Academic libraries play a vital role in supporting faculty and students by providing access to academic resources that can enhance research and instruction. One of the database providers that we subscribe to is Gale, owned by Cengage, which offers a variety of databases to support these efforts.
ASU Law Has Five Law-Specific Databases on Gale
Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926
Provides legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926 with full-text searching.
Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources
Consists of a fully searchable digital archive of early state codes, constitutional conventions, municipal codes, legal dictionaries, and published records of the American colonies designed to complement Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926. The archive has two parts: Part I, 1620-1926, containing material sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University with some from the Law Library of Congress and Part II, 1763-1979, containing material sourced from the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs, 1832-1978
Contains the records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court from 1832 to 1978. The collection is derived from two reference sources. For 1832 through 1915, the documents are based primarily on the holdings of the Jenkins Memorial Law Library in Philadelphia. For 1915 to 1978, the source is the Library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
The Making of Modern Law: Foreign Primary Sources, 1600–1970
Access four centuries of historic legal codes from northern, central, and eastern Europe.
Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926
Consists of Law, Islamic Law, Jewish Law, and Ancient Law sourced from the collections of the Yale, George Washington University, and Columbia law libraries.
Gale Homepages and Cross-Search
Gale has also made it easier to access its resources by providing a central link for all Gale databases. This link allows patrons to search across all of Gale’s databases using the Cross-Search feature, instead of having to navigate through multiple links and descriptions. Additionally, users can filter their search results on the back end, making the process more efficient and user-friendly.
If a researcher, for example, would like to find all mentions of Felix Frankfurter, they can now run that search across all databases and then filter content on the back end.
Cross-Search Homepage
https://link-gale-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/apps/menu?userGroupName=azsulawlib
Example of Felix Frankfurter search
Note: the same thing works for ASU Main Campus Libraries Gale Databases:
https://link-gale-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/apps/menu?userGroupName=asuniv
Video Introduction
If you would like a quick overview of the Gale databases and how to use them effectively, we have a video below from our Introduction to Topical Law Databases playlist.
If you’d like help using any of the Gale databases, or wonder if they would be good for a research project, don’t hesitate to reach out to a law librarian and we can get you moving in the right direction.
