Researcher Resources
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Research Guides Research guides provide a starting point for researching legal topics and recommend relevant materials in the Law Library's collections and online. The Law Library creates research guides that range from animal and landlord-tenant law to instructions for compiling a federal legislative history.
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Guide to Law Online The Guide to Law Online is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law. It includes links to useful and reliable sites for legal information from international, multinational, foreign, federal, state, territorial, and tribal jurisdictions. The Guide focuses on sites offering the full texts of laws, regulations, and court decisions, along with commentary from lawyers writing primarily for other lawyers.
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Legal Research Institute Through the Legal Research Institute, we offer a wide variety of legal research classes to members of the public on topics of American legal research, as well as foreign and comparative law. Some of our classes include our Orientation to Legal Research series, which covers research strategies and resources related to federal statutes, U.S. case law, and federal regulations. For further information or to…
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Congress.gov Congress.gov is the official website for U.S. federal legislative information. The site provides access to accurate, timely, and complete legislative information for Members of Congress, legislative agencies, and the public. It is presented by the Library of Congress using data from the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Government Publishing Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Library of Congress.
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In Custodia Legis In Custodia Legis is the Law Library’s blog. The Law Library has a blog team that publishes new posts on weekdays. Some of the topics discussed on the blog include international legal developments, current legal trends, legal history and arcana, and information about updates to Congress.gov.
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Databases The Law Library subscribes to a broad range of databases and eResources that provide legal and legislative information for the U.S. and around the globe. Note that some commercial databases are available only to researchers while on-site in a Library of Congress Reading Room.
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Story Maps Story Maps at the Library of Congress are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps. Preferred browsers are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari.
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Global Legal Monitor The Global Legal Monitor is an online publication from the Law Library of Congress covering legal news and developments worldwide. It is updated frequently and draws on information from official national legal publications and reliable press sources. You can find previous news by searching the Global Legal Monitor.