During the Spring 2008 semester, the Law Library conducted a survey asking students to comment on various aspects of the Library. 740 students responded, providing more than 1,500 separate responses to our narrative questions. We thank everybody who completed the survey. We read every comment.

Based upon student comments, the Library used the Summer break to make several improvements so that the buildings, collections, and services better meet student current usage and needs.


Highlights of the changes include the following:

• opening the Oakley Reading Room at 7 am on weekdays
• installing a new soft drink machine on the Third Floor of Williams
• creating and publishing several web pages that consolidate links for online course materials
• purchasing and installing a new self-serve scanner in the Computer Lab
• expanding popular reading and DVD collections
• purchasing all course books and housing them in the Reading Room Reserve
• acquiring and continuing to purchase new chairs for students
• implementing several enhancements to our catalog, GULLiver; of especial note is the improved access to online journals
• creating a new system to display the over 200 Georgetown Law Library research guides

The Library has posted a page with the most frequent comments from the Spring Student Survey alongside Library Responses.

We greatly appreciate student input. Please feel free to continue this dialog through our new Law Library Feedback Blog, a place where we post answers to your student questions.

Library Hours - Labor Day Weekend 2008

Library Hours

	Williams Library	Wolff Library
Saturday, August 30	9 am to 5 pm	9 am to 5 pm
Sunday, August 31	Noon to 8 pm	Noon to 8 pm
Monday, September 1	8 am to Midnight	8 am to Midnight

Reference Desks Hours

	Williams Reference Desk	Wolff Reference Desk
Saturday, August 30	Closed	Closed
Sunday, August 31	Closed	Closed
Monday, September 1	Noon to 6 pm	Closed

ABA Journal recently selected the 25 greatest legal movies.  Your ticket to the photo gallery (and list of winners) is online. 

Readers can also vote for their favorites.  Right now, My Cousin Vinny and To Kill a Mockingbird are the clear winners for reader favorite.

Georgetown Law Students can borrow many of these movies from the Library.  Check out this list of popular movies on DVD and VHS.

Look no further than the Williams Reading Room, where we've displayed some of the most recent additions to our "Popular Reading Collection".

Some of the featured titles include:

Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee, a Georgetown Law grad

The Law Clerk: a novel, by Scott D. Gerber

In the Ring: the Trials of a Washington Lawyer, by Robert S. Bennett

Chambermaid: a novel, by Saira Rao


Many more are on display and other popular titles are available in the Loewinger Lounge at the West End of the Williams Reading Room, so stop by and pick up a book to read "just for the fun of it".

Prof. Robert Oakley has been posthumously named the recipient of the 2008 Marian Gould Gallagher Award. The highest honor of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), it is given to recognize extended and sustained service to law librarianship [and] for exemplary service to the Association.

Prof. Oakley was the Director of the Georgetown University Law Library from 1982 until his unexpected death on September 29, 2007. In announcing the award the AALL President noted that: "Under his visionary leadership, the [Georgetown] ]library became one of the largest academic law libraries in the country, with an outstanding collection and a magnificent physical facility. Always the innovator, Oakley was one of the first law librarians to automate his library, establish an online catalog, and develop a Web page for his law school."

From 2000-2001 Prof. Oakley served as President of AALL. Besides chairing numerous AALL committees, Prof. Oakley also served on the AALL Executive Board and was the the AALL Washington Affairs Representative for 18 years.

The full award announcement is available through the AALL Website.

The Georgetown University Law Library has received a Law Library Publication Award from the American Association of Law Libraries for developing several Web-based legal research tutorials designed to teach first-year law students the basics of legal research. View all tutorials online on our website

Starting in 2007, the Georgetown librarians created the tutorials by using multimedia elements such as interactive demonstrations of online research, scored review questions, and sound to create a self-paced active learning environment to teach legal research skills. Many of the tutorials also require the user's participation in navigating a variety of legal research database simulations.

The tutorials cover topics such as case law research, statutory research, regulatory research, legislative history, secondary resources, and international law research.

The project coordinators were Kumar Percy Jayasuriya, Sara Sampson, and Sara Kelley. The tutorial authors were Amy Burchfield, Sara Kelley, Margaret Krause, Barbara Monroe, Sara Sampson, and Amy Taylor.

An article about the project is featured in the September 2007 issue of the Edward Bennett Williams Friends Newsletter.

Sara Kelley wrote a short article about the project on page 17 of of the Fall 2007 issue of Law Library Lights.

During the Spring 2008 semester, the Law Library conducted a survey asking students to comment on various aspects of the library.  740 students responded, providing more than 1,500 separate responses. The Library is reviewing all feedback, and we plan to publish a detailed response during the summer. For now, we've posted several charts summarizing the results. View 2008 Survey Results on our website here.

One of the more interesting results from the survey is a list of reasons people come to our library.  The top reason is to study in a queit environment, followed by conducting research.  Beyond that, it's nice to know that people continue to use the library for more traditional uses, such as checking out books and getting reference assistance.

Restricted Access to the Georgetown Law Library for students not from the Georgetown Community will begin this Saturday, the 26^th and end Tuesday, May 13^th.

For Georgetown Law students, the Williams Library Reading Room will be open 24 hours each day starting April 21^st and will remain open throughout the exam period, ending on May 13^th.

Need some tips on finding legislative history documents? 

Drop by the Williams CLC at 11:30 am on Friday (2/1), and we'll walk through solving common legislative history requests.

Check out the other classes being offered throughout the Spring semester for Faculty Research Assistants here.

The Library would like to get feedback from first year students about the Library's legal research instruction.  The survey is available online.
While you will have to log-in to take the survey, we won't be able to track individual responses.