study aids. Online study aids are increasingly popular, and this year we’ve added Lexis Digital Library to our offerings in this category. If you prefer print, our collection of study aids is on the 5^th floor.
ALERT. Get a head start on legal research (and other topics) by attending an ALERT session. The first topic is “Approaching Your Research Problem” on Monday, 8/21 at 5:45pm (Room 345), or Wednesday, 8/23 at 3:15pm (Room 242).
Social media. Did you know that the library is active on social media? Indeed, we just started an Instagram account, and we would love for you to follow us there for all of the latest news from the library.

If you have any questions, let us know. Here’s to an exciting and fulfilling semester! We’re so glad you’re here.

The GSU College of Law Library recently added PowerNotes (Premium) to its Database List. This is perhaps somewhat misleading as PowerNotes is not a research database, per se, but rather a research outlining and management tool. There is a stripped-down free version of PowerNotes; however, the law library acquired institutional access to its premium service (including unlimited projects and other upgrades) for the GSU College of Law community.

PowerNotes uses a browser extension to help with online research, specifically gathering and keeping track of source materials, and organizing and creating a writing outline. Users can install either the Chrome or Firefox browser extension; these are the only browser options at the moment. Once installed, use your campus email address to create an account. Now, you can create a project and begin searching on a preferred research platform or across the web, generally. PowerNotes works with any webpage you browse, including legal subscription services such as Westlaw Edge, Lexis+, and HeinOnline (which provides a LibGuide on how to use PowerNotes on its platform). This is perhaps its most significant feature– centralizing your research regardless of where the source material resides online.

When users find relevant information, they can highlight the text, save it, assign a topic to it and annotate it. The text is saved with a link back to the source. Citation information is automatically collected and put in a preferred citation format, say bluebook. At any time during the research process, users can revisit their projects and reorganize, rename, or expand their topics and quotes.

PowerNotes has compiled a helpful instructional video library. Also, the law library will host training on PowerNotes on Tuesday, March 1 @ 3:15 PM and Wednesday, March 2 @ 5:10 PM. Both sessions will be 45 minutes and satisfy a topic session for the Law Library’s Applied Legal Experience, Research, & Technology (ALERT) Program.

In the interim, if you have questions or problems accessing PowerNotes, contact Librarian Manion. Do good research.