Subject information Rechtswissenschaft (Law)

New at the Viadrina? Welcome! First steps

The law library - getting used to

1 OPAC and VIACAT

Your gateways to explore the University library’s collection.
In for a library tour? Please look at the season-schedule.
None of the dates works for you? You are very welcome to contact the law librarian for a library tour including demos of OPAC and VIACAT personalized to your individual needs.
For a start please watch these introductory videos.

Next steps

2   VPN

Mandatory to get access to licenced documents, databases etc. from anywhere outside the campus.
Please create your VPN-account. This provides access to any electronic media licenced at the Viadrina library, being databases or single documents. So don’t forget to log in prior to your work with e-documents if not at the campus.
Procedure: Download the VPN-client (important: download works only outside the campus) and follow the instructions at this page.

3   Personalized access to Beck Online (Ebooks, periodicals, court decisions etc. in full text, German)

Beck provides access only per individual accounts based on Viadrina Email-Accounts. Access is offered for any member of the Viadrina, being student or scientific staff.
You are student? Follow the instructions described at Beck-Online and contact the helpdesk in case of problems. If even this might fail feel free to contact the law librarian at hertz@europa-uni.de or per phone 0335 5534 3 330.
You are member of the scientific staff, especially the law faculty? Please contact Ms. Rothe rothe@europa-uni.de for your priviledged personalized accounts.

4   Access to Juris (court decisions and a selection of ebooks, language: German)

Please use exclusively this link. No further login needed.
You are member of the scientific staff, especially the law faculty? Please contact Ms. Rothe rothe@europa-uni.de   for your priviledged personalized account, no VPN needed.

Law documents in English

5   You are looking for law documents in English language? You are participant of law related Master programs or Summer Schools or elsewise interested in International Law matters?
Find materials on International Law, EU-Law, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law or Comparative  Law in specialized law databases like

Hein Online

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

Nexis Uni

Besides the program related yearly introductions any participant or guest is welcome to contact the law librarian for any assistance for document retrieval etc.

Advanced steps - looking for research assistance

Familiar with the library but looking for special research tools, research guides, retrieval strategies or assistance for access to documents? Please don’t hesitate to contact the law librarian at hertz@europa-uni.de or per phone 0335 55 34 3 330.

 

Overview of free legal web information

Instead of long collections of links, here are three important sources of information:

Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Recht an der Staatsbibliothek Berlin - offers an unrivalled overview of current jurisprudential content in Germany

Translation of the Regensburger Verbundklassifikation and its index into English

European sources online, highly indexed database of documents on all questions of European integration, maintained by the well-known expert on EU law, Mr Ian Thomson, Cardiff University.

Federal and state gazettes in full text // Now: via Juris

Makrolog is now history - but not the research of the journals listed there before juris took over. You can find all federal and state gazettes in juris under the tab on the home page on the left "Other categories", until further notice also via VPN like all juris offers.

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law - first-class reference work on all topics of public international law, access campus and VPN.

Kuselit online
Legal bibliographic database
In addition to the juris services (database of articles), you have access - initially for one year - to one of the classic offers of bibliographic references on all legal topics. In addition to analysing over 600 specialist journals, this database is particularly suitable for researching articles in anthologies, especially Festschriften. Access throughout the campus + VPN.

LexisNexis
is now accessible via the Lexis Uni interface, which has been released for the German market. One of the two classic databases on US law, but particularly important locally because of its content on international law.

Publication articles
In addition to the search in the juris literature database and the references in Kuselit, the local OPAC catalogue offers a very good supplement to the search options for publication articles: The OPAC of the EUV already lists over 4000 independently searchable articles from legal commemorative publications. This service conveniently complements the search for Festschriften articles in juris and Kuselit, as you are shown the local offerings without any detours. The entire local Festschrift collection will be successively catalogued in this way. The articles can be searched using keywords in the title field, using the notation and/or restricting the search to "Media type / article (small selection)". Please note that other types of articles from collective works and journals, with the exception of publications produced in-house by academics, are not included until further notice.

E-books
In addition to the many monographic full texts in Beck online, Lexis Nexis Recht and (BGB-Kommentar) juris, the University Library has acquired unlimited access to a large number of legal e-books. Search in OPAC e.g. by publisher: de Gruyter and media type: Online resource, the title records contain direct links to the media.

Change to the subject classification system for criminal law/tax law/social law
Please note that if you search for media on criminal law/tax law and social law in the "Notations" field, you must use the system locations of the new subject classification system.

Kluwer Law International Journals: This important offer is available via the national licences range, which makes some of the journals on international law that have been cancelled in recent years available to you electronically, both current and back issues. Please also note the other offers accessible in the campus area in this area (of interest to lawyers, among others: The Oxford Digital Archive).

Further specialised legal databases can be found in the database information system Dbis.