The interim law librarian: Part 5 - what to do with this small amount of new knowledge?

My brief time as a law librarian is nearly over.  I have rather enjoyed it, I have to say.  I have not had to teach anything, and most of the enquiries have been about referencing, but I did look into sources of French law, liaise with a supplier about a change of database interface, and look into ebook platforms.  It has certainly been interesting to learn about the habits, resources and conventions of another subject discipline.  With all this new found knowledge, I find myself wondering what use health students might make of law resources.   They may encounter legislation and case law referenced in articles and books.  Do they know how to decode the citations, and how to find that material?   The book on medical law and ethics that is on their reading list has a brief mention of how to decode a reference to a case in a law report, and mentions two of the law databases, but goes into no detail.Do they need to find and read the primary source material, or is it more usual for them to rely on articles, books, and reports about legal matters, that they find through their usual sources?   We have been asked in the past about how to cite legal information in Harvard or Vancouver, so some of them have sometimes used those primary sources.As health professionals they work within the law, laws about their registration, about consent and safeguarding, and law relating to specific procedures or circu...
Source: Browsing - Category: Databases & Libraries Tags: health librarianship law librarianship Source Type: blogs