Housed in a 1980 addition to the Law School, the Tarlton Law Library of the Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research is the seventh largest academic law library in the United States and the finest legal research center in the Southwest. The collection of more than one million volumes has both breadth and depth, with particular emphasis on legal materials from English-speaking jurisdictions. The library receives more than 5,700 periodicals, including at least one copy of every American law review. It also has a comprehensive collection of reporters, statutes, and treatises to meet the demands of a large faculty and student body.
Complete historical and current coverage is offered for the statutes and court reports from all fifty states. Texas materials have a special prominence in the collection. Other U.S. material includes all federal court reporters, statutes, and administrative regulations. Records and briefs filed in the U. S. Supreme Court from 1832 to the present are available; in 1960, the library became one of only fifteen depositories for these official documents from the Court. The Law Library was designated a U.S. government depository library in 1965. Thus, all Congressional committee prints, hearings, and reports, as well as many publications from federal agencies, form a vital part of the total collection.
The Library's collection of foreign and international legal materials is also extensive. Reporters, statutes and periodicals from the Commonwealth countries are available, including old and rare volumes. There are working collections from many other countries, with special strength in primary legal materials from Latin American and Western European nations. The Law Library is also a depository for European Union documents and Canadian federal publications and acquires many United Nations publications. A suite of rooms in the Law Library houses rare books, manuscripts, law school archives, and special collections of materials ranging from a fifteenth century Roman law codex to the papers of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark of Texas.
The Library has one of the finest interdisciplinary collections among the
nation's law libraries. Recognizing the needs of contemporary legal scholarship
and law practice, the Library acquires books and periodicals in such diverse
subjects as business, medicine, criminology, psychology, political science,
philosophy and environmental studies. These materials facilitate the intensive
research conducted in a large academic law library. The Library has more than
one million microform items in the media collection, which includes audio-
and videocassettes, microfiche, and microfilm. Reader/printers are available
to produce hard copy prints from microforms. A unit is also available for
scanning microform documents in machine-readable formats.
Access to the Library's vast collection is made easy by TALLONS (Tarlton Law Library Online System), a fully integrated online catalog system containing bibliographic, acquisition, serials, and circulation information, which can be used in conjunction with UTCAT, the online catalog of the University's General Libraries.
The Library's Computer Learning Center is a state-of-the-art facility that provides a network of 80 personal computers for word-processing and research. Please visit the Law Library Web page at its World Wide Web address: http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/. A wide range of Internet legal resources is available.
Law students may use the Center's personal computers for online research, memorandum- and brief-writing assignments, course outlining, résumé and cover letter writing, registration and to schedule interviews with the Career Services Office. Students owning laptop computers may take advantage of study carrels equipped with Ethernet connections. Wireless Internet connectivity is offered throughout the three buildings comprising the Law School.
In addition, the Library offers law students access to LEXIS-NEXIS
and WESTLAW, the major online
legal research services, and a variety of other legal and nonlegal electronic
databases and information services. Special facilities and equipment,
including Dragon Dictate voice-recognition software, are provided for
use by law students with special needs.
The Center supports the research needs of faculty, students, the University community, and the public. Thirty-eight staff members, including fifteen professional librarians and six lawyer/librarians, are a special asset to faculty and students. In addition to their regular duties, staff members teach legal research classes in the Law School.
The Library is also enhanced by the Hyder collection. Martha Rowan Hyder and her late husband, Elton M. Hyder, Jr., have loaned the Law Library nearly four thousand prints, paintings, manuscripts, furnishings, quilts, rugs, and other materials. The collection illustrates the history of law, and creates a unique and culturally enriching study and work environment for library users and staff.
Beyond the resources of the Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research, a law student may draw upon the University of Texas Libraries, the sixth largest academic library system in the nation. The University Libraries' holdings include comprehensive collections of United Nations publications and British government documents. Other collections include the Center for American History, the Benson Latin American Collection, and Wasserman Library of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. In addition, The University hosts the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, which is across the street from the Law School.