Summer RA Workshop - 2025

UPDATED June 23, 2025:

Are you an RA and looking for community during your summer?  Join other RAs in Room 5K for brown bag lunch and quite working every Monday and Wednesday from 12pm - 4pm through August 11, 2025, courtesy of Dean Lawrence.

Dean Lawrence has also created a Microsoft Teams page where RAs can chat with each other to arrange outings, swap advice, support each other, or anything else that could be helpful to an Emory Law Research Assistant.

Summer RAs can tour the library, our collections, and our services virtually via the MacMillan Law Library (MLL) website.  The MLL website is our primary research portal, and includes links to our most popular legal databases, additional legal databases, univeristy-wide databases, Emory Library’s catalog, WorldCat catalog, ILLiad (for ILL requests), research support, finding aids, and other library services.  Students can also find important information about library operations, such as library hours, library staff, borrowing policies, and study room reservations. 

Additional links to research guides, study aids, and descriptions of our numerous collections, including the Emory Law School archives and Manuscripts collection, our Rare Books and Dissertations collection, our Feminism and Legal Theory collection, and other special collections are available on the MLL home page (library.law.emory.edu)

Research Guides are online guides created by librarians that curate and organize information for specific subjects, courses, or research needs.  A Legal Research Guide is a reliable exploration of an area of law and the best resources to use to perform research in that area.  Research guides succinctly introduce and discuss the area of law (for example, intellectual property law) and then provide an annotated list of resources or online links you can use when researching in that particular area of law.  Using a research guide will teach you some basics, save you time, and point you to reliable resources.  An on point legal research guide can help you hit the legal research ground running.

The MacMillan Law Library currently has over 50 research guides which are available by clicking the “Library Research Guides” link on the library's website.  Research Guides are drafted by librarians using a SpringShare software platform called “LibGuides.”  Sometimes we refer to our Research Guides as “our Libguides.”  Don't be alarmed - they mean the same thing. 

MacMillan Law Library Research Guides

Not quite sure how to find library materials?  Answers to these questions and more are accessible through the MLL home page.

Under "Our Services," choose 

• Finding Materials, for help using 
  • Library of Congress (LC) Classification chart, which is useful if you want to browse print materials by topic.
  • Tips for using Library Search, Emory's universal catalog of print and electronic resources held in all of Emory’s libraries.
  • Links to MLL Research Guides, should you need help finding pertinent sources related to a specific topic.

• Interlibrary Loans, to learn more about ILLiad, Emory's online system for requesting print or electronic resources not held in Emory's collection.  Note: Many libraries all over the world lend to Emory faculty, students, and staff. 
  • ​If you are you looking for materials not available at Emory, try searching WorldCat.  WorldCat is used in conjunction with ILLiad and is the largest catalog of print and electronic collections held in libraries around the world.   

Several more options are available under "Our Services."  Be sure to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with our website before your research begins.

Finding and accessing legal databases is a much easier task when launching your search from the MLL website.  Direct links to databases are available for easy access to Emory's subscription-based and free sources. 

Click here to browse our alphabetical list of databases or to search for legal databases by subject.  Quick links to frequently used databases are also available on the MLL home page. 

Researchers can link to free law-related electronic sources by choosing from our suggested list of primary sources, secondary sources, and foreign law and international sources.    

If you need interdisciplinary sources, click here, or select “Databases” from the left-side menu on the MLL Electronic Resources page.  From this access point, you will be able to browse Woodruff Library’s full collection of databases (i.e., Databases@Emory).  To view a list of suggested databases for interdisciplinary journals and statistics, click here to jump to the "Beyond Westlaw & Lexis" tab in this guide.

The first 4:42 minutes of this recording inlcude an overview of our website and research guides.  Beginning at 4:43, the remaining 10-ish minutes include the last session of the workshop - the overview of additional workshop resources.

Faculty Research Question?
Please complete our Faculty Request form.

Student Research Question?
Please complete our Student Research Request form. 

Still have questions? 
Stop by our Reference Desk to chat with us in person.

MacMillan Library Hybrid Research Services:

          Monday - Friday: 9am - 5pm
          Saturday - Sunday: Closed 

MacMillan Library Building Hours (May 12, 2025 - August 18, 2025)*:

Monday - Friday: 9am - 6pm
Saturday - Sunday: Closed
*Closed Friday, July 4, 2025

Reference Desk:
Monday: 1pm - 3pm 
Tuesday: 1pm - 3pm (Virtual only) 
Wednesday: 10am - 12pm
Thursday: 10am - 12pm (Virtual only)
Friday: Closed
Saturday and Sunday: Closed

IT Help Desk:
Monday - Friday: 
Saturday - Sunday: Closed

Emory Law Archives:
Physical archives: By appointment only.
Digital archives: More information available here. 
Limited remote services are available on a case-by-case basis. 
Questions?  Email Anna Sturgill, Law Librarian for Archives and Assessment Services