Law Library 101: Using Your Law Library to be a Successful Law Student
Introduction
Law Libraries are different from other types of libraries because part of the actual practice of law takes place in them. The librarians at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library prepared this guide to introduce first year students to the language and structure of their new laboratory and to familiarize them with some of the most basic elements of legal research.
| Law Libraries in General: |
Mission of the Academic Law Library
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| Legal Materials: |
Where and How to Find Court Cases
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| Law Library Operations: |
Law Libraries in General
What Is a Law Library?
Law libraries consist of print and/or electronic resources that pertain to the law, as well as librarians who help patrons find information. Research Services librarians can help patrons find the legal information they need. Law libraries also offer circulation, interlibrary loan and other services. See Law Library Operations, below. A law library web site offers electronic research guides and helps to organize legal information available on the Internet.
Mission of the Academic Law Library
The primary mission of the academic law library is to serve the needs of law school students and faculty. Besides legal research materials, the academic law library provides study aids, bar preparation materials and career information for students. The library also collects some materials from other disciplines, (for example, medicine, history and criminology,) which will assist law students and faculty with their research projects. A law library collection's strengths often focus on the law professors' research interests. Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library, for example, has collection strengths in Constitutional Law, Islamic Law, Labor Law, Fair Employment Practices, Ohio Law and Practice, Health Law, Bioethics, and Urban Law.
Legal Materials
Types of Legal Materials
When starting legal research, it is helpful to ask yourself:
- Do I want to start by looking at primary or secondary resources?
- Does my research pertain to a particular jurisdiction?
- Do I prefer the results in print or electronic form?
- Would it be more efficient to start with print or electronic resources?
- Is the source official or unofficial?
- Is there a cost for using the database?
Primary or Secondary:
Primary law is the text of the law created by authoritative bodies. Primary law consists of constitutions, statutes, court cases and administrative regulations and administrative decisions. Primary law is often referred to as "the law itself". Secondary sources, such as law review articles and legal encyclopedias, comment upon, analyze or explain primary law. Often it is helpful to start your research with secondary sources, because they indicate which primary sources may apply and discuss the law in a particular area. Secondary resources are discussed later in this article. For more information, see CALI Lesson: Introduction to Secondary Resources.
Resources Pertaining to a Specific Jurisdiction:
The federal government and individual state governments each make their own laws and regulations and maintain their own court systems. Local governments, which derive their authority from the state government, also produce primary law resources. Foreign legal resources and the law of international organizations constitute other jurisdictional collections of legal materials. A secondary legal resource, such as a treatise, may attempt to cover all U.S. jurisdictions, or only one. Primary resources typically cover one jurisdiction.
Sometimes it is not clear whether to apply the law of one particular jurisdiction or another. The branch of law dealing with what jurisdiction's laws to apply is known as "conflict of laws".
Print or Electronic:
Books and journals produced on paper are considered print materials. Microforms, which can be microfiche or microfilm, are referred to as print or tangible mediums. Electronic materials include databases (which may be paid for or free) accessible via the Web, and CD-ROMs. Library videocassettes, DVDs and audiotapes are other forms of electronic media. For a good discussion of whether searching in print or online is optimum, see "Electronic Resources or Print Resources: Some Observations on Where to Search", Bintliff, Barbara, 14 Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing 1, Fall 2005. The per search or hourly cost of an electronic resource may also be a factor in deciding whether to use print or electronic, as discussed below. Additionally, not all materials are available in electronic form.
Official v. Unofficial
Primary law can be "official" or "unofficial". Official means that statutes, cases etc. are governmentally mandated or approved by statute or rule. Free state statutes on the web rarely are the official version. If there is a discrepancy between what is on the web and the official version, the official version prevails. Print resources may also be unofficial.
A document can be "authenticated" or "unauthenticated". Authenticated means that a government entity has verified the content. Once a print document is authenticated, it likely can not be change without the alteration being obvious. Electronic resources can be corrupted or tampered with, and any such change will not be obvious. Authentication of an electronic resource may involve digital signatures, digital watermarks, public key infrastructure or other methods to protect the data. Currently, there are no state primary resources on the web which are official and authenticated. See Matthews & Baish, State-by-State Authentication of Online Legal Resources, American Association of Law Libraries, 2007.
Free v. Fee:
When using any of the resources in the law library for educational use, you will not be charged for database use. However, you should get into the habit of using legal resources in a cost efficient manner. When you get a part-time or permanent job at a law firm or government agency, electronic searches on LexisNexis or Westlaw may be paid for on a per search basis (transactional) or an hourly basis. Even if the database is within the law firm's "all you can eat" or "flat rate" plan, some firms bill the search charges to the clients. You may decide to start your research with print resources or free electronic databases available on the Web to avoid or lessen database charges. For more information, see Efficient and Cost Effective Legal Research.
Where and How to Find Court Cases
- Sources for finding cases
- How to find cases when the citation is known
- How to find cases when party names are known
- How to find cases pertaining to a particular subject or issue
- Determining Court Level or Hierarchy
- Determining Precedential Value
What is a "case"?
Courts and judges rule on controversies and often write opinions explaining their decisions. The lawsuit is called a "case" and the written opinion is often called a "case" too. Some lawsuits, particularly at the state trial court level, may not result in a written opinion. In this article, when we are talking about a "case", we will be talking about written opinions.
Where can I find cases?
Cases can be found in print "reporters". Series of reporters, such as Northeastern Reporter or Federal Reporter, contain many thousands of cases arranged in chronological order. There are also case reporters that collect cases on specific topics. For example, United States Patent Quarterly covers intellectual property cases, including patent, trademark, copyright and trade secrets; while the reporter series Federal Rules Decisions collects cases dealing with the Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure.
Decisions from these reporters may appear in electronic services such as LexisNexis, LexisNexisNexis Academic, Westlaw, Casemaker (available via OSBA membership; membership is free to law students.) and Fastcase (Available via membership in the Cleveland Bar Association.) Electronic services may also contain "unreported" or "unpublished" cases, which do not appear in print reporters. For a discussion of the meaning of "reported" and "unreported" decisions in both Ohio and federal courts, see Ohio Legal Research Guide - Ohio Courts.
Sometimes cases, particularly more recent cases, may be found for free on the web. Cases can be found on courts' web sites, either in an opinion database or via a court's docket. For more information on dockets, see Resources for Online Court Dockets and Ohio Legal Research Guide: Dockets. For links to free cases on the web, go to: Internet Legal Research - Case Law.
How do I find cases using a case citation?
If you have a case citation, such as Shaffer v. Frontrunner, Inc., 57 Ohio App. 3d 18 (1990), you will find the case at the print Volume 57 of the Ohio Appellate Reports, third series, at page 18. Electronic databases, such as LexisNexis or Westlaw, typically provide a "search by citation" box to type in the citation. For more information on finding an Ohio case using a case citation, go to How to Find an Ohio Case in the Law Library.
For help interpreting case citations, see Cleveland Marshall Law Library Publications: How to Read a Legal Citation.
For guides to legal abbreviations, see: SIU Law Library's Common Legal Abbreviations, Cardiff's Index to Legal Abbreviations, and Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations, KF246 .P74 2001
Finding a Case with the Party Name(s):
Particularly if the party names are common, such as "State v. Jones", you are going to need more information to find the case, such as the jurisdiction, date range, and/or subject matter of the case.
Electronic:
- LexisNexis: Select "Get a Document", Select "By Party Name", type in party name(s), select jurisdiction (if you know it) and date range (if you have one).
- LexisNexisNexis Academic: use: Get a Case by Party Name
- Westlaw: Click on "Find a Case by Party Name", type in party name(s), select jurisdiction (if you know it) and date range (if you have one).
- Ohio Supreme Court’s web site : Reporter of Decisions, Opinions and Announcements (for Ohio Supreme Court cases decided 1992 to date; cases from appellate and other courts vary) Use Full-text option.
In print:
- Use the Table of Cases volume in a West's Digest set, such as West’s Ohio Digest or West's Federal Practice Digest.
- A legal encyclopedia may contain a table of cases, for example Ohio Jurisprudence 3d (selective).
How to Find a Case on a Particular Subject or Issue:
A legal researcher will try to find cases that are similar to the facts at hand, in order to use them as precedent or distinguish them. Cases on a particular subject matter or issue can be found using secondary sources, or by using a full text electronic search of primary sources, or by a combination of both methods.
(1) Using secondary sources to find relevant cases:
- Digests contain brief summaries of the case rulings arranged in a topical order, and contain subject indexes to help a researcher navigate the arrangement.
- Encyclopedias expand upon the digest concept, discussing areas of law arranged by topic and citing to case law supporting the text.
- Treatises or practice books provide an in depth discussion of a particular area of law, and cite to relevant statutes and case law.
- Annotated statutes or administrative codes list summaries of cases pertaining to each statute or rule. The annotated statutes and codes also list articles or other secondary sources relevant to each statute or rule.
- Citators, such as Shepard's Citations or West's KeyCite allow researchers to find all the cases that have cited a particular case. This approach helps researchers find new cases, and it also tells them whether there are new cases that have affected the value of an old case, perhaps by overruling it.
For more help, see Ohio Legal Research Guide - Secondary Sources.
These secondary sources are available in electronic form, as well as print. Sometimes the electronic format will provide a table of contents and/or an index, so searching may be similar to using the books. The electronic format allows for full text searching of a secondary source, and may allow searching the text of multiple secondary sources at once. Always remember to consider the cost factor in deciding whether to search electronically or in print.
(2) A researcher can also try a full text keyword search of primary source databases. Try LexisNexis, LexisNexis Academic or Westlaw, or other electronic databases. Usually, it is a good idea to begin with a secondary source, particularly if the researcher is unfamiliar with the subject matter and unfamiliar with terms of art. However, if a unique or unusual search word or phrase is known, an electronic search may be an appropriate starting point. For further discussion on when to use a full-text electronic search versus secondary sources, See "Electronic Resources or Print Resources: Some Observations on Where to Search", Bintliff, Barbara, Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing, Vol. 14, No.1, Fall 2005.
Determining Court Level:
Determining the court level can help locate a case, because case reporters are generally organized by court level. Identifying the court level helps determine the likelihood that a written opinion exists. Many state trial court lawsuits are decided without a written opinion. The precedential value of a case is determined by court level.
The first level is the trial court level. (District Courts in the federal court system; Common Pleas or Municipal Court, in Ohio). The losing party might appeal to an appellate court, such as the Court of Appeals in Ohio, or the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the federal system, and eventually to the court of last resort, such as the Ohio Supreme Court, or the United States Supreme Court. One judge presides over a trial court, while appellate courts such as the Ohio Courts of Appeal may have panels of several judges. Seven judges preside over the Ohio Supreme Court, while the U.S. Supreme Court has nine. For an explanation of the hierarchy of the Ohio State Court System, look at the Structure of the Ohio Judicial System Chart on the Ohio Supreme Court's web page. A similar diagram is on the U.S. Courts page: Structure of the U.S. Courts. For other states, BNA's Directory of State and Federal Courts, Judges and Clerks has diagrams of the state court structure.
The following are examples of case reporters arranged by jurisdiction: In Ohio, Ohio Appellate Reports 3d contains decisions of the state's Courts of Appeal, the reporter Ohio Miscellaneous 2d contains selected decisions from trial courts. To further complicate matters, these may be bound together under the title Ohio Official Reports, and Ohio State Reports 3d are sometimes included as well. The Northeastern Reporter publishes only appellate cases in Ohio and neighboring states. Ohio State Reports 3d contains Ohio Supreme Court cases. On the federal level, some trial court opinions are reported in the Federal Supplement. A higher percentage of appellate cases are reported in the Federal Reporter. All U.S. Supreme Court cases are reported in three reporter sets, one official version ( United States Reports (U.S.)) and two produced by private publishers (Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.) and Lawyer's Edition (L. Ed. and L. Ed. 2d) .
Determining Precedential Value:
A case has "precendential value" if a court must follow that case in subsequent decisions. A case has "persuasive value" if a court can choose to follow the decision in that case, but is not required to do so. Cases in the same jurisdiction have precedential value, and must be followed unless a subsequent case is distinguishable by its facts or there are very good reasons to overturn the prior legal reasoning.
The court level or hierarchy indicates whether the decisions of a court are binding upon another court. For example, a United States Supreme Court case is binding precedent in all federal and state courts. A federal appellate court decision has precedential weight on subsequent cases in that appellate circuit court and all the district courts in that circuit. For example, a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision would have precedential weight in federal district courts in Ohio ,Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. See Map of the Federal Appellate and District Courts. A Sixth Circuit case would merely have persuasive value in a California district court, or in the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Statutes
Statutes are bills that have been passed by legislative bodies and approved by the executive (or if vetoed, then overridden by the legislative body). Statutes may address issues never considered by the courts in the jurisdiction, or they may modify or overturn court rulings. Court cases often interpret statutory language, saying what the statute means in the context of particular fact situations. Large law libraries may collect the statutes from all fifty states, usually in the form of subject-arranged compilations called codes.
Ohio's statutes are published as the Ohio Revised Code by two private publishers - Baldwin's Ohio Revised Code Annotated and Page's Ohio Revised Code Annotated. At the federal level, the government publishes the official United States Code (USC) but since it takes about two years for an enacted law to appear in the printed USC, researchers will use either of the privately and more timely published United States Code Service (USCS)(LexisNexis) and United States Code Annotated (USCA)(Westlaw). Both of these unofficial codes are annotated, meaning they contain brief summaries of cases that interpret the statutes as well as references to other primary and secondary resources. These unofficial annotated codes are available on LexisNexis, LexisNexisNexis Academic and Westlaw, respectively. Annotated codes for all fifty states also appear on LexisNexis, LexisNexisNexis Academic and Westlaw.
Unannotated codes can be found in other commercial databases such as Casemaker. (Available via OSBA membership. Membership is free to law students.) Unannotated codes can also be located on the Internet, although these codes are not certified as authentic, and very few are sanctioned by the legislature as the official code. Links to the Federal and Ohio Online Codes can be found on the Legal Research Workstation: Statutes, Legislation and Codes. For Internet links to other states' unannotated codes, try American Law Sources Online.
Constitutions
A constitution is the basic document of organizational structure and principles by which a political body governs itself. It is the source and sets the scope of the authority for the branches of government it establishes. Each state's code usually contains a copy of its constitution. The United States Constitution is printed in any of the three versions of the United States Code, as well in many other sources in the library and on the Internet. State constitutions can also be located on the web via American Law Sources Online and other sites. LexisNexis, LexisNexisNexis Academic and Westlaw also have copies of federal and state constitutions.
Administrative Law
Administrative law consists of (1) rules and regulations passed by executive agencies and (2) administrative decisions by agency adjudicatory bodies. Both federal and state governments have executive agencies. Agencies or commissions derive their authority from Congress or the state legislature. Agency rules and regulations carry out the intent of the laws passed by the legislative branch. State administrative regulations are often published in a subject arranged compilation similar to the state code. For example, the Ohio Administrative Code arranges state regulations by titles somewhat parallel to those of the Ohio Revised Code. The Code of Federal Regulations is the official codification of regulations promulgated by federal agencies.
The legislature may authorize an agency to hear and decide legal disputes. The agency decisions may or may not set precedent, and many times may be appealed in the court system. For example, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is empowered to make decisions under the National Labor Relations Act, and publishes its Decisions and Orders. The State Employment Relations Board in Ohio administers the Ohio Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act, and is authorized to adjudicate disputes, issued as its Board Opinions.
Administrative agency regulations and decisions can also be located on the web via American Law Sources Online and on LexisNexis and Westlaw. LexisNexisNexis Academic has federal regulations, but not state regulations.
For more information, see Administrative Law Resource Guide and Ohio Legal Research Guide: Executive/Administrative
Updates
Legal publishers update books by pocket parts, booklets called advance sheets or by replacing pages in a looseleaf volume. It is very important to check the publisher's update service in case the law has changed. Electronic services often improve on the timing of updates, but don't assume that they are necessarily up to the minute. Be sure to note the date of the most recent update incorporated online.
To check for changes occurring after a pocket part or supplement was published, or after the last time a database was updated:
For Statutes - Look in state Session Laws or Federal Public Laws.
Regulations - Federal (CFR)- List of Sections Affected and Federal Register; Ohio Administrative Code- Ohio Monthly Record and Register of Ohio
Citators may also pick up recent changes to statutes and regulations. Cases can be updated using citators, see the next section.
Citators: "Shepardizing"
To shepardize a case or statute means to use a citation service to find out which cases, articles, etc. have discussed the case or statute at hand, or to determine the case or statute's current validity. The term "shepardize" evolves from the original publisher of Shepard's Citations, which for many years was the only provider of this type of service. Shepard's Citations on LexisNexis and Key Cite on Westlaw are the major systems legal researchers use to check citations.
Most of the time Shepards or Keycite will indicate whether a case is "still good law". Occasionally, it is possible the case is no longer good law, but no subsequent case ever cited that case as overruled. Looking at the Table of Authorities in LexisNexis will help determine whether the underpinning cases cited in a decision have been overturned. Thorough research of a question through electronic searches and/or secondary sources should reveal any changes in the law. Additionally, you should also check the statutes to see if the case was overruled by statute.
Secondary Sources
Secondary sources explain, analyze, comment upon, and help to locate the primary source material (constitutions, statutes, administrative regulations or decisions and cases). Secondary sources include legal encyclopedias, law reviews, ALR, restatements, treatises, study aids, digests and citators.
---- Am Jur and CJS
These are national legal encyclopedias, which provide explanations of legal issues and citations to primary sources, covering state and federal law. They are arranged in alphabetical order by subject, and contain multiple indexes. Am Jur is short for American Jurisprudence 2d, and CJS stands for Corpus Juris Secundum. Many states have their own legal encyclopedia. In Ohio the legal encyclopedia is called Ohio Jurisprudence 3d or Oh Jur for short.
---- Digests
Digests contain brief summaries of the case rulings arranged in a topical order, and contain subject indexes to help a researcher navigate the arrangement. An example is West's Ohio Digest. For more information on how to use digests, see Ohio Legal Research Guide - Secondary Sources
-----Law Reviews
Most law schools publish at least one law review, or journal. Law students run and edit these publications, which feature scholarly articles on various legal and law-related topics. Professors publish the bulk of their scholarship in these journals, and the depth of analysis and citation in such articles make them significant resources for legal researchers. Cleveland-Marshall publishes the Cleveland State Law Review and the Journal of Law and Health. For more information see Resource Guide: Finding Law Journal Articles.
-----ALR
ALR stands for American Law Reports, a multi-volume, multi-series set of selective case reports and essays called annotations. Though it contains primary case reports, ALR is most important as a source of commentary or explanation of the various legal issues presented in the case, as well as a finding aid for primary authority on discrete subjects. At the beginning of an ALR article is a table identifying cases cited in the article for each state.
----- Treatises
Treatises are secondary sources that generally present the law in a given field, often providing exhaustive treatment of a narrow subject area. They are published as single volume works or in multi-volume sets. An example is American Law of Torts.
---- Hornbooks and Nutshells and Other Study Aids
Hornbooks are treatises, usually one volume in length, that explain and analyze an area of the law with reference to the leading primary authorities. Nutshells, offer somewhat more concise treatment of legal subjects. For an introduction to some of these titles as well as study aids, see the Law Library's Resource Guide Preparing for Law School Exams.
----- Restatements
Restatements are publications of the American Law Institute which set out the common-law rules or majority consensus in United States jurisdictions on a subject. There are separate Restatements for agency, conflicts, contracts, foreign relations, judgments, property, restitution, security, torts, trusts, and unfair competition. Unlike most secondary sources, Restatements are often cited in legal opinions.
Electronic Resources
As mentioned above, many primary and secondary sources are available via LexisNexis and Westlaw. In law school, students are provided free access to these databases for educational use only. Law libraries subscribe to many other electronic research databases, including BNA databases, HeinOnline and Ohio Capitol Connection. For a list of databases Cleveland Marshall College of Law subscribes to, see the Electronic Resources page.
Most academic law libraries also offer many databases through the main campus library or consortia. The databases available to Cleveland-Marshall's law students through the Cleveland State University Library and the OhioLINK consortium include legal periodical databases, news databases and databases pertaining to other disciplines, such as sociology, medicine, criminology and more. Most of these are available either when using a computer in the library or law school or by using one’s university PIN (personal identification number). The databases are valuable for non-law issues that increasingly present themselves in legal research situations.
Law Library Operations
Access Services, Research Services and Technical Services
Law library functions are divided into access services (circulation, interlibrary loan, faculty services etc.); research services (reference) and technical services. Circulation deals with the flow of materials to and from patrons (checkout and check-in). The research services department helps patrons find suitable resources and develops legal research instructional programs. The technical services department orders and processes all materials for use in the library, and maintains the online catalog. Library employees are assigned to one of these three areas, although they may have responsibilities involving several of these three library functions. See The Cleveland Marshall College of Law Library Staff Directory.
SCHOLAR
Law Library catalogs, like those of other types of libraries, should be starting places for locating material the library owns, subscribes to, or links to electronically. Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Cleveland State University share a library catalog called SCHOLAR, which displays holdings for both libraries and links to full text internet sources and subscription databases.
OhioLINK
Law libraries often join consortia to take advantage of opportunities to pool resources with other libraries. OhioLINK, the Ohio Library and Information Network, is the information sharing network for Ohio's state institutions of higher education. You can access OhioLINK from the library PCs, your home or office computer, or from the Web. OhioLINK allows for the sharing of both print and electronic resources.
Print resources: If SCHOLAR, which includes both the Law and University Library holdings, does not show available copies of a particular title, you can search the combined OhioLINK Central Catalog. The OhioLINK catalog includes millions of items held by its member libraries. If a circulating item is available, follow the steps indicated on the screens to request that it be sent to you at the Law Library. Delivery for these materials generally takes two to three workdays. OhioLINK items circulate for three week periods, and may be renewed four times. OhioLINK charges non-negotiable overdue fees of $.50 per day per book.
OhioLINK also provides access to a wide variety of research databases. Among these is WorldCat, containing holdings for libraries throughout the U.S. and abroad, LexisNexis Nexis Academic, and Medline.
Interlibrary Loan
Interlibrary loan, or “ILL,” allows patrons to borrow books, articles, and other materials that are not available at one’s own library or via OhioLINK. ILL materials can take up to two weeks to arrive after they have been requested, so it is important to plan ahead when doing your research.
Difference Between Reserve and Reference Books
Both reserve and reference books can only be used in the library.
Reserve items are located behind the Information Services desk, and must be signed out to be used in the library. Reserve materials are high-demand items. Professors often place textbooks or other recommended reading materials on "course reserve" for use by students in their classes. Some course reserve items are available electronically via the Law Library Homepage. Patrons present identification at the Information Services Desk to access reserve material. You can only use the item for a two hour period to ensure availability.
Reference books are located in the reference area. There is no time limit for using reference books. They consist of items such as general or legal dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, or multi-volume treatises and form books. They are high-demand or exceptionally expensive items and consequently do not circulate outside the library.
Finding Books: The Library of Congress System
Knowing something about the Library of Congress (LC) classification system can help you find relevant books in the library. Knowing the relevant call number range can help you identify which sections of the library contain books on a certain legal topic. Also, when you do a search in Scholar, the catalog will provide an LC call number for each book title. If you look in the Range Guide, a binder located at the Information Services desk, it will indicate the floor and the book shelf where that call number is located.
Example of an LC Call Number: KF 299 P8 G74 2000 for The Great Firm Escape: Harvard Law School’s Guide to Breaking Out of Private Practice and Into Public Service
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To see classifications under Law, Class K, and United States Law, Class KF see Library of Congress Classification Outline, Class K. A "KF" call number may have an additional letter, indicating the state. For example, KFO indicates Ohio, Oklahoma or Oregon. For a guide to call numbers for certain legal subjects, see Law Subjects with Library of Congress Classification, for example, books on U.S. criminal law are found at KF9601-9760, while books on U.S. Tort law are found at KF1246-KF1327.
For more information on the LC Classification system please visit the Library of Congress web site.
Reading Call Numbers
Items are shelved in call number sequence – in both alphabetical and numerical order. The letters at the beginning of the call number are shelved alphabetically. The numbers immediately following the letters are arranged in basic numerical order, i.e. 5 then 6, 50 is after 49, and 100 is after 99. Thus, in Table 1, KF3 precedes KF 29.
Table 1
Two Types of Numerical Order
KF 2 .A74 |
KF 2 .A8 |
KF 3 .Z4 |
KF 29 .C29 |
KF 29 .C3 |
The cutter numbers (A74, A8, Z4, C29, and C3 in the above example) are sorted first by the letter and then by the number as a decimal. For KF 2 A74, think of it as being KF 2 A 0.74; for KF 2 A8, read KF 2 A 0.80. Thus A74 comes before A8 in Table 1; C29 before C3, because .29 comes before .30.
Information after the cutter number is sorted according to the following hierarchy: date, volume, supplement, copy. These are shelved in alphanumeric order, as illustrated in Table 2.
In addition, the library may add location symbols preceding a call number which define the area where the materials are shelved. For example, at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library, the location RR means Reserve Room (ask at the Information Services Desk), Ohio means the Ohio collection, Room 124, Ref means the reference collection on the First Floor, AO66 means the Skills and Professional Practice Collection in room AO66 on the Atrium Level, GovDocs means the US Government Documents collection on the Second Floor, Micro means the Microform Collection on the Base Level, Base Media Collection means the Casual Reading Area on the Base Level and Acq means the materials is shelved in the Technical Services Department (ask at the Information Services Desk for assistance).
Table 2
Call Numbers With Additional Information
K10 .T92 1967 |
K10 .T92 1973 Vol. 1 |
K10 .T92 1973 |
K10 .T92 1973 Vol. 2 Copy 2 |
K10 .T92 1996 |
K18 .A5 1985 Vol. 1 |
K18 .A5 1985 Vol. 2 |
K18 .A5 1985 Vol. 2 Supp |
Jan Ryan Novak, Assistant Head of Public Services
Leslie A. Pardo, Circulation & Faculty Services Librarian
August 2004
Revised by Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian
July 2007