Law Review

Step 1.  Use Lexis and Westlaw for cases, codes, regulations and law review articles.  You might want to search for these types of materials last since these will be easy to locate. Searching book titles in Lexis and Westlaw is also a good idea because many legal eBooks are available in these databases.

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Step 2. Next use HeinOnline.  HeinOnline has a wide range of primary legal materials, articles in hundreds of law reviews and historical government documents in PDF.  Coverage of law reviews in HeinOnline goes back much older than on Lexis or Westlaw. Other historical sources.

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Step 3. University Library Catalog: Use the UA Libraries Catalog.   Select the Author from the pulldown menu if you have an author.  Select the title if you have the title of the work. Search book titles or journal titles.  Do not search article titles in the online catalog. If you are not sure what the journal's abbreviation in the citation means, see the box below for Abbreviation Indexes.

• If the Law Library has the title, you will see the location and its availability.  
• If the University Libraries has the book, use the REQUEST button at the top of the catalog page to have the book delivered to the Law Library.  This process can take 3 business days.  If you are in a hurry, you can go to the libraries on campus and checkout the book.  You will have to go to Bierce Library for periodicals owned at Bierce Library.  

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Step 4. OhioLINK Library Catalog:  If you discover that the University of Akron does not own the material that you are searching for in the online catalog, click the SEARCH OHIOLINK button that displays in the catalog next to where your title should have been.  This does an automatic search of OhioLINK's Catalog using the same search criteria.  After opening the OhioLINK record, click the green REQUEST button to have the material sent to the Law Library.  This process can take 7 business days.  If you are in a hurry, you can go to any OhioLINK library and checkout the material.

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Step 5.  WorldCAT: If you cannot locate the material in OhioLINK, then you may want to double check the citation information.  There may be an error and you could be wasting your time looking for something that does not exist as it is cited.  Look up your author or title (of book or title of journal) in WorldCAT, which is a combined catalog of libraries from around the world.  After finding the material in this catalog, verify that you have the correct citation information.  This catalog also shows the number of libraries around the world that own the title.

• If you see that the work exists but is not available from OhioLINK libraries, proceed to number 6.
• If you cannot locate your material in WorldCAT, STOP and ask a librarian for help.  You cannot proceed at this point because something is wrong with the citation.

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Step 6.  Borrowing from out-of-state: use interlibrary loan.  If the University Libraries and OhioLINK do not own the material, you will have to request the material using the online interlibrary loan form.  The Law Library requests the material from out-of-state. The form can be used to request articles, books, book chapters, reports and conference papers.  This can take 10 business days.  Contact Tiffanie Nevins with questions about ILL requests. 

Related Links:

Incomplete or inaccurate citations cannot be processed by the interlibrary loan staff.

Interlibrary loan is not a research service. Staff at the supplying library will not conduct research to identify the document or article you are requesting.  Your interlibrary loan form will be rejected.

If you are having difficulty in determining the citation or identifying the work, get help from a librarian.

Searching Google and Google Scholar are an option, especially when you are trying to verify the citation. 

You might get lucky and find the material but be aware of who posted the material.  See this library guide on how to evaluate websites using information literacy skills.

1. Sometimes the links in Google take you to websites that try to sell you a copy of the article, even though the Law Library already has access to the material.  Google does not know what subscriptions the Law Library has.  

2. Some of the material found with Google Scholar are pre-publication articles (a draft) and are not the final version published in journals.  Do not use the draft copy.  You need the final version of the article for your research check.

Obtaining full text access:

• Google Scholar indicates the database where a copy of the article can be found.  The library subscribes to Jstor, Heinonline and many other databases.  When off campus, use the proxied links to these databases.  
• Use browser add-ons to get the fulltext of articles behind paywalls:  unpaywall.org, openaccessbutton