Dr. Ronald B. Standler
Information Resources

Table of Contents

Introduction

DIALOG

• INSPEC databases in physics and electrical engineering (online databases begun in 1969), corresponding to the printed abstracts in Physics Abstracts and Electrical Engineering Abstracts back to 1898
  
  
• Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts since 1974
  
  
• U.S. Government publications, including technical reports of scientific or engineering research sponsored by the Government, since 1964
  
  
• IHS International Standards, contains engineering standards from 350 organizations in the USA and 40 foreign/international standards organizations
  
  
• CLAIMS®/U.S. PATENTS, all information on the front page of the issued U.S. Patent and full text of all claims, since 1971
  
  
• Derwent World Patents, since 1963
  
  
• TRADEMARKSCAN® — U.S. FEDERAL, all active trademarks registered with USPTO, plus inactive marks since 1984.
  
  
• full text of many newspapers in the USA, Canada, and Europe. (This resource has become less useful in recent years, as newspapers have made their archives accessible on the Internet.)

Westlaw

• all reported federal court cases in the USA:
  1. all U.S. Supreme Court opinions since 1790
  2. all U.S. Court of Appeals reported opinions since 1891
  3. all U.S. District Court reported opinions since 1789
  4. also some unreported opinions from federal courts since 1945
  
  
• all reported opinions of state courts, back to the beginning of the West Reporter series (e.g., A.,   N.E.,   N.W.,   P.,   S.E.,   S.,   S.W.,   Cal.Rptr.,   N.Y.S.). Westlaw has added older cases so that its coverage of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is complete back to the year 1804, and its coverage of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is complete back to 1754.
  
  
• U.S. Code Annotated (USCA), from 1990 to present
  
  
• legislative history of all U.S. federal statutes since 1948
  
  
• U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), from 1984 to present
  
  
• state statutes and regulations (i.e., public utilities commission rules)
  
  
• amicus curiae briefs from the U.S. Supreme Court since 1995

1. Westlaw permits quick searching of large amounts of material from different sources. Not only can one search for conventional legal topics (as in a search of printed Digests), but one can also search for quotations from cases, citations to cases (and immediately retrieve the text surrounding the citation), and the occurrence of specific words (a more narrow search than in topics in the printed Digests).
   
   
2. Westlaw also contains documents that are too recent to be found in printed materials in a library. For example, the paper version of U.S. Reports first appears on library shelves about four years after the Supreme Court issued the opinion, and the interim bound copy of the West's S.Ct. Reporter first appears on library shelves about one year after the Supreme Court issued the opinion.
   
   
3. Westlaw contains some unreported state and federal cases that are not available in published volumes. Westlaw also contains much information that is not available in law libraries.
   
   
4. Text that is downloaded from Westlaw can be searched by a computer for all occurrences of a word or phrase, which is both much faster and more certain than reading hundreds of pages of printed text.
   
   
5. In October 2008, the printed volumes of judicial opinions (published by West) filled 4500 volumes for federal courts (excluding Fed.Appx.), and 13660 volumes for West's seven regional reporters that include state courts in all fifty states.   This is too much information to be quickly searched by looking in printed Digests or other printed indexes to cases.

Local Libraries

• Franklin Pierce Law Center, Concord, NH (excellent for intellectual property law)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology libraries (excellent for physics, engineering, and meteorology)
• Boston University Medical School

• PDF images of 1185 major legal periodicals in the USA from Hein Online, each from Vol. 1 to the most recent completed volume.
• PDF images of more than 21,000 legal treatises published in the USA or Britain during the years 1800-1926 from Making of Modern Law
• Westlaw databases described above
• Westlaw databases for legal periodicals (but not those published by the ABA or Aspen), A.L.R., Restatements of the Law, American Jurisprudence 2d, etc.
• online CCH Copyright Law Reporter, formerly Copyright Law Decisions
• online BNA U.S. Patent Quarterly since 1929   (contains many patent, copyright, and trademark cases not reported elsewhere)