Electronic Research

Lexis and Westlaw

New or Visiting Faculty:  Your liaison librarian will have already obtained Lexis and Westlaw passwords for you.  If you forget your Lexis or Westlaw password or are having problems accessing either database, contact your library liaison or call the Reference Office at ext. 8-1661.

Lexis and Westlaw Laser Printers:  The laser printers assigned to faculty Westlaw and Lexis passwords are located at the west end  of Storey Hall's second floor. 

CALI Exercises

The Law School Student password for CALI, which allows students to download the lessons, is available on the Research Databases page.     All computers in the Computer Lab are loaded with CALI lessons.

To obtain the Faculty password, contact your library liaison or the Reference Office at 8-1661.  This password, which should not be given to students, allows faculty greater access to CALI materials.  To learn more about CALI, visit their website at http://www.cali.org.

For more detail on using CALI, see the Law School Technology Guide at http://www.law.smu.edu/techweb/guide/cali.pdf.

PONI: SMU’s Library Catalog

PONI, at http://poni.smu.edu, the catalog of SMU's libraries, contains the holdings of all libraries on campus.  Through PONI you can also access numerous, generally non-legal, research databases, place interlibrary loan requests, and renew books charged to your library account.

For assistance using PONI, contact your liaison or call 8-1661.

Underwood Research Databases & E-Journals¹

The library subscribes to numerous online databases, which may be useful to your work.  These databases are listed on the Research Databases & E-Journals page at http://library.law.smu.edu/secure/.  A link to the page appears on the library’s home page.  In order to limit access to these subscription services to SMU law faculty and students, the page is accessible only from computers in the law school quad (that is, with the law school’s IP address) or from computers outside the quad via SMU’s Virtual Private Network (VPN).  For instructions for configuring your computer for VPN access, go to http://www.smu.edu/help/docs.

The Research Databases page includes passwords for the databases requiring them.  You can access these password-protected databases from off-campus using the database’s URL and password.  Resources not requiring a password are IP protected and so can only be reached from the law quad. 

Some of the more useful research databases include the following:

• LexisNexis Congressional
  
  LexisNexis Congressional, at http://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp/, is extremely useful for locating federal legislative history or following the progress of pending legislation.  In separate files, LNC covers the time periods 1789 – 1969 and 1970 – present.  While primarily an index, some of the documents issued during the last few years are available in full text online.  Underwood holds all of the documents from 1970 on as part of its CIS microfiche collection.  The library also holds selected pre-1970 documents and can obtain the remainder through other sources.

• Access UN
  
  Access UN, at http://infoweb.newsbank.com, indexes United Nations documents from 1948 to the present.  Some documents from recent years are available in full text.  The library holds many of the remaining documents in its microfiche and paper collections of UN materials.

• Official Document Service of the United Nations
  
  The United Nations Official Document Service, at http://www.ods.un.org.ods/ provides full text access to UN parliamentary documentation and official records for meetings of the Security Council, the General Assembly and its subsidiary bodies, the Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council, and for global conferences convened by the United Nations.  Comprehensive coverage begins in 1993, with selected coverage of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and Trusteeship Council since 1946.

• FirstSearch

FirstSearch, at http://firstsearch.oclc.org/FSIP,  includes:

WorldCat A catalog of books and other materials in thousands of libraries worldwide, along with Internet resources and

You can reach FirstSearch at the URL above while on campus and from off campus at
http://proxy.libraries.smu.edu:2048/login?url=http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org/FSIP.

We will be happy to borrow books for you that you find in WorldCat.  Contact your liaison librarian to place a request.  You may also use the online interlibrary loan request form at http://www.smu.edu/cul/ill/ILLiadindex.html.

• Eureka (Research Libraries Group)

Eureka contains the records of well over 100 million items held by research libraries and special libraries in the Research Libraries Group.  Please contact your liaison librarian if you wish to request an interlibrary loan of material found in Eureka or need assistance in using the service.

• Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals
  
  Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals covers legal periodicals from countries other than the U. S, Great Britain, or the British Commonwealth.  IFLP includes more than 560 legal periodicals, including journals, essay collections, and festschrifts from 1985 to the present.

•  LawTel EU
  
  LawTel EU provides full text access to European Union materials, including case law (ECJ & CFI), adopted and proposed legislation, Commission Reports, Notices, treaties, Merger Decisions, background information, press releases, along with abstracts from ten major EU legal journals.  Various access points to UK materials are also provided, including Westlaw UK, which is accessible using your SMU Westlaw password.

•  Other Useful Research Databases  

SMU Online Resources, at http://www.smu.edu/cul/or.  This web page links to a large number of databases which may prove useful in interdisciplinary research.  Subjects covered include the humanities, social sciences, science/engineering, and business.  Many of these databases are available courtesy of other SMU libraries that pay the subscription fees for the entire campus.

¹See also Current Awareness for electronic journals and legal periodical indices and tables of contents.