Electronic Resource of the Month: Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

From now until May, we will focus this series on some of the collections available via HeinOnline. All HeinOnline resources can be accessed through http://law.loyno.edu/library/online-resources. The collections are available to Loyola Law faculty and students, and they can be accessed while connected to the Loyola internet or off-campus using your Loyola username and password. Check back each month for updates!

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) is a great tool for researchers looking for up-to-date foreign-published periodical material on legal subjects. IFLP is available in print (3rd floor index table near the main elevators) and electronically via HeinOnline.

IFLP indexes articles and book reviews by subject from over 500 legal periodicals published outside the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. There is no limit to the languages included, and the legal subjects range from abandonment to the World Trade Organization. The database can be searched from 1984-present (2014), and the print edition on Hein covers 1960-present.

To search online, you can browse by subject, country subject, region, publication title, or a general search. Search options include: language, author, title of article, title of journal, date of publication, key word, country of publication, etc. A search can be further narrowed by year, the type of material (articles or reviews), and to only include entries where the full text is available on another HeinOnline database. While browsing, entries are in alphabetical order.  

One of the best things about IFLP is that it links to articles listed that are available in HeinOnline. This makes it more of a one-stop-shop than print indexing tools. 

Print Resource of the Month: Guide to International Legal Research

Welcome to our new monthly segment, Print Resource of the Month! On the first week of each month we’ll be highlighting a print resource available in the Law Library. That’s a lot of books so check back often for new information. We’ll be tagging these posts with appropriate tags at the bottom; you can use these tags throughout the blog to help guide your research.

This month we’re taking a look at Guide to International Legal Research. Produced by the George Washington International Law Review, this book is a must-utilize for research on public international law, private international law, and comparative law. This guide provides a researcher with a comprehensive list of law and law-related sources to help jump-start any research concerning international law.

“[I]t provides sources that address not only relations between States, but also the relations between States and international organizations, subnational actors, and non-state actors.” 

The introduction provides an overview of sources of international law, including the traditional sources like conventions and customs, while introducing the influence of municipal courts and soft law. Chapters are arranged by geographic region – like South Asia and the Middle East – and by subject – like intellectual property and maritime law.

The two biggest strengths of this resource are the annotations providing summaries of the sources listed and the inclusion of official (or at least reputable) websites where available.

Find it in the Reference Section on the second floor of the library, KZ 1234 .G85.

GEORGE WASH. INT’L LAW REVIEW, GUIDE TO INTERNATIONAL LEGAL RESEARCH (2015).