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Complete Periodical Literature of Law Librarianship

An exhaustive historical and contemporary bibliography of more than 5,000 law review articles on the law librarianship profession in the United States and Canada.

Understanding Complete Periodical Literature of Law Librarianship

The following criteria were used to determine the articles included in The Complete Periodical Literature of Law Librarianship:

  1. All scholarly articles on law librarianship topics with a United States and/or Canadian focus.
  2. Non-scholarly law librarianship articles judged to be of practical use to law librarians, or articles that are of historical importance to law librarianship, with a United States and/or Canadian focus. 
  3. Articles on legal research or related instruction such as legal writing, authored by law librarians.
  4. Articles on law librarianship or law library topics written by non-law librarians.
  5. Articles on law librarianship in a foreign journal with a U.S. or Canadian focus.

Please note: Spanish-language articles that fit the above criteria, if authored by U.S. or Canadian law librarians, will be added in a future update.

Not included are:

  1. Legal research, legal writing, or law school instruction articles written solely by non-law librarians.
  2. Columns or regular features in non-scholarly law librarianship publications that, in the editors' judgement, are ephemeral.
  3. Articles written by law librarians on non-law librarianship or non-legal research instruction topics.
  4. Articles from regional law librarian publications, such as regional AALL chapter publications.
  5. Newsletter articles.
  6. Articles on law librarianship that primarily have a foreign or international subject matter focus, unless they also have a significant comparative nexus with U.S. and/or Canadian law librarianship.
  7. Books or book chapters.
  8. Reports or proceedings from professional meetings unless they discuss substantive law librarianship topics.
  9. Annotations for bibliographies or research guides are not provided.

Please note: the editors attempted to find and include every article on law librarianship that met the above selection criteria. Readers should contact the editors concerning any article not included that they believe meets the selection criteria. 
 

Each article has been assigned a designation indicating the primary law library audience to which the article is most directed (see Library Type). However, any article, regardless of library designation, may be useful to readers from other types of law libraries.

Researchers should keep this in mind when examining articles that otherwise appear to be of interest:

  • Articles that are not targeted to a specific type of law library have been assigned a designation of “General.”
  • Articles written with a Canadian emphasis also receive an additional library type designation, e.g., both Canadian and Law Firm Library.

The Library Type Categories are:

  1. Academic Law Libraries
  2. Bar Association Libraries
  3. Canada
  4. Corporate Law Libraries
  5. County Law Libraries
  6. Court Libraries
  7. Federal Libraries
  8. Foreign & International Law Libraries
  9. General Library—Of interest to multiple types of law libraries or has no specific type of library focus
  10. Government Libraries
  11. Law Firm Libraries
  12. Law Society Libraries
  13. Medical Libraries
  14. Military Libraries
  15. Non-law Libraries
  16. Prison Law Libraries
  17. Private Law Libraries
  18. Public Law Libraries
  19. Satellite Libraries
  20. Special Libraries
  21. State & Municipal Law Libraries

The Annotations were written by the editors to provide the reader with a detailed look inside each article. These Annotations highlight the major themes and topics included within the article. Click the + symbol to expand the Annotation.

Click the Annotations link to view the annotation written for each article.These annotations are reproduced in the index and search results and are full text searchable.

 

A Significance is assigned to each article and an article may have more than one significance value assigned to it. Users can browse, search, and filter search results by Significance. The Significance is appended after the article publication year.

Articles are assigned at least one of the following:

Landmark = of both great value and lasting importance

Continuing Value = useful for current readers and researchers

Historical Value = of historical interest

An example of an entry in the bibliography. Author, article title, bluebook citation, publication year, significance highlighted in a red box

 

Please note that this Significance is not intended as a ranking or assessment of an article's overall quality or level of scholarship.

For ease of access, Bibliographies & Research Guides are listed alphabetically by title within their own dedicated tab that can be navigated by an A-Z index. These bibliographies and research guides will also appear within results when using the Search CPLLL tab. Generally, this content:

  • does not have Annotations
  • does not have Library Types
  • does not have Significances

Although select Bibliographies & Research Guides may have one (or all) of the above at the editors' discretion, the absence of any of these indicators from a Bibliography & Research Guide is not an oversight.

All Bibliographies & Research Guides, within both their dedicated tab or within the Search CPLLL tab, can be identified as such by a (Bibliography & Research Guide) note at the end of the article title.

An example of a Bibliography & Research Guide, with the denoting note at the end of the article title outlined in red. This particular bibliography & guide has subjects applied to it, but not all bibliographies & guides will have this metadata.