Does the Law Library have casebooks for Georgetown Law students to borrow? Or other law course textbooks?
Answer
Starting with Fall 2022, the Law Library will purchase the required texts for required 1L courses. The copies will be housed in Casebook Reserve at the Circulation Desk for the entire semester and may be checked out for three hours at a time. We also reserve a copy of the latest edition of any casebook donated by students or faculty in Casebook Reserve. If we happen to have a upper level casebook on Casebook Reserve, it is because it was donated to the Law Library for that specified purpose.
If you search the Law Library's catalog, an entry of "Casebook Reserve" indicates that it is available at the Circulation Desk and can be checked out for three hours at a time.
The Law Library may also house faculty-required or recommended non-casebook readings in our Course Reserve as long as your law faculty has specifically requested that we do so. Search the Course Reserves catalog for the course name, course ID or course instructor if your faculty informs your class that the reading material is on Reserve.
The Law Library may happen to have a class reading in the general collection which has not been requested by the faculty to be placed on Reserves. You may find such titles by performing a search in the Law Library's general catalog and check the copy out for a normal loan period.
Unfortunately, we are not able to purchase electronic casebooks for the Law Library's collection because of the limitations placed by the publishers. The publishers will not sell an ebook casebook that would allow for unlimited users to access them the way they may for scholarly, non-textbook publications.
We are unable to scan, or obtain via Interlibrary Loan (ILL), pages out of casebooks. We also cannot borrow via ILL electronic casebooks or textbooks due to licensing restrictions.
If you are experiencing difficulties getting your textbook at the beginning of the semester (e.g., shipment delay), please let your professor know of the issue, in case it's a more widespread problem. The faculty may be able to address the issue by providing the first set of readings on Canvas or TWEN. If you retained proof of purchase of the print version, we also recommend that you contact the publisher and ask if they would be willing to share specific content from or or provide you limited, short term access to their electronic version. Publishers may be willing to share with you limited content as that would not impact sales which has already taken place.
If you are assigned to read a small portion out of an entire book, then ask the faculty to consider providing a copy of the assigned reading on Canvas or TWEN for your class.
For non-law Georgetown University Capitol Campus students, please contact your home library with questions about their textbook policies. Please consult either main campus Georgetown University Lauinger Library Access Services Department or Georgetown University Dahlgren Memorial (Medical) Library Ask DML service for more information.