Services

Student Services

The Collection

The Thurgood Marshall Law Library contains over 400,000 volumes of Anglo-American legal materials as well as an outstanding international and foreign law collection. Extensive collections of both primary sources and secondary materials such as treatises are available. The library has also served as a selective depository for United States government documents since the 1970s, receiving many of the law-related documents that are published. Subscription access to many legal and non-legal databases and online journals is available. The library's catalog provides access to its holdings, as well as the holdings of other libraries within the University of Maryland System. Consult the catalog search guide to learn how to search the catalog.

In addition to law library borrowing privileges, law students and faculty may borrow from 14 additional Maryland public colleges and universities either by visiting the other libraries in person or by using the self-service "hold" delivery system available in the catalog. Books requested via the "hold" system will be delivered to this library. The library also provides an interlibrary loan service for items not found in its collection or in the collections of other University System of Maryland libraries.

Study Space

Seven group study rooms on the third floor (Rooms 3316, 3320-3325) are available for use and must be reserved. Study rooms are locked and will require students to check-out a key from the User Services Desk on the 2nd floor of the library. To book, choose “Group Study Room” from the Student Resources menu on any library web page. Reservations for rooms will be taken only up to one week in advance. A minimum of two names (first and last names) with @umaryland e-mail addresses must be given for each reservation request. Students can make a maximum of one (1) booking per day for up to three (3) hours except for the last reservation of the day at 6:00pm, which will last until the library closes. To ensure continued eligibility to use the study rooms, keys should be returned to the User Services Desk at the end of your reservation.

In addition to the group study rooms, students may use the individual study carrels, tables and soft seating located throughout the library. Study carrels are wired for laptop use and Ethernet cables. The library also offers an accessible work station for students and faculty who require machine-assisted support.

Research and Reference

Reference assistance is available at the User Services Desk at the library entrance and Email.

Research librarians are available to provide students with more in-depth assistance and give advice on strategies for researching seminar paper topics or other research problems. A library liaison has been assigned to all current law school courses to give students a contact for all library-related questions that arise in the context of the course. Information about the librarian liaison and an e-mail address are automatically included on each Blackboard course page.

Students should also consult the list of library research guides, which are authored by research librarians and highlight the best resources, in both electronic and paper formats, for a particular legal topic.

In addition to working with students on research projects, the library’s team of experienced law-trained librarians teach required research courses. These courses include an introduction to legal research, taught to first-year students during the spring semester, and Advanced Legal Research, offered to students in the fall semester. Advanced Legal Research courses are offered in several legal subject areas, including environmental, business, and health law.

Course Reading

The library keeps one copy of assigned and recommended books for all law school classes on reserve. Course books may be checked out for four hours from the User Services Desk located near the main entrance to the library. Additionally, the library also provides a collection of study aids and treatises for many courses, including all first-year classes in the Rothenberg Reading Room which is located across from the User Services Desk. Books in the Rothenberg Reading Room are for in-house only and may not be checked out.

Exam Files

The library maintains a file of previous course exams to which faculty members may choose to contribute. Exams are available to UM Law students, faculty and staff only.

CALI

The law school is a member of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction which distributes CALI programs on various topics. The CALI library of exercises is a collection of more than 270 computer-based lessons covering more than 30 legal education subject areas such as civil procedure, torts, contracts, property, and criminal law. The exercises are designed to augment traditional law school instruction. They can be used as supplemental materials or integrated with other course materials. Students may download CALI exercises from http://www.cali.org.

Publication Support

The law library has an institutional account with Scholastica for use by current students of Maryland Carey Law. Scholastica is an online submission management tool that enables you to submit an article to multiple law reviews at one time.

The law library will also underwrite the submission of articles written by students up to $130 provided that a member of our law faculty reviews the article and vouches that the student's article is of publishable quality. Please contact Sue McCarty, Managing Research Fellow, for details.

Requests from recent graduates to use the library's Scholastica account are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Please contact Sue McCarty for more information.

Printing, Copying and Scanning

All library computers print to the GoPrint Pay-Per-Print system. Students may configure their Windows or Mac laptop to print to the black and white GoPrint printers. Printing costs $0.06 per side for the default duplex printing, $0.10 per page for singled-sided black and white copies, and $.50 per page for color copies using the library’s dedicated color printer. Printing may be paid for with UMB One Cards (the University of Maryland, Baltimore ID card). There are is a photocopier in the Imaging Room on level 2 of the library. Photocopies cost $.12 per page. Visitors may purchase a copy card for one dollar from the UMB One Card machine in the imaging room on level 2 of the library.

The Law Library has a high speed, overhead scanner in the imaging room on level 2 of the library. The scanner can be used to scan books and documents into searchable PDF, Word doc, JPEG, TIFF and PNG file formats. The Law Library also has a computer with flatbed scanner that is reserved for UMB faculty, students and staff and is meant for small scanning projects (1 - 2 pages). It is not recommended for copying books.

Faculty Services

Library Liaisons

Under the library's liaison program, each faculty member and each course is assigned a research librarian who can help with requests for research or materials in support of teaching and scholarship. This help ranges from database searching, tracking down esoteric materials, handling in-depth research projects, setting up current awareness alerts, and working with faculty research assistants. Training can include orientation to LexisNexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg Law, and/or other electronic databases.

Research Assistants

The library liaisons strongly encourage training of newly-hired faculty research assistants, and offer a group training session for faculty RAs at the beginning of the summer. With the permission of the faculty member, research assistants may borrow books in the name of the faculty member and will be assigned a code which they can use to make copies of library materials for work-related purposes. Forms are available at the User Services Desk for authorization of any of these privileges. Research assistants are welcome to contact the faculty liaisons for help with library-related questions.

Empirical Research Analysis

Faculty liaisons can assist faculty members who want to integrate empirical legal research in their legal scholarship by helping them acquire datasets. Available sources for datasets include the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), Wharton Research Data Services, ProQuest Statistical, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., and other dataverses (large, general collections of data). The law school also provides licensed access to Stata for data analysis, contact the Office of Information Technology for more details. At this time, faculty liaisons cannot assist faculty members with developing research proposals or performing statistical analyses.

Current Awareness Services

E-mail notification for the tables of contents of specific journals, or about articles in specific legal and non-legal subjects can be arranged. Your faculty liaison will help you customize your requirements and select the service.

Borrowing Books and Finding Articles

The Thurgood Marshall Law Library contains over 400,000 volumes of Anglo-American legal materials as well as outstanding international and foreign law collections. You may search for articles and books using the library catalog. Faculty liaisons assist with locating and acquiring materials for faculty members, and facilitate the delivery of items to faculty offices.

If you need an item you don’t see in our catalog or want an article you can’t find, we usually can obtain it for you from another library. Contact your faculty liaison or Teresa White to request materials.

Research Tools

The Law Library provides a one-stop shop for faculty to support the publication of manuscripts. This includes advising faculty members on obtaining copyright permissions for scholarship, reviewing author agreements, identifying publication options, assistance with targeting journals, selecting an appropriate electronic submission service and uploading papers. For any of these services, please contact Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty.

Getting It Written: Drafting and Polishing

The Ryan H. Easley Research Fellows provide scholarly support to faculty members. The fellow responds to requests from individual faculty members for assistance with law review articles and other works of scholarship, including broad and substantive research, detailed citation checking, and editing for style and format. Research fellows are available to assist with editing, footnote creation, citation checking and formatting, and proofreading. While we try to meet everyone’s deadlines, it is best to give us as much advance notice as possible if you need work done in a specific time frame. Contact Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty to request the assistance of a research fellow.

Manuscript Review and Submission

The Law Library will review author agreements, identify publication options, assist with targeting journals, provide advice on an appropriate electronic submission service and upload papers for electronic submission. For assistance, please contact Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty.

Electronic submission services are available that make submitting papers for publication easier. Using these services eliminates photocopying, assembling, printing and mailing and provides rapid acknowledgment and periodic status updates. To facilitate delivery of manuscripts to law reviews, faculty members may submit scholarly works to law reviews submission services Scholastica and SSRN's eSubmission.

Your intellectual output is a valuable resource. The University of Maryland School of Law encourages its faculty to use the AALS Model Author/Journal Agreement to judge agreements received from law journals. All five student-edited journals published at the University of Maryland School of Law have adopted the AALS Model Agreement.

Scholastica

Scholastica is an online submission management tool that enables you to submit an article to multiple law reviews at one time. The Law School has a faculty-only institutional account with Scholastica.

To use Scholastica, go to https://app.scholasticahq.com/login. If you already have an institutional account with the law school, you may login with your credentials. If you do not have an institutional account, click the 'I need to sign up' button to sign up.

When prompted to identify your institution, please enter 'Uni. of Maryland Carey School of Law.' Additionally, you must use your @law.umaryland.edu email address to be recognized under the Law School institutional account.

After you enter your account information, you should receive a confirmation email. Click the confirm button in the email and you will be taken to your account page within Scholastica. From here, you can start a submission. Sue McCarty confirms accounts on behalf of law faculty for Scholastica. Please contact Sue McCarty for questions about signing up for your Scholastica institutional account or for more information.

Submission Guidelines for Faculty

Full-time faculty and visiting faculty are eligible to use law library's institutional account with Scholastica to submit articles.

There is no limit on the number of journals to which full-time faculty and visiting faculty can submit their articles. However, please contact Sue McCarty prior to submitting articles and please provide notice if you intend to submit an article to more than 125 journals. This helps the library manage expenses for this account and ensures that you will not have to pay for any submissions. We cannot reimburse you for expenses incurred in submissions.

Requests from adjunct faculty to use the library's institutional account with Scholastica are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Please contact Sue McCarty for more information.

Submission Guidelines for Staff

Requests from staff to use the library's institutional account with Scholastica are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Please contact Sue McCarty for more information.

Open Access and Scholarly Publishing

The Digital Commons@UM Carey Law showcases the research and scholarship of the School of Law. In addition to faculty scholarly articles and publications, it contains program newsletters, conference proceedings, outstanding student publications, alumni publications, and administrative reports. To submit a paper, please contact Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty.

Faculty members are also invited to submit research in progress as well as papers already accepted for publication via the Research Papers Series maintained by the law school, under the auspices of the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN), part of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Issues of the University of Maryland Research Paper Series are distributed by email to all members of the LSN. Although any faculty member may directly post a paper to LSN, for the paper to be included in the law school's Research Papers Series it should be posted by the library. If you are interested in contributing a working paper or an accepted paper to the next issue or would like to learn more about LSN, please contact Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty.

If you would like to receive email distributions from the Legal Scholarship Network or Economics Research Network, you may sign up by filling out a form online.

Faculty Publications Database

The Library maintains the publications portion of the faculty database for the law school's website. This database includes scholarly publications by faculty, and items display on both the faculty member's web page, and, if recent, on the Recent Faculty Scholarship page. Items are included from each month's Publications list distributed by the Dean's Office, but if you do not see your publication on the web, please send the information to Managing Research Fellow Sue McCarty for inclusion.

Copyright Clearance on Course Materials

The Law Library handles copyright permissions and photocopying of course materials. This includes print course packs, materials that are distributed during the semester, and materials to be loaded on Blackboard pages. Course materials to be photocopied, regardless of the number of pages, must be submitted directly to the Law Library for copyright clearance prior to photocopying. Once the course materials are submitted to the library, a determination will be made as to whether copyright permission is required. In order to manage this process in a timely fashion, documents are to be submitted in sufficient time to have the materials checked, photocopied and available to students well before they will be needed. Submit course documents to law-copyrightclearance@law.umaryland.edu.

Once permission is granted for the materials, please contact Jean Robinson in the Copy Center for duplication. All printed course packs will be distributed directly to students by faculty or (depending on the size of theexa packet) placed on the Forms Shelf (outside Suite 280) for students to pick up. Details about course pack distribution (where/when) should be posted on your Blackboard course page by either you or your administrative assistant.

Placing Materials on Reserve

While linking to materials on Blackboard the preferred method for distributing materials, the library will place course readings on reserve in the Reading Room. To place an item on reserve, please contact coursematerials@law.umaryland.edu. Extra copies of textbooks assigned for the semester are also located the Law Library Reading Room. These are a courtesy of the Library, but are not intended to serve as a replacement for students purchasing their own copy of the required text.

Research Support for Courses

Course Liaisons

Librarians serve as course liaisons to students in courses taught by their assigned faculty members. The purpose of this program is to give students a contact for all library-related questions that arise in the context of the course. Information about the librarian liaison and an e-mail address are automatically included on each Blackboard course page.

Topical Research Pages

Upon request, librarians can create a topical research guide to serve as a starting point for research in a particular area of law. Pages track coverage of the particular courses and contain links to primary and secondary sources that will help students begin their research in the subject. A list of current research guides is available online.

Classroom Presentations

Librarians are available to speak to the classes about research strategies for the various topics. Librarians make classroom presentations at the request of faculty. Presentations may focus on the topical research pages, resources for selecting paper topics and other subjects as requested. Contact your course liaison for more information.

Blackboard Support

For answers to frequently asked questions about Blackboard, see the guide to Using Blackboard or contact blackboard@law.umaryland.edu.

Exam Files

The library maintains a file of previous course exams to which faculty members may choose to contribute. To view a list of exams you have on file, go to Exams on File. To add an exam to your exam file, please send an electronic copy of the exam to law-web@law.umaryland.edu.

Alumni Services

Access Policy

Authorized building visitors include students, faculty, and staff of University System of Maryland campuses; attorneys; School of Law alumni; guest speakers; clinic clients; admitted and prospective students; and UMMC and VA staff. Alumni will be asked to show a valid driver's license or other government-issued photo identification to the security officer at the main entrance. The officer will check the name against a list of alumni.

The Collection

The Thurgood Marshall Law Library is primarily a research and reference collection of law and law-related materials to be used within the library. Therefore, many categories of legal materials do not circulate, including court reports, statutes, codes and regulations, digests, indexes, encyclopedias, directories, periodical volumes, parts of multi-volume treatises, and looseleaf services. These books must be used in the library and should be reshelved immediately after use to ensure availability to other patrons. Library materials that are available for general circulation, primarily monographic works, circulate via the library’s automated circulation system. You may search for law books and articles using the Library’s Catalog.‌

If you are in the library, please feel free to browse the list of databases. Although the full academic subscriptions to LexisNexis and to Westlaw are restricted to current law students and faculty, a more limited version of Westlaw is available to on-site library visitors. The majority of content is available for downloading and emailing, including cases, statutes, and most Maryland analytical materials. However, there is a limit of 20 documents email or downloads per user session and a maximum limit of 250 documents per day from our library. A notification will appear when you have reached the limit.

Alumni Borrowing

The Thurgood Marshall Law Library’s Alumni Borrowing service allows alumni of the School of Law to sign up for borrowing privileges at the law library.

An Alumni borrowing card entitles local alumni to borrow circulating materials from the Thurgood Marshall Law library. Alumni may not use the borrowing card at any other University System of Maryland library. The card is valid for two years from the date of issuance and is renewable.

Alumni borrowers may charge out up to five items at a time. The borrowing period for materials is 28 days with a maximum of two renewals. The user is subject to all holds, recalls and fines. Overdue fines are $.25 per day, and overdue recall fines are $1.50 per day, both to a maximum of $15.00. The lost book fine is the replacement cost of the book plus a $10.00 processing fee. All fines must be settled prior to charging additional material. Fine notices will be sent via U.S. Mail to the work address listed above. Alumni must inform the library of any change of address, phone or email within 14 days. Failure to comply with library practices and policies will result in termination of borrowing privileges.

Applicants may apply in person Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm or may mail in the application form with a photocopy of a valid driver's license. Verification from the Alumni Office of your status as a graduate of the School of Law is required before a borrowing card will be issued. Upon verification of your status, the library will issue a barcode affixed to the Special Borrower Card and mail it to the applicant. All applications will be processed within five business days.

An alumni borrower must present both a valid picture ID and their alumni borrowing card before each transaction with the library. The borrowing card is non-transferable and may not be used by other individuals.

Printing, Copying and Scanning

All library computers print to the GoPrint Pay-Per-Print system. Printing costs $0.06 per side for the default duplex printing, $0.10 per page for singled-sided black and white copies, and $.50 per page for color copies using the library’s dedicated color printer. There is also a book scanner and a photocopier located in the Imaging Room on level 2 of the library. Photocopies cost $.12 per page. Alumni may purchase a OneCard for one dollar from the UMB One Machine located in the Imaging Room for printing and photocopying purchases.

Members of the Public

Authorized visitors are able to access the building during all open hours. Authorized building visitors include students, faculty and staff of University System of Maryland Campuses; attorneys; School of Law alumni; guest speakers; clinic clients; admitted and prospective students; and UMMC and VA staff. Students with valid ids may bring guests into the library. Law library hours can be found here.

Effective Sunday, August 18, the Thurgood Marshall Law Library will primarily support members of the public and their research needs remotely. Due to the inherently dynamic nature of staffing and capacity, this model will ensure we are able to support members of the public more equitably. Members of the public are encouraged to complete this form to outline their research request, and someone will reach out to you using your preferred contact method during regular business hours. The library will remain available to members of the public with legal research needs on Fridays between 10:00am – 4:00pm or by appointment during a mutually agreeable time.

Please check the calendar or call us at (410) 706-6502 before coming to campus to ensure we will be open.

Guidelines on the type of assistance librarians can provide can be found here: Guidelines for Visitor Services.

Computers and computer network facilities are provided to support the education, research and service mission of the campus and its schools.

Visitors may bring a wireless-enabled laptop into the Law Library to access the online catalog and legal databases. To access the guest wireless, visitors should double click the wireless network icon on the laptop’s system tray (which is usually in the lower or upper right corner, near the clock). A list of wireless networks that are available will be shown. Visitors should select and connect to the "UMB Guest" wireless. Upon opening a browser, they will be prompted to enter an email address before proceeding.

Work and personal items should not be left unattended at any computer.

Visitor Workstation

The visitor workstation is available exclusively for academic and legal research purposes.

To use the visitor workstation, patrons must show an ID and sign in with their full name, indicating the time. The librarian on duty will be the only one with the password to this computer. After signing in, patrons may use the public computer for 30 minutes when other users are present. When finished, patrons should log out of the computer and return to the circulation desk to sign-out.

Misuse

Misuse of the public computers consists of any violations of the UMB Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy. Violations include, but are not limited to:

Computing activity that is not in support of the education, research, and service mission of the campus and its schools.
Securing unauthorized access to or unauthorized use of IT resources, or facilitating such use or access by another person.
Altering system software or hardware configurations without authorization.
Computing activity that is illegal.
Computing activity that is wasteful of IT Resources
Software theft or piracy, data theft, or any other action that violates the intellectual property rights of others.