Letting the Worldcat out of the bag
There are lots of legal information reources out there at a library near you…from Nolo’s book on Music Law to the in-depth treatises on Copyright Law. The trick is finding out which library has what. Fortunately, Worldcat has a search engine for library catalogs. You can enter in your zip and find out which libraries near you have the books you are looking for. For instance, a search for Nolo’s Music Law: How to Run Your Band’s Business gives me a list of libraries in my neighborhood that have the book. It even gives me libraries around the world that have it on their shelves (you will be glad to know the University of Hong Kong has a copy!).
david giacalone
November 18, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
This is a great resource, John. Clicking through to the WorldCat site, I see that you can often find a link to the Ask a Librarian feature at a listed Library, which might be quite helpful. Of course, those who are easily-addicted to searching will find WorldCat to be a terrible temptation. [e.g., I found that very few libraries have copies of my favorite haiku books.]
I was disappointed by the results when I asked where I could find the new, 3rd Edition of “Law for the layperson : an annotated bibliography of self-help law books” (2006), by Amber Hewette; Diane Murley; Jean Sinclair McKnight — an essential book to help self-helpers. So far, only 19 Libraries have the 485-page, $78 book, and the closest one to my home is over 130 miles away. On the other hand, I guess I could use “Ask a Librarian” to find out what the book says about a particular self-help law book or group of books.
MaryWhisner
November 21, 2006 @ 8:23 pm
Good post, John!
Let me add a reminder to researchers: sometimes starting with a smaller catalog can save you time and frustration.
For instance, if you know that you’re going to be spending the weekend researching at the Blank County Law Library, you might prefer to begin your project with that library’s own catalog. You’ll find a lot less than you find when you search WorldCat — BUT it will be material that you’ll be able to look at this weekend.
Each library’s collection has been carefully developed by librarians who are thoughtfully looking out for you, the researchers it serves. Blank County might not have all the books about, say, landlord-tenant law, but it will probably have the ones that are tailored to your state (and maybe even something especially for Blank County). So what you find in the catalog for your library is more likely to be useful to you than the longer list of stuff you find in WorldCat.
On the other hand, sometimes you do want to cast a wider net, and then looking at a much larger database, like WorldCat, can be great. But what do you do if a book that sounds terrific isn’t available locally?
(1) Ask your local library staff to borrow it for you through interlibrary loan. Different libraries will have different policies. For instance, my law school library is open to anyone and we’re happy to serve the public, but we will only borrow through interlibrary loan for faculty and students, so we would refer someone to the local public library. Hey, that reminds me: many general public libraries have some basic law books, especially self-help books. And even if they don’t they can borrow them from other libraries for you.
(2) Consider buying the book. For instance, Music Law: How to Run Your Band’s Business is $33.99 from Nolo or $26.39 from Amazon.com. Even if your band is making only a couple of hundred bucks a gig, it might be worth investing in this so you can write in the margins and keep it handy.
(3) Talk to your local library staff and ask that the library get a copy. Librarians are all about serving their patrons’ research needs and will often be happy to learn about another tool to help. Of course, with tight budgets and other constraints, they won’t always buy what you request — but it sure doesn’t hurt to ask! It always helps if your request fits the library’s mission. For instance, my library’s primary mission is to serve law students and faculty, so we don’t buy as much for practitioners and pro se litigants as the county law library does.
(4) You might even consider donating the book to your local library. I know: a lot of people interested in self-help law have very limited financial resources. Of course I’m not suggesting that someone who’s struggling to put food on the table buy books for the library. But if you happen to have resources to share and you’d really like your library to build a better self-help collection, then financial support (or current books in good condition) can get the ball rolling.
Finally, a caution: WorldCat has records from over 10,000 libraries, but that’s not all the libraries there are. County law libraries are often NOT members of WorldCat. I just ran a little test search: I found a book in LION (a catalog for New York’s county law libraries) that was held by over a dozen libraries, and then I looked for that book in WorldCat. I found a listing and I found the book at some law school libraries and an appellate court library, but not the county law libraries.