See:
Bloomberg Law, Health: In Focus: Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Bloomberg Law also allows subscribers to receive alerts from its legal newsletter: Coronavirus Outbreak
Health Affairs, click link: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION > Topic: COVID-19
Lexis+, Complimentary Coronavirus Resources
Westlaw, Covid-19 Legal Materials & News
The New York Times, The Covid-19 Pandemic
Also, members of the BLS community who choose to create FT.com accounts can receive FT Coronavirus Business Update.
You automatically have summer access to Lexis. You can use your account for both school work and your internship. Check the Lexis for Law School homepage for information on upcoming trainings and workshops. Graduating students have access to their accounts until February 28, 2022.
For Bloomberg Law, you can continue to use your account over the summer without interruption. This access is granted automatically. Graduating students will have access to their account until June 21, 2022.
You can continue to use your Westlaw account for summer research. If you are interning at a firm, be sure to check with them first. You may need to use a different account for billing purposes.
To help you begin your career as a practicing attorney, the Brooklyn Law School Library’s “Practice-Ready” program from Westlaw provides you with continued access to Westlaw and other practice tools for 18 months after graduation, for up to 60 hours each month, including use for work-related research.
To access these products, all you have to do is enroll in Westlaw’s “Grad Elite” program. Simply log in to your existing Westlaw account and you will receive a pop-up message to confirm your enrollment.
In addition to Westlaw and Practical Law, you also have access to these practice tools:
Drafting Assistant Essential
Westlaw Doc & Form Builder
Practical Law Connect
Learn more about these products and others, including how to access and support, by visiting the Practice Ready Landing Page.
Recent grads should check out our Affordable Legal Resources research guide.
Good luck with your summer research! BLS librarians are here to help.
BLS students: you can register FOR FREE to attend the online International Law Weekend 2020 (Oct. 22-24, 2020). This year’s meeting theme is: International Law in Challenging Times. On this page, click: Full Schedule of Speakers to view the complete schedule of events. The opening panel will discuss current challenges on Thursday at 2 pm. Both Surveillance, Privacy, and Human Rights: The Outlook for 2021 and Intellectual Property and COVID-19 in International Law will follow on Thursday in the 3:30 pm program time slot. Asylum in Crisis: Upholding Human Rights During a Pandemic will occur on Friday at 10:30 am. Participate in International Law Trivia on Friday afternoon… On Saturday at 9 am, sip your pumpkin spice coffee while enjoying the keynote address of H.E. Judge Julia Sebutinde, International Court of Justice. The Pathways to Careers in International Law panel also will occur on Saturday at 11:30 am. After this career program, there will be a career networking session sponsored by ILSA. Then, attend one of the “hot topics” panels.
A BLS student, faculty member or administrator who has implemented the BLS proxy instructions now has off-campus access to 180+ treatises, handbooks and treaty commentaries in Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law (OSAIL). (In BLS Library’s SARA catalog record for OSAIL, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION-OXFORD.) This e-collection includes recently published handbooks, such as: The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration, The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law and The Oxford Handbook of International Cultural Heritage Law. It contains noted treatises, such as Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law (9th ed.). It provides treaty commentaries, ranging from The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (3rd ed.) to The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol: A Commentary. Paper-writing students: if you click Title List near the top right of the screen, you will see OSAIL’s e-books listed by category, such as: Environmental Law, Human Rights Law and Use of Force/Humanitarian Law.
Q: What do International Law Weekend 2020 and OSAIL have in common?
A: At 9:30 am on United Nations Day (Saturday, Oct. 24), International Law Weekend 2020 will offer a United Nations 75th Anniversary Plenary Panel. To commemorate the United Nations’ 75th anniversary, OSAIL is providing a FREE (until Nov. 30, 2020) collection of articles and chapters about “the role of the UN in international law over the past 75 years, and its significance to the development of global human rights and international peace and security.”
The first day of summer was June 21, and heading into July it sure feels like summer! For those of you sticking around BLS to study, the Library will be open 9am-12pm every day but Sunday (10am-12pm). The Library will be open from 9am-5pm on July 4th. Reference Services will not be available for those days.
As the count down to the bar begins, please remember to take care of yourselves! A good night’s sleep is valuable as we get closer. If you need a brief distraction, games and puzzles are available. Ask the Reference Librarian on duty for more information!
The first floor of the Library remains closed this for construction. Circulation, Reference, and Reserve services will be on the 3rd floor of the Library, near the internal staircase. Printing and scanning services will also be available on the third floor. If you have questions, you can always, Ask the Library.
Bloomberg Law has made significant enhancements to their citator, BCite, available on BloombergLaw.com:
“The enhanced Bloomberg Law Citator (BCite) makes it easier to navigate the content related to a case and to find related documents across all of Bloomberg Law. BCite now features separate tabs for the Direct History, Case Analysis, and Table of Authorities and provides expanded filtering options designed specifically for related tasks. For instance, the Direct History tab includes filter options for History, Court, and Date, while the Case Analysis and Table of Authorities tabs add filters for Analysis, Case Status, Citation Frequency, Court, and Judge. The new Citing Documents tab provides the ability to find documents citing to your court opinion across many content sets, including court materials, administrative and regulatory documents, legislative content, and secondary sources, like books, treatises, and BNA analysis.”
Users can now easily see all documents, including secondary sources, that cite to a particular case, and filter or search within those citing documents. Remember that BloombergLaw.com is free for all BLS students with no academic use restriction. Your passwords will be active until the end of the calendar year in which you graduate.
For questions on how to access or use BloombergLaw.com, see a Reference Librarian, or contact our BLS Bloomberg Relationship Manager, Erica Horton (ehorton@bna.com).
For when New York City has more rain than shine…umbrellas are back and available to borrow in the library! We have been fortunate enough to receive replacements for the original Bloomberg umbrellas, courtesy of LexisNexis. There are currently 6 umbrellas that can be checked out from the library’s Circulation Desk for 24 hours. So the next time you see rain pouring down as you leave class for the day, stop by and borrow one – you can bring it back the next day.
In addition to umbrellas, remember that we have lots of useful things available to borrow besides books – USB drives, laptop locks, headphones, and dry erase markers. If you have suggestions for other items you might be interested in having available for loan in the library, please let us know.
Virtually every library database available to you on campus can also be accessed from home, most without a password (with the exception of BloombergLaw, Westlaw, and Lexis – they always require passwords). However, in order to access databases such as HeinOnline, Academic Search Premier, and other useful resources without coming all the way to school, you must first implement the Proxy Server Instructions so that you are communicating with these websites via the BLS server. Instructions for the browsers that work best with these databases can be found on the law school’s website. Please note that once you set up the Proxy Server, you will be required to enter your BLS Username and Password each time you attempt to access the web on the selected browser. Therefore, you may want to use a browser different from the one you normally use for web browsing.
If you have any difficulty setting up your browser using these instructions, feel free to stop by the Reference Desk and a librarian will be happy to assist you.
The Library recently installed a second mobile charging station. This charging station is in Library room 104M, which is our lounge for students. It is to the left as you enter the room and is a gift from Westlaw. The first charging station is on the ground floor and was described in the Library blog of July 3, 2013.
These charging stations are for cell phones and tablets only. When using either charging station, remember to sit nearby while your device charges. The Library is not responsible for unattended devices.
This week Brooklyn Law School’s Library instituted a new chat reference service. The service is accessible through the Library’s
BLSConnect page, and is available for Brooklyn Law School’s students, faculty, and staff.
Librarians are available to chat during regularly scheduled reference hours. Reference librarians attempt to respond to instant message questions as quickly as possible. If you do not get a response back, please leave your email address or phone number, and someone will get in touch with you as soon as possible.
The service is best suited for short, fact-based questions and general questions on finding the relevant resources for a given topic. If you have a more detailed question, we may encourage you to arrange a meeting with a reference librarian, or to stop by the reference desk during our normal reference hours.
Reference Hours
| Monday | 9:00am-8:00pm |
| Tuesday-Thursday | 9:00am-9:00pm |
| Friday | 9:00am-6:00pm |
| Saturday | 9:00am-5:00pm |