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Textbooks | Course Requirements | Grading Policy
Students must self-enroll for this course on Blackboard during these dates:
You will be required to use a password access code which I will provide using MYSJSU Messaging system prior to May 20.
Course Description
This course will introduce information professionals and those aspiring to be information professionals to the basic legal resources for the federal legal system and the State of California legal system. The course will cover those resources that are likely to be of interest to legal professionals and the general public, particularly people visiting Public Libraries and Public Law Libraries.
The course is designed for information professionals with little or no familiarity with legal resources, but who have an interest in learning about these resources to be able to help other people, library patrons, find legal information.
The emphasis will be on answering legal resources questions that one is likely to receive at a reference desk in a public library.
Course Objectives
The fundamental objective of this course is for the student to learn the basic resources that both lawyers and non-lawyers are likely to need and use when seeking out legal information and are therefore likely to ask information professionals for assistance in finding.
In pursuit of this objective, the student will:
- Learn the federal and state governmental units that make primary law and the type of primary law they make;
- Learn how to identify the major types of primary law and secondary authority for both federal and state jurisdictions;
- Learn where the nearest brick-and-mortar law library is and how to find materials in it;
- Learn how to use online resources – both “free” and “pay-for-view” resources – in locating legal information;
- Learn the major print, online, and pay-for-view sources for legal information;
- Learn how to find – in print, in pay-for-view databases, and on “free” Web sites - the major types of primary law and secondary authority for both federal and state law;
- Learn how to answer questions from patrons about basic legal resources and direct those patrons to the best sources for legal information;
- Learn the relative merits and shortcomings of in print, online, and pay-for-view sources for legal information;
- Learn strategies for developing search terms for using “finding tools” in print, online, and pay-for-view databases for legal information;
- Research, write, and produce a guide to a specific area of law (a “pathfinder”) that could be utilized by patrons needing legal information.
This course supports the following SLIS objectives:
- Teaching students the major theories, important principles, and current practice in the following areas:
- Information transfer, specifically, legal information;
- Advocacy and leadership for citizen access to information and knowledge resources, which are especially critical because they involve the legal system in which citizens are involved, often in crisis situations;
- The School fosters service through
- Providing opportunities for interested students throughout California to take courses from an ALA-accredited degree program closer to their homes and places of work.
- The course furthers the School’s leadership role through
- Taking advantage of new information and communication technologies.
- Developing distance learning opportunities throughout California.
- Creating and facilitating lifelong education.
Textbooks
Required Text
Steven Elias & Susan Levinkind, Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law (10th edition or later) Berkeley: Nolo Press.
Recommended Texts
Many texts on legal research and the legal system are in print. Any one of them published in the past 5 years would probably provide additional help but I do not recommend that you spend lots of money on any other text other than the required one.
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Course Requirements
- The student will take five online, timed quizzes worth 40 points each. These quizzes will be posted every 2 weeks. While quizzes may be somewhat unusual in a graduate course, they are designed with a specific purpose in mind – answering reference questions – and will involve not just rote learning but actual hands-on familiarity with legal resources.
- The idea of the “quiz” is to represent as well as possible in the print format the type of reference question one might receive at a reference desk and for which one would be expected to have a relatively “ready” answer. Several of these quizzes, however, may be somewhat unusual in that to answer the quiz one will have to first complete a research assignment, usually in a “brick and mortar” law library. The quizzes in the aggregate will be worth 200 points.
- The student will also complete a “Pathfinder” paper that focuses on a particular legal topic and gathers together references to the major legal resources – in print, in pay-for-view databases, and in “free” online sources – pertaining to that topic. This Pathfinder will be due on August 5, 2005, a week prior to the final day of class. The Pathfinder assignment will be worth 100 points.
Plagiarism
All assignments submitted must be your own work. Sources must be properly cited in papers as specified in class.
Academic Integrity
Read the SJSU Academic Integrity Policy
http://www2.sjsu.edu/senate/S04-12.pdf
Reasonable Accommodation of Disabilities
Students who need accommodation due to a disability must register with SJSU's Disability Resource Center (DRC) during the first three weeks of the semester. The Center will work with the students to determine the disability, document it, and determine the services and accommodations necessary for student success. Then, the DRC will contact the faculty member to determine the types of consideration necessary.
Students attending the Fullerton campus should first contact the Disability Resource Center in San José since they are SJSU students. The DRC will then direct the students to supporting resources on the Fullerton campus.
The DRC Web site: http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/
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Grading Policy
Three-hundred (300) points will be available for the course work. The person receiving the highest number of these 300 points will receive an A+.
Students earning less than the highest number of points achieved, will be graded as follows:
| 95% - 99% |
A |
| 90% - 94% |
A- |
| 85% - 89% |
B+ |
| 80% - 84% |
B |
| 75% - 79% |
B- |
| 70% - 74% |
C+ |
| 65% - 69% |
C |
| 60% - 64% |
C- |
| 55% - 59% |
D+ |
| 50% - 54% |
D |
| 45% - 49% |
D- |
| Below 45% |
F |
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