Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Article about NILL's Thesaurus recently published in Law Library Journal

The National Indian Law Library recently published an article about NILL's Thesaurus for Describing Materials Related to Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law. The library's collection of federal Indian law and tribal law resources is cataloged using specialized subject headings to help library users get the most out of the online catalog. The online catalog can be searched in many ways, including subject searching, which provides a smaller, more refined set of results, and keyword searching, which provides a broader set of results.

The online catalog includes information about all of the materials in the library's collection: tribal codes, tribal constitutions, treaties, and other tribal law materials; court case documents; federal legislative history and administrative documents; Indian law treatises, case law reporters, handbooks, and manuals; Native American Rights Fund publications; tribal and Indian law-related newsletters, newspapers and periodicals; and general reference and historical/cultural books on Native Americans.

In addition, library staff can assist researchers in finding resources that are not part of the library's collection, through the use of subscription databases of legal materials, other government publications and law libraries, special collections of historical and difficult-to-find documents, and web sites with digital collections and information.

Article citation: "Creating a Supplemental Thesaurus to the LCSH for a specialized collection: The Experience of the National Indian Law Library." Law Library Journal volume 98 n2 (Spring 2006).