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Tuesday, June 21, 2011
From the Terrible News for Legal Scholarship Dep't.
Just got an email that bodes poorly for us misbegotten lovers of legal scholarship. Indeed, it sucks. Read it and weep:
After a distinguished, decades-long run, the law journals tables of contents current awareness service produced by the University of Texas Tarlton Law Library and the Washington and Lee University School of Law Library, Contents Pages from Law Reviews and Other Scholarly Journals, has ceased publication. This move was precipitated by the retirement of key personnel at Washington and Lee, resulting in that institution’s opting to end its participation in the joint project. Their decision affects both the domestic and the international services. We thank you for your support of the Contents Pages current awareness services offered through Tarlton, and welcome your feedback on how we can best meet your information needs. Barbara Bintliff, Joseph C. Hutcheson Professor in Law, Director of Research, Tarlton Law Library, Jamail Center for Legal Research, The University of Texas School of Law
Posted by Administrators on June 21, 2011 at 05:32 PM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink
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Comments
W&L's service did two things that other services don't, and that I depended on: customizable RSS feeds, and a link directly to journal websites that offer full-text downloads.
Posted by: Bruce Boyden | Jun 22, 2011 5:23:45 PM
I get Smart Cilp also but i have to say I don't like it nearly as much as the ones from Tarlton. I can't quite explain it. Maybe b/c it comes once a week instead of daily and so it seems terribly long? Maybe b/c it comes in rich text on my blackberry so I can't read it as easily--though that could be fixed no doubt. Maybe because selecting which journals and which subjects I want makes me less likely to come across something with the winds of serendipity at my back.
Not sure. Still, bring back my Texas Tarlton emails please!
Posted by: Dan | Jun 22, 2011 11:59:37 AM
Lee R. has some great alternatives - I use SmartCILP (http://lib.law.washington.edu/cilp/scilp.html, from UW's Gallagher Law Library). It is a great product.
Posted by: anon | Jun 22, 2011 11:06:40 AM
Neither of the following is exactly the same as the UT/Washington and Lee service, but either might help fill the gap.
SmartCILP (http://lib.law.washington.edu/cilp/scilp.html, from UW's Gallagher Law Library) lets subscribers set up email alerts for tables of contents of law reviews and for citations to articles on topics of their choosing.
HeinOnline will let you create an "eTOC Alert" for contents of most law journals, provided you set up a myHein login.
Neither of these is free, but most academic law libraries subscribe to one or the other (and probably both), so most law profs will have access without any additional charge. Check with the faculty services librarian at your school's law library to see what's available to you.
Lee Ryan
Reference Librarian
Zief Law Library
Univ. of San Francisco School of Law
Posted by: Lee Ryan | Jun 21, 2011 7:31:22 PM
It's news made more terrible by the fact that so many law review and journal home pages that purport to list past TOCs have not been updated in years.
It's also made more terrible by the fact that all the table of contents information was linked into W&L law journal rankings database--very useful for browsing content by speciality areas and inferring whether journals publish on time.
It'd be nice if Lexis and Westlaw could fill the void, assuming it would equivalently quick and convenient (even if login were required).
Posted by: anonanana | Jun 21, 2011 7:24:05 PM
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