Library & Technology

Faculty Services

The Duke University Law Library provides a variety of services for the Law School faculty. Reference librarians will work with you and other members of your research team to help you locate information and identify and obtain relevant books, articles and electronic resources to assist your teaching and scholarship. You may coordinate any of these services by contacting the Reference Department (ref@law.duke.edu or 613-7121), as well as the direct contacts listed below. Governing faculty are encouraged to coordinate these services through their liaison librarian.

Research Support

Liaison Librarian (Governing Faculty)

All governing faculty are formally assigned an individual reference librarian who serves as your liaison. While we encourage you to use any of the departmental contacts listed throughout this page, your liaison librarian is your best contact for information about Library services and research requests because the liaison focuses on knowing your areas of teaching and scholarship and providing services to support them. Your liaison librarian should arrange to meet with you at the beginning of each semester to discuss your current needs, and is available throughout the year to support your research and instruction with the services listed below. Contact Lauren Collins (collins@law.duke.edu or 613-7120) with questions about the Liaison Librarian program.

Faculty Research Assistants Program

For short-term research projects during the academic year, all Law faculty may request the services of law students who are hired, trained and supervised by the reference librarians. We assign library RAs to work on your projects based upon their areas of interest and availability. This service is free-- there is no charge to your faculty account. To request assistance on a project, contact program coordinator Molly Brownfield (brownfield@law.duke.edu or 613-7123), or the Reference Department (ref@law.duke.edu or 613-7121).

Empirical Research Support

The Reference Department has implemented a program to support empirical research and scholarship at the Law School. For an overview of the existing services and resources, please visit http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/facultyservices/empirical.

Training & Orientation

The reference librarians can provide basic and specialized research training for you, your assistants, or other members of your research team. Training can include orientation to Lexis, Westlaw and/or other electronic databases. We can schedule one-on-one or group sessions and are also available for impromptu sessions. We especially encourage training of newly-hired research assistants. We schedule a group training session for RAs at the beginning of each semester.

Routing Services

To keep you abreast of the latest legal news and scholarship, we can send you the most recent copies of law journals and legal newspapers when they arrive in the Library. To request routing of a particular title, contact Collection Services (cir@law.duke.edu or 613-7128).

Alert Services

Many publishers allow us to set up periodic electronic notifications to you about new books, journal articles, cases, amendments to statutes, and working papers in your areas of interest. To set up an alert, contact the Reference Department (ref@law.duke.edu or 613-7121). Here are some of the major services we can set up for you:

Recent Faculty Scholarship

The Library works with you to provide wide access to your scholarship through the Duke Law School Faculty Research Repository, and through submission to other major repositories such as SSRN and BePress. In addition, we regularly gather and publish notices of your recent scholarship. To notify us of items you want included in any of these resources, please contact Melanie Dunshee (Dunshee@law.duke.edu or 613-7119).

Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery

If you need an item you don’t see in our catalog or want an article you can’t find, we usually can obtain it for you from another library. You can use our online form, email the interlibrary loan department (ill@law.duke.edu or ref@law.duke.edu), or call 613-7121.

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Course Support

Research Lectures & Tutorials

Reference librarians have the expertise to guide your students on researching particular areas of law for your courses. If you would like to arrange a lecture or tutorial on legal research for one of your courses, please contact Lauren Collins (collins@law.duke.edu or 613-7120).

Research Resources for Blackboard Course Sites

We can add both static and dynamic research information to your Blackboard course site, including RSS feeds and research guides created specifically for your course. Contact Lauren Collins (collins@law.duke.edu or 613-7120) if you would like research resources added to your course web page.

Course Reserves

The Library can place books on reserve and facilitate the posting of documents on Blackboard for your classes. Contact Collection Services (cir@law.duke.edu or 613-7128) to arrange either service.

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Suggest Services or Resources

If you have an idea for an additional way that the Library can assist Duke Law faculty, please contact Melanie Dunshee (Dunshee@law.duke.edu or 613-7119) or Lauren Collins (collins@law.duke.edu or 613-7120). We also welcome your suggestions for items we should purchase for the collection.

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