The law collection is in the Main Library (in the Wilkins building). It
is arranged in several sequences according to type:
Primary materials
Legislation and law reports are grouped by jurisdiction/country. Within each
of these sections legislation is shelved first followed by series of law
reports arranged alphabetically by title.
The sequence starts with England and Wales in the East room in the Law Library
and is followed by material from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland,
New Zealand and Scotland. US law reports are shelved away from the main law
section at the end of the History corridor on the first floor.
National materials are followed by material from the European Union (the Official
Journal of the European Communites and series of EU law reports),
and then international legal materials, including the United Nations
Treaty Series, United Kingdom Treaty Series and reports of
international law cases. There is a separate collection of Human Rights
material in room 113 at the start of the History corridor on the first
floor which includes series of reports of human rights cases.
Journals
Law journals are listed on the catalogue as LAW pers and are arranged alphabetically
by title in a single sequence in the galleries in the East and West rooms
of the Law Library. Current parts are shelved with back runs.
Law journals and primary materials can not be borrowed, but may be photocopied
in the Library. See the Library's web pages for information about photocopying.
Books
Textbooks and monographs are classified by subject and arranged on the shelves
in classified order. UCL has its own classification scheme which consists
of the name of the subject (indicating the collection and section of the
library) followed by letters and numbers denoting its subject and position
on the shelves.
The main sections of the law book collection are:
LAW A - Law generally, legal profession, statutory interpretation
LAW B - Jurisprudence
LAW B 50 - Law and medical ethics
LAW BS - Sociology of Law
LAW C - General Legal History
LAW D - English Legal History
LAW E - Public Law
LAW E 5 - E 10 - Constitutional law and politics
LAW E 20 - Administrative law
LAW E 27 - Civil rights
LAW E 32 - Tax law
LAW E 60 - English legal system
LAW E 65 - Police
LAW E 80 - Environmental law
LAW E 90 - Media law
LAW E 100 - Medical law
LAW F-G - Commonwealth and Foreign Public law
LAW H - Criminal Law
LAW J - Private Law
LAW J 10 - Civil procedure and evidence
LAW J 20 - Contract
LAW J 40 - Tort
LAW J 50 & J 60 - Commercial law, insurance, credit
LAW J 84 - Company law
LAW J 95 - Labour law
LAW J 102 - Land law
LAW J 150 - Equity, trusts, charities
LAW J 168 - Family law
LAW K - Commonwealth Private Law
LAW L - Conflict of Laws
LAW M - Foreign & Comparative Law
LAW M 24 - France
LAW M 25 - Spain
LAW M 27 - Italy
LAW M 32 - Germany
LAW M 76 - Australia
LAW M 77 - New Zealand
LAW M 82 - Canada
LAW M 81 - USA
LAW R - Roman Law
LAW W - International Law
LAW W 46 - International trade
LAW W 49 - International environmental law
LAW W 85 - United Nations
LAW W 100 - European Community law
Reference works are grouped together in a separate section
on the shelves immediately opposite the doors into the main part of the Law
Library at the end of the South corridor. This section includes dictionaries
of legal terminology and abbreviations, indexes to law reports, digests of
case law and legal developments including The Digest and Current
Law, case and legislation citators and general legal encyclopedias
including Halsbury's Laws of England.
Other sections of the Library which contain material of relevant to Law
are:
HUMAN RIGHTS (Main Library - South, room 113, 1st floor)
for national, international and comparative human rights and civil liberties
PUBLIC POLICY (Main Library - South, room 113, 1st floor)
for material on constitutional and administrative law, including Hansard
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Main Library - South, room 113,
1st floor) for material on international law
PHILOSOPHY (Main Library - Donaldson) for material relevant
to jurisprudence
HISTORY (Main Library - South, 1st floor) for material
on legal history
Environmental Studies Library (Bartlett School - Wates
House, 5th floor) for planning and construction law
CLINICAL SCIENCES, LIFE SCIENCES and medical library sites (Cruciform
Library, Science Library and medical library sites) for medical ethics and
bioethics
GEOGRAPHY (Science Library - 1st floor), ANTHROPOLOGY (Science
Library - 2nd floor) and ECONOMICS (Main Library - Donaldson)
collections also all contain relevant material.
Remember to use the Library's online catalogue eUCLid to
find out exactly where a specific item is held
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UCL staff and students have access to several databases of legal materials as detailed below. You will usually need your user id/password for Information Systems in order to gain access to them.
Full-text databases
Westlaw UK contains the full text of cases and legislation
from the UK, US and many other countries, as well as large range of journals
from the US and some from the UK. For a full list of contents see the 'Directory'
section of the database after logging in.
LexisNexis contains a similar range of full-text cases
and legislation as well as journals from the UK, US and other countries.
In addition it contains transcripts of selected unreported cases from the
higher UK courts from 1980 onwards and the contents of British and foreign
newspapers. To search for legal materials enter the 'Professional' section
of the database at the opening screen, and for news and company information
'Executive'.
The English Reports on CD-ROM contain the full-text of
this 170 volume reprint of pre-1865 cases. To access the database click on
the ELIB icon on the WTS desktop. You will need to enter your UCL userid
and password and select it from the A-Z list which appears.
Indexes and abstracts
Legal Journals Index indexes the contents of UK legal journals
from 1986 onwards. It is available as part of the Westlaw UK service.
Index to Legal Periodicals indexes US legal journals plus
the leading titles from the UK and other Commonwealth countries from 1978
onwards. It is available as part of the LexisNexis Professional service.
To find the database log in to LexisNexis Professional, click on 'Power Search'
and select it from the drop down menu in the 'Select source' box.
Westlaw UK includes infromation from the Current Law monthly
digest and case and legislation citators and as such can be used as an index
and citator for cases and legislation.
In addition to indexes specifically for law, there are a number of other
databases which include legal journals as part of more general coverage.
These sources can be particularly useful for identifying relevant material
in non-law publications. The most useful are:
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS),
indexes journal articles and book chapters in social science subjects including
anthropology, geography, economics and political sciences from 1951.
Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), indexes 1,175 social
science journals from 1981 via a service called Web of Knowledge.
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) covers 1,144
journals in the arts and humanities from 1975 onwards.
Electronic journals
A large range of law journals is now available via the web. For a complete
list of all the electronic journals available to UCL members see the e-journals
page on the Library's web site.
To look for a specific title, go to the alphabetical
list on the Library's web pages. You will also find details of the
access arrangements for each title.
A separate list of law titles is available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/ejournal/ejlaw.php.
Westlaw UK and Lexis both contain an extensive range of law journals (particularly
from the US). While most of these are listed on the UCL alphabetical list
of e-journals, it is advisable to check the detailed contents list for each
database if looking for a particular title, as the holdings are regularly
updated.
Exam papers
Copies of UCL examination papers for undergraduate courses (from 1997 onwards)
are available on the web at: http://exam-papers.ucl.ac.uk/Laws
Printed copies of the Law papers are available on the open shelves in the
South Corridor immediately outside the Catalogue Hall.
Other internet resources
For links to other web-based material for Law, see the web resource page at
http:www.ucl.ac.uk/Resources/Law/.
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The Institute of Advanced Legal
Studies (IALS) in Russell Square
is the legal research institute for the University
of London and has one of the best collections of foreign, international and
comparative legal materials in Britain. Access is restricted to postgraduate
students
and staff. UCL undergraduate students may be given access to IALS to consult
material not available elsewhere in the University of London if they have
a letter
of recommendation from their tutor or the UCL Law Librarian.
The Senate House Library (ULL) has an
extensive collection of British official publications and runs of some the
main legal journals. Access is available to all UCL staff and students.
The library of the London
School of Economics (LSE) is a depository
for the European Union, United Nations and the United States Government and
has extensive holdings of official publications from the UK and overseas. Reference
access is available to all UCL students. Borrowing may be possible for staff.
The Union List of Serials lists
the journal holdings for all parts of the University of London and is very
useful for locating journal
titles not held by UCL.
COPAC is a combined catalogue
of the holdings of the major research universities in the UK and as such can
be used to locate material not held
by UCL.
More information about using other libraries and links to other
library catalogues is available at; http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/otherlib.shtml.
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For Information about our Library Training Programme covering
use of the library, ejournals or specific databases - please see the following
page at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/infoskill.shtml or arrange individual tuition
with the Subject Librarian (contact details below).
If you have any problems in using the Library, come to the
Enquiry Desk, or ask for the subject librarian for Law:
Suzanne Traue
Main Library, South Corridor, Room 105
E-mail: s.traue@ucl.ac.uk
Telephone: internal: 32588; external: 020 7679 2588
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