Goodson Law Library

The Bolch Judicial Institute has partnered with the American Law Institute (ALI) to create the podcast Coping with Covid, examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the legal system. The series is hosted by David F. Levi, director of the Bolch Judicial Institute and president of ALI.

In addition, the Bolch Judicial Institute is compiling a list of available resources on efforts to continue maintaining court operations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The list is updated regularly as new information becomes available.

From an interdisciplinary perspective, the Duke Medical School Library has created a list of links to information and literature about COVID-19 that will be immediately useful to practicing clinicians at Duke.

Finally, if you are also a member of, or know a member of, the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, or Duke Health communities, the Medical Center Archives and Library are collecting your stories. Please visit their Share Your COVID-19 Story page for more information.

The Centers for Disease Control maintains a page with tables including daily updates of national provisional counts for deaths involving COVID-19 in the United States by week, by age, by sex, by place of death and by jurisdiction of residence.  It also includes regular weekly reports.

GeoPlatform.gov has developed The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources page collecting multiple links to pages covering geospatial data and information to assist with situational and general awareness about the spread and affects of the pandemic.  It includes both websites and links from the Health and Human Services (HHS) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) data, as well as academic, international, and commercial sources.  An additional resource there is the COVID-19 Dashboard created by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins, which provides an overview of the international numbers of confirmed cases and death from the virus.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains a U.S. focused dashboard similar to the Johns Hopkins one above, including links to state-based reports, many of which have granular information down to the county level.

The current administration has referenced modelling data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington.  An interactive page covering its modelling and predictions can be found on the linked site.

The COVID Tracking Project was launched out of The Atlantic, and attempts to cover not only case counts, but also a set of complete testing data—including not just identified cases, but how many people have been tested, and where, along with interactive tracking maps. 

Major news sources also have created pages gathering data on health and other issues affected by the pandemic. The Financial Times at FT.com has created a page providing an up-to-date visual narrative of the spread of COVID-19.  The page is regularly updated, and changes are tracked and listed at the top.  In addition to health date, it includes tracking of international government decisions on lock downs. The New York Times also has a page entitled Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count.  It includes U.S. maps and other interactive graphics covering information about how each state is being affected by COVID-19.

The North Carolina Division of Health and Human Services’ dashboard is dedicated to tracking laboratory-confirmed cases that were tested and returned positive, including those from the NC State Laboratory of Public Health and reporting hospital and commercial labs. All data are preliminary, and not all cases of COVID-19 are tested.

During the time of the pandemic, there has also been some controversy about how the information has been collected, interpreted, and presented.  For example, there is an alternative local dashboard tracking the spread of COVID-19 for Florida, while the Florida Department of Health, Division of Disease Control and Health Protection has its own site.  The story about the creation of this alternative dashboard is available on NPR, with links to both options.

Due to an increase in data collection, news reporting, and social media attention, Wikipedia has dedicated an entire page to an ongoing discussion of misinformation on the COVID-19 outbreak.  Many fact-checking sites have also been gathering and archiving viral stories about the pandemic (e.g., Snopes has curated a page dedicated to online coverage spreading through social media, particularly memes).

America’s News, which includes complete editions of hundreds of U.S. news sources, with full text access to most articles contained in those sources is available through the Duke Library Catalog.  Currently, the source has a link at the top of its landing page to run a search for articles on COVID-19.  You can use the filters on the left side to narrow the results by date, region, and more.

The New York Times has curated a page providing free access to the most important news and useful guidance on the coronavirus outbreak to help their readers understand the pandemic.  If you do not have an account, you will have to create one to access the free articles.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a page specific to the Coronavirus pandemic.  It includes various stories on the outbreak from across the globe, as well as video explainers on the issues, but also includes a “Reality Check” section that fact checks some of the misinformation on COVID-19 and medical or governmental reactions to its spread.

As part of its COVID-19 News Search Alert page, which is also discussed below, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has created links which auto-populate news searches in four search engines: Baidu News, Bing News, Google News, and Science Daily.

Wolters Kluwer has created a chart building tool to compare and track state laws, regulations, executive orders, and more.  The topic searches are organized topically across Banking & Finance, Labor & Employment/HR & Benefits, Health & Infectious Disease, Tax, Securities and other categories.  Access is complimentary, and the data and tables are exportable and shareable. 

Dentons has created a tracking chart that provides a review of state and local governmental orders, directives and financial assistance impacting U.S. jurisdictions, as well as others. 

National Public Radio has created a state-by-state guide on how each jurisdiction is approaching a “reopening plan.” The guide is divided into regions: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West, and is regularly updated as states adjust their policies.

The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has gathered legislative and other material relevant to consumer protection in an easily accessible web page.  Topics cover bankruptcy, price gouging, foreclosure actions, and credit reporting.  

The UNC School of Government has been updating local government actions on the pandemic. Issues covered include public health, emergency management, employment law, courts, and more.

Pre-print, in-process, and working papers recently produced under the COVID-19 pandemic have been collected together on a Social Science Research Network (SSRN) research page.  There are multiple categories, one specifically containing almost 200 papers related to the public health, legal, economic, societal and fiscal implications of the outbreak.

ProQuest has created a specialized Coronavirus Research Database, which includes coverage of content available through openly available content through ProQuest related to coronaviruses in general, including the COVID-19 outbreak. It includes thousands of open-access articles from the world’s leading publishers as well as current research from pre-print repositories.  Researchers can focus on specific COVID-19 material by limiting results to dates since the current outbreak. The database can also be accessed by going through the Duke catalog entry, selecting “Change Database,” and then the Coronavirus Research Database.

ProQuest has also curated some additional resources and databases related to the outbreak, including journal, news, and government sites, which it has made available on its main website.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has been collecting and listing research and working papers on COVID-19 (as well as coronavirus and other pandemic responses). Access to individual papers often will require access through Duke’s NBER Working Paper Series subscription through the Duke catalog link.

Elsevier has collected over 21,000 early-stage and peer-reviewed research papers on COVID-19 from journals including The Lancet. These articles are also available to download with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis through their specialized research page.

JSTOR editors curated a number of articles related to coronavirus outbreaks in general on a research page, and have made the content free to the public through June 30, 2020.  JSTOR has also made general, non-coronavirus content available for free during the crisis, both to institutions and to the public on a separate page.

New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has put together a collection of articles and other resources on the Coronavirus (specifically, COVID-19) outbreak, including clinical reports, management guidelines, and commentary.

The Google Scholar landing page now includes links to free resources from various academic and scientific journals covering the COVID-19 pandemic, including Nature, Science, and the Lancet.

Columbia Law School has collected scholarly research about the affects of the outbreak into a free, downloadable book covering myriad subjects related to the law entitled Law in the Time of COVID-19.  Topics include criminal justice, immigration, elections, public health, privacy, and LGBT civil rights.

The three major legal databases have begun collecting materials on COVID-19, most of which are focused on practical resources.

On Lexis Advance, there are several practice module collections, which can also be accessed through the “Complimentary COVID-19 Resources” on the home page. It includes links to LAW360 news resources on the crisis.

Bloomberg Law has built out a focused COVID-19 “Practice Center”. It can also be accessed through the “Health” Practice Center, you can click on the “In Focus: Coronavirus” banner a the top. The Bloomberg collection is organized much like a standard practice center page on its website, and includes a link to analytics and a chart builder tool.

On Westlaw there is a focused collection of legal materials and news available through a link. Or you can click on “COVID-19 Legal Materials and News” under “Specialty areas.”  The Westlaw materials have been curated into state, federal, and global resources, and also include a link to what it has deemed COVID-19 related dockets.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has put together a multilingual database of scientific findings updated daily (Monday through Friday) from searches of bibliographic databases, hand searching, and the addition of other expert-referred scientific articles.  In addition, the page lists nearly 20 other sites, including science and academic publications (e.g., OUP, Cambridge University, Elsevier, PLOS, Science, and the NEJM) with corona resources available to the public. 

The CDC has put together a research guide, which includes links to research articles, databases and journals, secondary data and statistics, and other websites.  It also provides links to instructions for creating various search alerts on the pandemic from Ovid, PubMed, Scopus, and general news. 

The Law Librarians of Congress have created a regularly updated research guide of multiple government resources on COVID-19.  These include federal legislation, presidential actions, federal agency pages, state action pages, CRS reports, and law library blogs on the issue.

Federal courts are individually coordinating with state and local health officials to obtain local information about COVID-19 and court business, operating status, and public and employee safety. As part of that effort, they have maintained a U.S. Courts specific site with links covering the COVID-19 pandemic and court business.

USA.gov has provided some of the more practical legislative and agency descriptions of how the government is handling the COVID-19 crisis.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics has built an FAQ page with an overview of common questions and data regarding the effects of the pandemic on the employment landscape.  The page includes monthly updates on the employment situation during the crisis.

National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) has put together a legislative action site.  The page includes an interactive map to see what each state legislature has proposed or passed in reaction to the pandemic. The NCSL also includes a review of state actions on issues related to interruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, including issues related to upcoming elections.

National Governor’s Association (NGA) members include the governors of the 55 states, territories and commonwealth.  The group maintains a page of current information on the status of COVID-19 in the United States and internationally, as well as what actions states and other territories are taking.

The University of Pittsburgh has curated a list of articles on various medical ethical issues, including issues on research ethics, emotional and psychological effects of the pandemic, and the response of the art community in relation to mental health with a specific focus on COVID-19.  The list is updated regularly, and new additions are indicated with a green background. 

Stanford University has produced a searchable database of over 4000 COVID-19 related memoranda and other firm resources, (e.g., web pages from law firm websites).