Faculty Library Handbook

Law Library

The Law Library has a rich collection of print, multimedia and electronic resources. You can determine what the Library has and where to find it in the Library’s online catalog, Discovery. This catalog reflects both Law Library and main campus library (Axinn Library) holdings.

The Library also subscribes to a wide variety of online databases in addition to Lexis, Westlaw and Bloomberg Law. You can access a subject listing of these resources on the Library’s website. To access these resources from off-campus, you will be asked to authenticate using your Hofstra credentials.

The Library’s website, law.hofstra.edu/library, provides more information about the Library’s resources, staff, and research assistance. For any questions regarding the Library’s website, or if a link is broken, contact the webmaster at weblaw@hofstra.edu.

Axinn Library

Law faculty may check out most circulating materials from the Axinn Library for six months. Two additional six-month renewals are permitted, after which the item must be returned. If you would like your research assistant to be permitted to borrow Axinn books under your account, please contact the Law Library at lawlib@hofstra.edu.

Law faculty may request Axinn materials through the Law Library’s document delivery service. Contact your liaison or email lawlib@hofstra.edu. The materials will be delivered to your mailbox in your secretary’s office.

Law faculty can access the research database subscriptions of Axinn Library. For access to these databases, you must authenticate through the portal and use your network username and password.

FACULTY LIAISON SERVICES

The Law Library seeks to provide excellent library service to the Hofstra Law faculty, including research and circulation assistance. This is accomplished through a liaison system, where each full-time faculty member is paired with one of four reference librarians. The faculty and librarian may meet and/or talk at various times throughout the year to determine the faculty member’s research and instructional needs, and the librarian will seek to tailor delivery of information to the individual faculty member. S/he will also coordinate all non-research library requests. Our librarian liaisons hold both JD and MLS degrees.

The services provided through the program include:

1. Research Assistance
   We will assist with research for instructional or scholarship purposes.
   • The library employs either one or two research assistants each semester to assist in conducting faculty research. The following tasks will be given directly to RAs for completion: cite checking, Bluebooking, basic literature review, requests to review or collect content from other law schools’ web sites, and other similar tasks.
   • One-time projects requiring more than 2-3 hours of work will be referred to either the Library RA or faculty-hired RA, and we will supervise and guide the RA in conducting the research.
   • Extremely complex or difficult requests will be handled by your library liaison to the best of our ability, time and resources permitting and in accordance with the liaison’s best judgement.
   • Ongoing research projects should be assigned to a faculty-hired RA. Your liaison will guide and supervise your RA in completing the work.
   • Current Awareness – We will create alerts to notify you of new resources relevant to your research needs.
   • Alerts can be created to email notice of new materials directly to you from most of our electronic products. This includes Shepard’s and Keycite reports for primary authority, news alerts, and notice of new scholarship in your areas of interest.
   • We are no longer able to offer any librarian-curated current news services. While we may monitor blogs and news in your area of interest as time allows, we cannot promise this service on a regular basis.
   • Document Delivery – We can arrange for the delivery of library materials, electronically where possible.
   • Interlibrary loan – We will coordinate the borrowing of materials from other libraries to meet your teaching and scholarship needs.
   • Faculty members may request books and articles which are not available at the Law Library or other campus libraries. Your liaison will determine the best means to obtain the title. Contact your liaison directly for this service.
   • You can also fill out a request form on the Library’s website.
2. Instruction Assistance
   • We will provide topic-specific or specialized legal research instruction for your classes.
   • We are happy to meet individually with students for assistance with research projects for your courses. We ask that you provide us basic information about the assigned project and relevant deadlines before we schedule meetings with your students.
   • Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg and Online Resources – We will assist with searching Bloomberg, Lexis, Westlaw, and other electronic resources licensed by the law library or Axinn. Your liaison will arrange for your Bloomberg, Lexis, and Westlaw passwords, and can contact vendor representatives to schedule more in-depth training for you or your classes.
     • TWEN or Lexis Classroom assistance – At your request, we will arrange for training for you and your administrative assistant in setting up and maintaining a web course.
     • TWEN training will be provided by our Westlaw representative. You may wish to browse reference guides and resources for using TWEN.
   • The University’s Faculty Computing Services department can provide Canvas training and support. You can request assistance by emailing edtech@hofstra.edu. Please contact University ITS for assistance with Canvas.
   • Online Research Guides – We maintain selected existing research guides. While we are not able to create new guides at this time, we would be happy to recommend guides created by other academic law libraries that may be relevant to the research your students are conducting.
      
3. Scholarly Services
   • Coordinated by our Reference and Scholarly Service librarian, liaisons will assist faculty to maximize scholarly impact through utilizing author profiles and other means.
      
4. Other
   • Acquisitions – We work closely with faculty on collection development and seek to acquire materials necessary to support the law school’s teaching and research needs. If you have a request for materials (print or electronic) to be purchased for the Library’s collection, or if you discover Library materials, especially loose- leaf or journal titles, that are redundant or no longer necessary, please notify your liaison. With very limited exceptions, we cannot purchase office copies of materials for our faculty.
   • Routing – We will arrange for journal and Library materials to be routed. If you have particular titles you would like routed to you regularly, contact your liaison.
   • Exam Archive – At your request, we will include copies of past exams or model exam questions and answers in our Exam Archive. We will not include any material without your express permission.
   • Course Reserves – You may place items on course reserve specific to classes you are teaching. These can be personal copies of books/videos/other materials, copies of items already in the library collection, or heavily used materials that should be available for all students in the class.
   • CALI – to access CALI lessons, go to cali.org/content/cali-lessons. Contact your liaison for the password.
   • For other database passwords, contact your liaison or the Reference Desk at 463-5908.
   • Research Assistant Training: Law Librarians will provide training for faculty RAs on request. Please contact your library liaison for this service.