Welcome to your new law library catalog. We hope to answer some of your basic questions here and to give you an introduction to to the system. If any of your questions aren't answered on this guide, please contact a librarian.
Please be signed into your library account so that you can fully experience all the features our new system can provide. Being signed in allows you to:
Signing into your library account is where you can find what materials you currently have checked, along with due dates and renewals. This is where you can also find if you have any fines or fees or the status of an interlibrary loan requests.
Your library account also contains your saved searches and favorites.
In the catalog search bar, you'll be offered the following search options:
What do these search options mean?
Law Library Catalog searches the physical and electronic holdings in our catalog, including journal titles.
Everything search the library catalog plus articles, open access materials, cataloged databases and items available through OhioLINK.
Beyond My Library searches OhioLINK participating institutions and other participating institutions for materials that can be interlibrary loaned to you or digitally sent.
After entering your search terms, you'll be given a page of results. In this case, "search everything" was chosen and the results are a mixture of different types of materials. You can quickly filter this search for more specific results by using the limiters under "Refine your results".
Using the search option Everything can lead to an overwhelming number of results. You can use the filters to narrow your search, or you can use the Advanced Search option.
But, you can also limit your search from the start by choosing Law Library Catalog (default search) instead of Everything. This will help you find books more quickly without a lot of extraneous material appearing in your results list. The results went from almost 100,000 to 3,300 just by narrowing down to the Law Library Catalog:
You can also begin with the Advanced Search, which allows you to narrow down your search from the beginning. You can choose fields to search such as Title, Author, Subject, or Call Number. You can choose Materials Type, Language, and Dates of Publication. You can also use the Boolean operators of AND, OR, and NOT. And you can add lines to further refine your search.
You can still limit your search further once you get your results list.
You must be signed into your library account for the ability to request interlibrary loan materials.
Do a search for your title in our catalog to ensure that the Law Library does not own a copy. Please note: if you put in a request and the book is owned and available at the Law Library, your request will be rejected by our system. Once you have ensured no copy is available at the Law School, hit the option "Expand my results" to see if your title is available at other institutions for interlibrary loan.
Once you have located your title, you click the appropriate tile for physical or digital delivery.
Select your option and complete the form that pops-up and submit. After you submit your request, you will see that request under library account. If your request is not able to be fulfilled from our participating lenders, please visit or email our reference librarians for other options.
(c) Capital University. All rights reserved.
Capital University Law Library, 303 E. Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, 614-236-6464
Information found on these pages does not constitute legal advice. Use of these guides does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Capital University students, faculty, staff, alumni, and attorneys looking for reference assistance with legal materials may contact the reference department at reference@law.capital.edu. or call 614-236-6466 during normal reference hours.
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