Faculty Services

Support for teaching, research, and scholarship is at the heart of Law Library service to our faculty. One of the support services that the library provides is the Library Faculty Liaison Program. We have three law librarians who are assigned to individual faculty members and administrative offices. Your liaison will help ensure that your general library and research needs are filled, including:

Acquiring and borrowing books and materials
Providing customized in-class or individual research instruction for your students
Using any of the library’s electronic databases and resources, including Westlaw and Lexis
Assistance with your research projects and answering general reference questions
Providing support and instruction for your research assistants
Routing of periodicals and current information services
Bringing to your attention new books, articles and electronic resources relevant to your interests

Denise Gibson, John Perkins, and Jim Walsh, serve as library liaisons to faculty members and administrators. The table at the end of this page provides the name of your librarian liaison as well as a short list of library staff whom you may also contact for assistance.

Teaching and Curriculum Support

ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar

Law School Survey of Student Engagement Annual Report 2009

Institute for Law Teaching and Learning: Gonzaga School of Law

Best Practice for Legal Education: A Vision and a Roadmap 2007
Available free on the CLEA web site. You can download the whole book or individual chapters in PDF.

William M. Sullivan, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (Carnegie Foundation Study - Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2007) aka as the Carnegie Report is available in the law library's Reserve collection and in the Walnut Wing, KF272.E38.

Madeleine Schachter, The Law Professor's Handbook, (Carolina Academic Press 2004). Copies in the Walnut Wing and on Reserve, KF272.S29.

The Law Teacher
Published twice a year by the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning, The Law Teacher is co-sponsored by the law schools at Gonzaga University and Washburn University.

Mercer Law School Adjunct Faculty Handbook

Mercer University Faculty Handbook

Adjunct Law Professor Listserv
Maintained by the ABA.

Washburn's List
Over 150 legal listservs maintained by Washburn School of Law.

Best Practices for Legal Education Blog
Blog on exchanging ideas on current reforms in legal education.

Law Professor Blogs Network
Network of web logs ("blogs") designed to assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching, i.e., Science and Law Blog, Statutory Construction Blog (by Mercer Law Professor David Hricik), Law School Innovation Blog, etc.

Legal Scholarship Blog
This blog features law-related Calls for Papers, Conferences, and Workshops, as well as general legal scholarship resources.

The Faculty Lounge Blog
Conversations about law, culture and academia.

Prawfsblawg
PrawfsBlawg (aka Prawfs.com) is a blog about a variety of topics related to law and life, which is operated by PrawfsBlawg LLC, a limited liability corporation based in Florida

Leiter's Law School Reports

beSpacific.com
Daily law and technology news with links to reliable primary and secondary sources on topics including: e-government, privacy, government documents, cybercrime and ID theft, the Patriot Act, freedom of information, federal legislation, legal research, KM, blogs, RSS and wikis.

The Volokh Conspiracy

Legal Blawgs Archive
Maintained by the Law Library of Congress since 2007.

Submitting Law Review Articles & Law Journal Information

Legal Scholarship Network
Legal Scholarship Network (part of the Social Science Electronic Publishing Network) is a free service that allows you to submit a paper to over 300 law reviews that allow electronic submission. You can send customized messages to each journal, and to submit to different journals at different times. To use eSubmission, you must first include your paper in the SSRN elibrary.

ExpressO
Berkeley Electronic Press provides electronic submission of articles to over 550 law reviews. The law school has an institutional account. The first time you use ExpressO, select Start Your Submission and Create a Free Account using your law school email address.

Notes:
ExpressO provides FAQ about the submission process.
ExpressO provides a list of law reviews that are temporarily full and not accepting submissions.
ExpressO 2007 survey of legal scholars who used the submission service in 2006.
ExpressO 2006 Top 100 Law Reviews.

Issues in Legal Scholarship
Provides a forum for discusson of seminal articles and important issues in legal scholarship, available through Berkeley Electronic Press.

LexOpus from working papers to published works
LexOpus is a free online law journal submissions system at Washington and Lee Law School offering two services to authors: 1) Authors can make their articles available to all interested law journals, inviting journals to make offers. Journals are able to limit by subject matter the articles that they see as open to offers. 2) Authors can make offers to a specific list of law journals. For non-peer-reviewed journals "short term" is one week. Author offers continue past each journal's exclusive period, on a non-exclusive basis, until rejected by the journal or withdrawn by the author, but any journal with an exclusive period always has acceptance priority. Authors can choose to both make a work "open to offers" and also to submit to specific journals, or do one or the other. As the system does permit uploading of revisions authors might make working papers open to offers and then, if no acceptable offers have been received, when the finished work is available submit that version to specific law journals. Authors can suppress their work from public view if that's desired. Website created and maintained by John Doyle, Associate Law Librarian at Washington and Lee Law School Library.

Law Journal Information
The basic purpose of this site is to allow authors to find journals by subject, country, or journal rank. Website created and maintained by John Doyle, Associate Law Librarian at Washington and Lee Law School Library.

Article Providing Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews and Journals
Available on SSRN. Article update by Nancy Levit and Allen Rostron on law review submissions/expedites and law review rankings from different sources for the summer and fall submission season. The first chart contains information about each journal’s preferences about methods for submitting articles (e.g., e-mail, ExpressO or regular mail), as well as special formatting requirements and how to request an expedited review. The second chart contains rankings information from U.S. News and World Report as well as data from Washington & Lee’s law review website.

Electronic Submission of Law Reviews (Chase College of Law)
Provides a list of law reviews which accept electronic submissions. Site also enables email submissions to multiple law reviews.

NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository
The NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository provides a free and persistent point of access for working papers, reports, lecture series, workshop presentations, and other scholarship created by faculty at NELLCO member schools. Powered by Berkeley Electronic Press technology, the aim of the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository is to improve dissemination and visibility of a variety of scholarly materials throughout the academic and legal research communities.

Bepress Legal Repository
Website from Berkeley Electronic Press which posts working papers and other materials from law schools, institutes, research centers, conferences and think tanks. Law schools can set up a collection of working paper series to be posted on this site for a fee. Mercer Law School has an insitutional account.

Jurist Legal Intelligence - Law Reviews
Jurist includes submission information, tables of contents and more.

LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews and Scholarly Legal Periodicals
A comprehensive listing of law reviews and legal periodicals compiled by Professor Michael H. Hoffheimer, University of Mississippi. The site also includes a directory of University Presses. In addition, articles about law reviews are located under the "Sources" link.

Tips on Publishing from Columbia Law School.

Google Scholar - Search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Tips on getting email alerts.

Google Book Search
Search and preview millions of books from libraries and publishers worldwide using Google Book Search. Google now includes a bookstore to shop for ebooks.

Findlaw's Directory of Law Reviews by Topic

Law School & Law Review Rankings

U.S. News World Report - Ranking of Top Law Schools

Analysis of biggest moves in U.S. News Report Law School Rankings for 2007 - By Tax Prof Blog.

Journal Rankings - Washington and Lee's Journal Rankings is a database which counted citations to journals in two large Westlaw databases: JLR (primarily U.S. journal and law reviews) and ALLCASES (U.S. federal and state cases). Faculty may choose to view the list arranged by journal title or by ranking.

100 Most Popular General Student Law Reviews and Top Law Reviews within the Most Popular Subjects from Berkeley Electronic Press's ExpressO are rankings based on how many articles were submitted to each journal through their online submission service.

Leiter's Law School Rankings Website
Designed as an alternative to the U.S. News & World Report ranking of law schools, this site seeks to provide a knowledgeable guide to the best law schools based on faculty quality, student quality, teaching quality and job placement. This website is a service of Law Professor Web Services, LLC, parent limited liability company of the Law Professor Blogs Network.

Per Capita Productivity of Articles in Top Journals, 1992 - 2009 - Roger Williams University School of Law Study.

Call for Papers, Conferences, & Upcoming Symposia

Legal Scholarhip Network Call for Papers and Conferences (get on the distribution list for LSN Professional Announcements and Job Openings.)

Legal Scholarship Blog
This blog is a collaborative effort from faculty and staff at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law. The blog features calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, with links to relevant websites and papers and it also contains an event calendar.

Upcoming Symposia
A list of current and upcoming symposia compiled by Professor Rick Bales, Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

AALS Workshops and Conferences

In addition to the above mentioned sources, faculty can follow listservs and blogs in their subject areas.

Copyright & Publisher Information

General information regarding copyrighted material and "fair use" of copyrighted material is available on the U.S. Copyright Office website. The Mercer University policy regarding copyright is available at Section 3.14 of the University Faculty Handbook.

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
The largest licenser of text reproduction rights in the world, the CCC was formed in 1978 to facilitate compliance with U.S. copyright law. CCC provides licensing systems for the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted materials in print and electronic formats throughout the world. The company currently manages rights relating to over 1.75 million works and represents more than 9,600 publishers and hundreds of thousands of authors and other creations. The Center also provides an online permission service.

Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center
Stanford University's web page provides a wide range of discussions pertaining to fair use, website permission and the public domain.

When Works Pass Into the Public Domain
A concise table from Univeristy of North Carolina simplifying the issue of when a copyright work is no longer covered by copyright restrictions based on its date of publication.

What Can You (Legally) Take From the Web?
Article by Kirk Teska in IEEE Spectrum Online, April 2008.

Publisher Directories and Information

Alibris
Rare books, out of print books, new and used (use this site if book unavailable on Amazon).

AbeBooks
Rare books, out of print books, new and used (use this site if book unavailable on Amazon).

AcqWeb's Directory of Publishers and Vendors
An international directory of publishers and vendors used by libraries with links to publisher Web sites and email addresses. It is primarily maintained for the benefit of the library community, in particular, acquisitions, collection development and serials librarians, but can be helpful to faculty as well.

American Association of Law Libraries - List of Legal Publishers and Vendors
Includes a Divested Titles List which identifies current publishers of titles whose original publishers have ceased to exist. Also includes Corporate Affiliations of Legal Publishers.

University Press Catalogs
Web page provides links to the catalogs of university presses from the Association of American University Presses.

Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instructions (CALI)

Legal Education Commons
The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), a non-profit consortium of law schools, is providing a Legal Education Commons where faculty can find and share legal education materials including syllabi, podcasts, presentations, and more. Faculty and librarians from CALI member schools can upload materials under a Creative Commons license that allows colleagues and students to find and use the materials.

CALI Classcaster
CALI's blogging and podcasting services

CALI Radio
Each week, CALI posts a podcast from law faculty on understanding key cases and tips on mastering different areas of the law.

Other Podcasts:

Podcasting News

Podcast Legal Directory

Legal Talk Network

American Association of Law School Podcasts of 2006 Annual Meeting Sessions - In collaboration with CALI, the AALS has posted the recordings of faculty presentations at AALS which involve cutting edge issues in legal scholarship. Faculty may find these materials useful in their upper-level seminar courses.

Westlaw Course Web Page System

If you wish to create a course web page utilizing either TWEN, the following information is provided to help get you started with the setup and maintainance of the course web page.

Westlaw TWEN

TWEN is a course home page system available to professors through the Westlaw system. Among the features of TWEN are:

Ability to post course syllabus and readings on the Web.
Ability to seamlessly link to the full-text of cases and law review articles availabe on the Westlaw system without concern about copyright clearance.
Create links to CALI lessons.
Create threaded forums for course participant interaction.
Create online quizzes.
Create faculty access levels, create co-teachers and invite guests into your course.
Access online teacher's manuals for many West Group casebooks.
View course usage statistics.
Archive a course.

Professor's Guide to TWEN - click here to obtain an instructional brochure on using TWEN.
Some things to consider before creating the course:

1. Do you want to password protect the page? (If you choose to password protect the page you will have to let your students know what the password is.)
2. Be cognizant of the registration date - do you want students to be able to access the page immediately or do you want to give yourself some time to work on the site?
3. What types of documents will you be posting and how do you want to organize them? (Document pages: Syllabus, Course Materials, etc.) Remember, you can always go back into TWEN and change your initial settings.

Additional Training

For TWEN assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week call 1-800-486-487 for general or technical assistance. For further follow-up, contact Denise Gibson, Assistant Law Librarian for Research Services.

Librarian Liaison Assignments

Denise Gibson Assistant Law Librarian for Research Services	John Perkins Reference Services Librarian	Jim Walsh Reference Services Librarian
Claxton	Adams	Armstrong
Creswell	Baldwin	Blumoff
Feinberg	Dantzler	Cole
Floyd, D	Fleissner	Floyd, T
Griffin	Hunt	Gerwig-Moore
Hricik	Jellum	Johnson
Lamparello	Jones	McCann
Longan	Lewis	Oedel
Moses	Moore	Ritchie
Painter-Thorne	Peterman	Sheppard
Sabbath	Titshaw	Wells
Sammons	Watson	Williams
Simson
Sneddon
Adjuncts not otherwise assigned
Registrar Patsy Crammer	Admissions & Financial Aid Marilyn Sutton Leah Aiken	Career Services Stephanie Powell Hope Martin Jenia Bacote
Associate Director of Development and Director of Alumni Affairs Leslie Cadle Director of Development TBA	CLE Coordinator Nancy Terrill	Dean's Office Mary Donovan Michael Dean
Director of Communications and Marketing Billie Brooke Frys

General Library Contacts

You may also contact the following staff members for assistance.

Acquisitions	Contact	Or, if unavailable contact...
To order books, tapes, or software to support your research	Suzanne (2665)	Ismael (5904)
To check status of a previously placed order	Ethel (2668)	Ismael (5904)
To request certain material be routed to you	Lynn (2988)	Ismael (5904)
Circulation, Interlibrary Loan, Reserves	Contact	Or, if unavailable contact...
To have material checked out to you and sent to your office	Susan (2612)	Michelle (2613)
To borrow research material or request photocopies from other libraries (Interlibrary Loan)	Michelle (2613)	Susan (2612)
To place materials on reserve for your courses	Michelle (2613)	Susan (2612)
To have material photocopied	Your secretary
To arrange for your research assistant to make photocopies in the library	Susan (2612)	Michelle (2613)
To inquire about policies for circulation, interlibrary loan, and reserve	Suzanne (2665)
Classroom Technology and Media Services	Contact	Or, if unavailable contact...
To provide assistance with classroom technology	Chris Osier (2183)	Chris Bombardo(2182)
To request AV or classroom technology equipment	Chris Osier (2183)	Chris Bombardo(2182)
Reference and Research Services	Contact	Or, if unavailable contact...
To ask a general reference question	Reference Desk (2334)	Your Librarian Liaison or Denise
To ask a research question or assistance with an ongoing research project	Your Librarian Liaison	Denise (5905)
To request a librarian to teach legal research sessions as part of your class	Suzanne (2665)	Your Librarian Liaison
To inquire about your Lexis and Westlaw account, TWEN, passwords, Westlaw and Lexis printers, and general information about Westlaw and Lexis services	Send an e-mail message to Denise Gibson gibson_dm@law.mercer.edu or call 5905.	Suzanne (2665)
To request assistance with using Lexis, Westlaw, the Internet and other online research applications for yourself, your research assistant, or as part of your class	Your Librarian Liaison	Denise (5905)
To request a library tour or orientation for yourself or your research assistant	Your Librarian Liaison	Denise (5905)
To inquire about polices for reference and research services	Denise (5905)	Suzanne (2665)
To inquire or provide suggestions about the law library website, the Faculty Services web pages, or the Faculty Library Liaison program	Denise (5905)	Suzanne (2665)