The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library houses an impressive collection of domestic, foreign, comparative, and international law materials on four floors throughout the library. Most of the materials are located in open stacks; which means that users can go to the shelf and retrieve items without assistance. Many items in our collection do circulate and may be checked out by patrons who have borrowing privileges. However, some of the collections do not circulate and must be used within the law library. The library does have scanners that are available for use free of charge to scan items, which may then be emailed or downloaded to a USB device. Some of our collections are located in closed stack areas which require assistance for retrieval. The law library also houses part of its collection in a retrievable off-site storage facility in Princeton, New Jersey. Any items requested from offsite are generally available the next business day if requested before 2:30 PM or within 2 business days if requested after 2:30 PM. See the law library website for a description of the library collections.
Please note that the library is currently in the process of moving pre-1990 books to offsite storage. Please see the circulation desk if you have difficulties locating these titles.
To find books in the rest of the Columbia University Libraries you can use CLIO. Clio includes the Columbia University Libraries (CUL) catalog.
CLIO includes the holdings of most of the Columbia University Libraries. Most Law Library materials are also cataloged in CLIO. However, it is better to use Pegasus to ensure that you see both the most up-to-date information on Law Library holdings, as well as the most complete information since some items may not always appear in CLIO.
To look for materials beyond Columbia, search for books at other libraries using WorldCat. WorldCat allows you to search the collections of libraries in your area and around the world. There are over 10,000 libraries that have listings in WorldCat. There are over 402 million bibliographic records in WorldCat. The Diamond Law Library is a member of OCLC and WorldCat and can borrow materials from other University libraries throughout the country through Interlibrary Loan. For more information, see the Reference Librarians.
Some texts and treatises are available in full-text online. Sometimes the books are exact PDF facsimiles of the printed work, and other times, there is only html text available. Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law all have many secondary sources available in html format. These items are not cataloged in Pegasus so you would need to go to the individual database to see what is included. HeinOnline and Making of Modern Law Legal Treatises 1800-1926 also have access to many PDF copies of books. These items are cataloged in Pegasus.