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It’s the setting for many law school dramas, especially the classic 1973 movie The Paper Chase: the dry shelves of the law library, where young, would-be lawyers spend endless hours researching case law in the challenging effort to stay on top of their classwork.

The at the UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law, however, isn’t a silent, dry and dusty cathedral of law. It is a modern, multimedia venue open to the entire university and the general public, where researchers find information vital to the entire community. The law library recently updated its furnishings with the goal of making the facility more inviting and comfortable for all users. Some of the changes are obvious — there are collaborative spaces amenable to group projects and study sessions and modern standing desks. Because the library has subscribed to online resources that provide many of the authorities once available only on microform, the library was able to condense its microform holdings. As a result, space became available and the library now includes a lounge reserved for students where they can study collaboratively or relax. 

The library space can serve more than 400 users. Andrew Martineau, research librarian, says the redesign should encourage both collaborative and solo work.

“The primary goal of the remodel was to create better and more varied places for law students to study,” he said. “Some of the new spaces, like the lounge and other open areas with comfortable seating and movable white boards, should help facilitate group study sessions. For students who like to study alone, we installed elevated desks that can be used either standing or sitting.“

Chad Schatzle, student services librarian, noted that, “In addition to being a great place to study and perform research, the law library is an inviting space where students can take a break from the pressures of law school. Students enjoy checking out the latest documentaries, attending library open houses, and cuddling up next to therapy dogs as exams approach.”

Jeanne Price, professor of law and director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, has been with the Boyd School of Law since 2008. Price, like the research librarians among her 13-person staff, has degrees in both law and library/information science. A graduate of Yale and the University of Texas law school, Price practiced law in Houston and Qatar. While overseas, she helped organize English-language libraries. Price came to Boyd from the University of Texas School of Law.

Price noted that the relative youth of the Boyd School of Law, compared to its peer schools around the country, and its standing as the only law school in Nevada, present many opportunities for the law library to serve different constituencies around the state and beyond.

“There’s so much that the law library can do to support the community, the university, and, of course, the law school,” Price said. Arriving at Boyd seven years ago, she found that her predecessors and all of the library staff – especially founding faculty member and library director Rick Brown, founding library faculty members Jennifer Gross and Sean Saxon, collection development librarian Matthew Wright, and operations manager Cindy Claus – had assembled “an amazing collection in a short period of time.” The strength of the collections meant that Price and her colleagues could focus on new ways to serve students, faculty, the university, and the state of Nevada and on creating new resources. “Our collections serve as the raw materials that we help our patrons use to engage in advocacy and scholarship and to better their lives.”

Jennifer Gross, collection management librarian, noted that the law library has rearranged its collections, bringing together scholarship from different disciplines that relate to faculty, student, and community interest. “Our collections’ strengths reflect our curriculum, our faculty’s scholarship, and issues important to the state. We’ve tried to make those collections as accessible and open as possible.”

One of the law library’s special collections is the Documentary Film Collection, featuring thousands of documentaries on social justice, immigration, labor and employment, gender studies, human rights, environmental rights, and criminal justice: issues that have become topical flashpoints in legal and political debates. These documentaries are used by law school faculty and students, and the collection supports an annual Public Interest Law Film Festival hosted by the law school.

Among other special collections are the archives of the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association. The National Bar Association is the country’s largest and oldest organization of African-American attorneys and its Las Vegas Chapter has a rich history. Included in that archive are the oral histories of a number of Nevada’s prominent African-American jurists who share their experiences and memories of the civil rights movement in the state.

The law library is a federal government depository and a European Union depository, receiving government publications at no charge.

While the law library’s physical collections support research locally, it is the library’s digital collections that enable the law school’s work to be shared with new audiences around the world. The preserves and shares the work product of the Boyd School of Law. “The primary purpose of the Scholarly Commons is to archive and showcase the scholarly work of the law school faculty and the law school community,” said David McClure, head of research and curriculum services at the library. That includes faculty-authored articles; every issue of the Nevada Law Journal and UNLV Gaming Law Journal, Boyd’s two journals produced by students; conference proceedings; and a number of special collections. The Scholarly Commons is also the repository for summaries — authored by UNLV students — of Nevada Supreme Court decisions.

The Scholarly Commons is just five years old; already articles and other materials posted on the Scholarly Commons have been downloaded more than 550,000 times by scholars and students all over the world. That number should grow rapidly as the number of articles, which are indexed on Google and other search engines, continues to grow.

The Scholarly Commons is electronic, but it is, as the name suggests, a place where people can gather and learn from Boyd students and faculty. Whether they’re in China or the Ukraine, Denmark or Australia, Seattle or New York, or Reno or Laughlin, scholars around the world read articles and watch videos on the Scholarly Commons. An interactive map shows the location of each download as it happens.

“There is no charge,” McClure noted. “Everything we’ve uploaded is freely available and is searchable by anyone with access to the Internet.” In the past year alone, articles on the Scholarly Commons have been downloaded more than 190,000 times.  That means that the scholarship and activities of the students and faculty of the Boyd School of Law are widely recognized. Among other benefits, faculty members have been invited to speak at some conferences because scholars have discovered their writings on the Scholarly Commons; law students’ writings are finding new audiences as well.

Among the resources uniquely available through the Scholarly Commons are proceedings of conferences and special events held at the law school, including the 2013 panel discussion Water Law in the West with Patricia Mulroy, the 2011 colloquium Multidimensional Masculinities and Law, and the 2012 Labor and Employment Law Symposium. The Scholarly Commons also hosts an archive of newsletters published by the Society of American Law Teachers and includes an archive of scholarship relating to gender and civil rights authored by Boyd faculty and by participants in the 2014 U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

“It truly is a great resource,” McClure said. “We’re always looking for input from everyone who’s involved with the repository to make it better and more responsive to the needs of our students and faculty, the legal community of Nevada, and scholars around the world.”

None of these wonderful collections could be put to good use were it not for the expertise of the law library faculty and the skills of the law library staff. Six law library faculty members, including five who have both law degrees and degrees in library and information science, undertake research, provide research instruction, manage the resources of the largest law library in the state, and otherwise support the research and teaching activities at the law school. 

Daniel Hamilton, dean at the Boyd School of Law, last year told the Boyd community of the importance of the law library. “The Wiener-Rogers Library provides access to all of the authorities and resources that law students will need to concoct an argument, structure a transaction or counsel clients,” he said in his message.

“Sometimes those ingredients are authorities traditionally used in scholarship and practice, but ever more frequently, students and faculty alike need access to more exotic resources, like social science research, datasets, historical archives, popular media and foreign and international materials. It’s the flavor of the unexpected that distinguishes the Wiener-Rogers Law Library’s collections.”