Library Shifting Project
by Larisa Bosma
Have you noticed some changes in the Reference Stacks on the second
floor? The Gallagher Law Library staff asks your patience while we work on a
project that involves consistent relocation of materials throughout the
Library. Certain items are being reclassified (assigned new call numbers) to
keep current with the Library of Congress' classification scheme. The
project will eventually involve movement of the Library's entire collection,
but right now the activity is contained within the Reference Stacks. Please
pardon our dust and confusion while we keep the Library up to date.
In-the-Trenches Guide to Legal Abbreviations
by Sarah Hollingsworth, Reference Intern
One of the earliest rites of passage that every student of law must
confront head-on is mastering the ordinary tools of the lawyer’s
trade---namely, finding and communicating the law. To the uninitiated, this
is no mean feat in light of the fact that the finding half of that equation
requires, first and foremost, an ability to decipher the arcane code of
legal citation. And even if one is well past the liminal stage of connecting
the dots between and among rule of law, source of law, and citation, recent
events have conspired to make the once mundane task of deciphering obscure
legal abbreviations a bit more complicated than in yesteryear. Examples of
such events include the judiciary’s expanding acceptance of non-traditional
sources of authority; the continuing proliferation of decision-making public
agencies with their ubiquitous, mind-numbing acronyms; the global trend
toward professional specializations, including the evolution of specialty
vocabularies; and, of course, the ever-increasing ability of courts and
practitioners to obtain Internet access to previously inaccessible sources
of “authority.”
The bad news is that all of these factors (and more) go into the mix of
making legal authority these days something of “a moving target” (See
Christina L. Kunz et.al., The Process of Legal Research xxiii (5th
ed. 2000)) and thereby rendering the task of finding and hitting the mark,
citation-wise, a bit more of a challenge than it used to be. The good news,
however, is that there are a number of finding aids located here in the
Gallagher Law Library that index and describe legal abbreviations, common
and uncommon alike. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to suggest
some in-the-trenches resources that may come in handy for anyone who is
interested in improving their aim at the “moving target” of legal authority.
- Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations: A Reference Guide for
Attorneys, Legal Secretaries, Paralegals, and Law Students (M. M.
Prince ed. 5th ed. 2001). KF246.B46 2001 at Reserve & Reference Office
- This no-frills, workhorse of over 30,000 legal abbreviations was
compiled and edited by career, reference law librarians. More decoder than
dictionary, its entries are limited to American and English legal
abbreviations that are compiled without benefit of cross-references,
creating repetitive minutiae (at least in the paper version). In spite of
its minor detractions, however, this unpretentious reference tool does
exactly what it says it will do---it helps make sense of the ubiquitous
letter symbols found in American legal literature. A note of caution:
Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations comes with a companion
volume, Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Citations (KF246.B45 2001 at
Reserve & Reference Office). While there are many situations where the
latter volume may be useful, the decryption of legal abbreviations will
not, in all likelihood, be among them. Copies of the most current edition
of Bieber’s Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations can be found in
Reserve and the Reference Office; older editions are on the shelves in the
Classified Stacks under the same call number. Bieber’s Dictionary of
Legal Abbreviations is also available online through Lexis-Nexis:
LEXREF; BIEBLA.
-
- The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (17th ed. 2000).
KF245 .U5 2000 at Reserve, Reference Office & Quick Reference Floor 6
- The Bluebook remains the undisputed gold standard for
formatting and analyzing legal citations, despite sustained efforts to
find a more manageable alternative. Criticized by many for its unwieldy
format, The Bluebook nonetheless serves as a particularly useful
resource for decoding abbreviations for early state official reporters
(see Table 1, for U. S. jurisdictions listed alphabetically) and legal
periodicals (see Table 13). Opinions vary, of course, but The Bluebook
is also considered by some as the court of last resort for untangling
mysterious citation knots of the Gordian variety. In this regard, a
logical (and surprisingly helpful) place to begin is with the first entry,
Abbreviations, in the index. Copies of older editions are located in the
Classified Stacks.
-
- The United States Government Manual, Appendix A: Commonly Used
Abbreviations (2001/2002 ed. JK 421.U57 2001/2002 at Reserve & Reference
Office
- Appropriately shortened to USGM, this small paperback is one of
several “fast and easy” sources to search when you need to find the name
of a federal agency or hearing board. Appendix A of the current edition
contains a straightforward list of agency-related abbreviations and
acronyms arranged alphabetically. Thus, sample entries include:
- HUD = Department of Housing and Urban Development
- JAG = Judge Advocate General
- UNICOR = Federal Prison Industries, Inc.
- At Gallagher, paper copies of the most current editions of the USGM
are on the shelves in Reserve and the Reference Office, with older
versions located in the Classified Stacks. A handy link to the free USGM
is also embedded in MARIAN,
the Gallagher Law Library online catalog. Ootherwise, this useful
government publication can be viewed at
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/gmanual/index.html.
-
- World Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations (Igor L. Kavass & M. M.
Prince, eds. 1991/2001. K865.K3 1991 at Reference Office & Quick Reference
Floor 6
- The World Dictionary is a four-volume, loose-leaf tome that
undertakes three discreet tasks. The first is a list of abbreviations,
arranged first by language group and then by continent or country, found
in legal literature around the world. The second comprises a collection,
set out in Appendix A, of abbreviations and sigla found in legal documents
written before 1607. Obviously intended for use by serious scholars of
law, history, and history of law, this section of the World Dictionary
includes legal abbreviations found in Roman, medieval, civil, canon, and
English common law. The third undertaking, the results of which can be
found in Appendix B, is a compilation of legal abbreviations by subject,
which remains a work-in-progress. To date, legal abbreviations have been
compiled for the subject areas of Environment, Maritime, Military,
Taxation, and United Nations. Although this scope of coverage by subject
is still quite narrow, the depth of coverage on the subjects reported to
date is noteworthy.
-
- Black’s Law Dictionary (Bryan A. Garner, ed. 7th ed. 1999.
KF156.B53 1999 at Reserve, Reference Office & Reading Room
- This guide would be incomplete without mentioning the classic,
Black's Law Dictionary, which contains (in addition to its 24,000
legal definitions) a separate list of abbreviations commonly found in
American legal references. For those who have not yet discovered this bit
of Gallagher trivia, multiple copies of Black’s Law Dictionary (in
various editions) have been placed atop the divider shelves throughout the
Reading Room. Additional copies, together with older editions dating back
to the first in 1891, can also be found at the given call number location
in the classified stacks. The 7th edition is also available on Westlaw:
BLACKS.
-
- Abbreviations Dictionary, by Ralph De Sola (7th ed. 1986).
PE1693.D4 1986 at Reference Office
- This dictionary of abbreviations includes a greater number of
international, cultural, scientific, geographical, and historical sources,
and correspondingly fewer, expressly American legal abbreviations than any
of the other resources listed here. Thus, it may be especially useful in
analyses of international law references, as well as in cases where a
citation abbreviation remains stubbornly illusive. The author’s stated
purpose in selecting entries for this dictionary was to find order in the
midst of “abbreviatiorial acronmyical” [sic] chaos (p. ix), and his
efforts toward that end have produced a volume that easily merits a place
on the top ten list of “The Most Diverting Books in Gallagher Law
Library.” While this sleeper’s lists of dysphemistic place-names and
bafflegabs may be unlikely sources of answers to thorny problems in
citation analysis, they may nonetheless provide fast relief in unexpected
ways for sufferers of common citation chaos, otherwise known as chronic
congestion of cited passages, to which students of legal research are
believed to be particularly susceptible. This result, it should be noted,
is completely (and happily) consistent with the author’s professed and
implied objectives for this work. Only one copy of the current edition of
the Abbreviations Dictionary is in Gallagher, and that can be found
on the shelf in the Reference Office. An older version, the 1977 fifth
edition, can be found in the classified stacks at the call number noted
above.
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