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Why and How to Use Secondary Sources

Recorded by Diane Murley, SIU Law Library, January 2006

Listen to Why and How to Use Secondary Sources. Duration of audio: ~16.5 minutes.

You can follow along with the transcript. The times in the outline below indicate the point in the recording when that topic begins.

1. Secondary = About the Law (0:29)
2. Advantages to starting your research with a secondary source (1:40)
3. Other advantages to using secondary sources (2:18)
4. Different secondary sources are better for different purposes (2:54)
5. Types of secondary sources (3:11)
   • chart from Laurel Currie Oates and Anne Enquist, Just Research 21 (Aspen 2005)
6. Law reviews, law journals, and other legal periodical articles (3:52)
   1. Online indexes: LegalTrac and WilsonWeb (4:28)
      • law library home page (4:41)
      • Subscription Electronic Resources (5:07)
   2. Print indexes: Current Law Index and Index to Legal Periodicals (7:05)
      • SIU Law Reference Collection (7:33)
   3. Other resources (7:40)
      • law library home page (8:16)
      • Subscription Electronic Resources (8:25)
      • SIU Law Journal Collection(8:44)
7. Treatises (8:51)
   1. Types of treatises (9:04)
   2. Resources for treatises (10:26)
      • law library home page (10:36)
      • Subscription Electronic Resources (10:52)
8. Encyclopedias (11:30)
9. American Law Reports (12:12)
   1. ALR annotations (12:20)
   2. ALR series and sets (13:35)
   3. Finding annotations by topic (14:24)