Annual Report 2006-2007 - Osgoode Hall Law School - York ...

LAW LIBRARY
Staffing
Four new professional librarians were hired in 2006. Judy
Ginsberg, Special and Retrospective Collections Librarian,
retired in December 2006, and Kathy Copping retired as
Cataloguing Assistant in April 2007. The library is in the
process of hiring a replacement for the position of
Cataloguing Assistant.
Library Use
The gate count for this year is shown in Table 4 and Figure 1.
Library loans figures continue to drop compared to the last
academic year. This is because patrons tend to consult a lot
of materials online.
The number of materials borrowed by the library through
interlibrary loans continues to increase as shown in Table 2.
Similarly the trend indicated in the type of requests made
shows an increasing demand for materials in the following
areas: economics, finance, banking, social issues and human
rights. There is a continuous demand for materials related to
terrorism, religious freedom and multiculturalism. Eighty per
cent of requests are for materials published in the United
States and outside North America. There was also an
increasing demand for materials not available online.
The interlibrary loan database RACER continues to be highly
used especially by undergraduates.
Library Collection
The acquisitions budget continues to be insufficient for
building the collection. A total of 830 new monograph titles
and 22 new serial titles were acquired with a total of 907
monograph volumes and 2,112 serial volumes were added
to the collection.
The following databases were added to the library’s
collection in the past year:
• CariLaw (legislation and case law from Caribbean
jurisdictions)
• Current Index to Legal Periodicals (A current awareness
service of journal articles)
• English Reports 1220 – 1865 (A searchable database
containing over 100,000 cases available through
HeinOnline)
• Isinolaw (Legislation of the People’s Republic of China in
Mandarin and English)
• Kluwer Arbitration Online
• Manupatra (A comprehensive database containing Indian
legal and business information)
• Takdinet (A Hebrew database providing access to over
200,000 cases and legislation)
• UN Treaties
• World Trade Online
• WorldTradeLaw.Net
A total of 211 DVDs were added to the Barbara Scott Legal
Fiction Collection of the library.
See Appendix A for library holdings break down.
In September 2006, the Law Library spearheaded the
negotiation for campus wide access to LexisNexis/Quicklaw
with the York University Libraries. This service provides access
to Canadian legal information available in the database. This
reduces the burden on the Law Library in providing legal
information to non-law users in the York community.
Bibliographic and Reference Services
A total of 75 bibliographic instructions were organized by the
Reference Department, 48 of which were for law students
and faculty and a total of 1499 attended compared to 975 in
2005-06. A number of these instructional sessions were for
Upper Year courses and the Perspective Option courses.
E-mail reference continues to be very popular with library
patrons. A total of 560 e-mails were answered in the past
year. See Appendix D for details.
Part-Time LLM Program
Marianne Rogers presented a one-hour “Introduction to
Research in the Law Library” to each of the new Part-Time
LLM courses: Family, Civil Litigation and Health in the Fall
term, and Criminal, ADR, Municipal and Constitutional in the
Winter term. These classes included the students in the
General stream. She also answered reference and password
questions by e-mail and telephone from new and continuing
Part-Time LLM students. On an overload basis, she taught the
half-day library research component of three Research
Methods Workshop courses in November, January and March.
Physical Facilities
The front entrance walls have been taken down while
purpose built display racks have been set up for the display
of new journals.
Current Journals Display
The library atrium garden has been renovated. Benches,
tables and chairs are now available for the use of library
patrons and it is a favorite spot in good weather.
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OSGOODE HALL LAW SCHOOL