University of Maryland School of Law : Catalog, 1988-1989

One wing of Lane Hall houses
classrooms, the Moot Court, administrative
offices, student lounge
and lockers and the coffee bar.
The second wing is used for faculty
offices and the Clinical Law Program,
which includes work areas
for student "practitioners," four law
offices and a courtroom. The law
offices and courtroom are equipped
with remote control video equipment
which permits (with client
permission) videotaping of students'
lawyering activity for later
critique and learning.
The campus has since January
1965 attempted to identify and
eliminate as rapidly as possible and
wherever feasible physical barriers
and safety hazards to handicapped
persons involving campus buildings,
parking spaces and other facilities.
Thurgood Marshall Law Library.
The law library, with its collection
of over 250,000 volumes, is the
largest in the state of Maryland
and is a major resource for the faculty
and students of the law
school, as well as for members of
the state bar. Opened in 1981, the
facility is attractive for study purposes
and has a convenient arrangement
which maximizes effective
use of the collection.
In addition to a virtually complete
collection of all Maryland
legal materials, the library contains
the reported decisions of the highest
courts of all the states and most
of the lower court reports, as well
as all current statutory compilations.
A large collection of legal
periodicals, treatises and looseleaf
services supplements the primary
source material. An impressive foreign
law section is particularly
strong in French and German primary
and secondary sources. The
library is a depository for federal
documents and contains an expanding
collection of microtexts
such as U.S. Supreme Court records
and briefs, Congressional
hearings and other materials for
tracking legislative histories.
The law library has a number
of computerized systems including
an online catalog and circulation
system; LEXIS and WESTLAW
(computerized legal research systems);
personal computers available
for student use of word processing,
computer-assisted instruction programs
and other software; and access
to a wide variety of external
data bases. Besides having a large
collection of video and audio
tapes, the library renders curriculum
support through extensive
video-taping of law classes and of
client interviews handled by students
associated with the school's
Clinical Law Office.
The library staff has an active
teaching role, including an introduction
to legal research for firstyear
students (both traditional
sources and computerized research)
and advanced research for upperclass
students. An interlibrary loan
service is available to assist students
and faculty in obtaining
books from the excellent general
research libraries in the area. The
professional librarians are an integral
part of the considerable faculty
and student research occurring at
the law school, and also produce a
variety of subject bibliographies
and research guides.
The library is open days, evenings
and weekends throughout
the year, with the exception of certain
national holidays.
The Nathan Patz Library Fund
and a general library endowment
fund are available to enhance the
collection.
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