Librarians Consult Library Guides

You will too if you are wise.  Library guides are—well, guides to researching specific topics or, in the case of law guides, specific areas of law.  They are a collection of resources recommended by the author of the guide.  Because they are curated and maintained by librarians with subject matter expertise, library or law guides are a reliable means of getting started with research in a particular area of law.  Need to research congressional voting records? Perhaps Congressional Voting Records: A Beginner’s Guide, from the Library of Congress, is just the right guide for you.  Writing about international commercial arbitration? You might check out this International Arbitration guide from the Peace Palace Library in the Hague.  Or you just want to brush up on where to find legal materials in the great state of Rhode Island.  In that case, the Rhode Island Research guide created by your very own law librarians is probably where you want to start.

As law librarians, we unabashedly consult law guides created by librarians from other institutions before researching an unfamiliar subject, wanting to gain a better understanding of the best sources to use in my research.   Now that you know what law guides are, you may be curious about how to locate them.

Start your search for a law guide at your home library or institution.  At RWU Law, you will find a link to the complete list of our LawGuides on the law library homepage under Additional Resources. RWU LawGuides focus specifically on the resources available to you through our library or publicly available on the internet, thus, they should be tailored to your specific research needs.  However, if we have not created a guide about your research area of interest, you can always reach out to us for a recommendation.

You can also search for law guides on the internet using your preferred internet browser.  If you search for the terms law guide and your subject of interest, your search result should yield a bevy of guides that you can review. When determining what guide is best, you want to consider the follow factors:

1. Coverage – you obviously want to choose a guide that most adequately covers your subject of interest;
2. Currency – choose a guide that has been updated recently (the date of last update should be on the homepage of the guide at the bottom of the page); and
3. Credibility – select a guide published by a reputable institution and author (both pieces of information should be clearly posted on the homepage of the guide).  On Google, add site:.edu to limit the search results to guides posted by law schools and universities!

If you select a guide that provides good coverage of your subject, remains current, and comes from an institution and author that is knowledgeable and reputable, then you should be well on your way to understanding the resources available on your research topic.

As always, please reach out to us at lawlibraryhelp@rwu.edu if you have any questions about law guides or any other research topic. Happy researching!