Wisconsin State Law Library

Welcome
  to the first issue of WSLL @ Your Service, an e-publication of the Wisconsin State Law Library (WSLL).
 Each issue will consist of a brief "Focus On" article and these regular columns:  "WSLL Web", "Tech Tip in Brief", "What's New at...", and "Odds 'n' Endings".  We hope you'll find some useful tidbits. 

Focus On:  WSLL

• provide legal information to Court staff, attorneys, government agencies & the public
• mail books to court staff & attorneys in WI
• fax, mail & email information
• provide contact information about courts, publishers, organizations & people

• help locate information on the web
• teach classes on using legal resources as well as provide one-on-one training
• maintain a website to direct users to legal resources
• maintain a collection of Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals briefs

So stop in, give us a call, drop us an email, or visit our website! Let us help you with your information needs!

Future Focus On:  topics will include "Accessing Briefs @ WSLL", "Judicial Council Materials : A Very Special Collection", "Using Listservs & Mailing Lists", "Native American Resources @ WSLL", "How to Access & Use Legal Resource Index",  "What is BadgerLink?"

WSLL's catalog contains titles owned by the Wisconsin State Law Library, Dane County Law Library, and Milwaukee Legal Resource Center. Over 1,000 of these titles (mostly published by federal or state agencies) are linked to full-text versions on the Web.

Can't find what you want in the online catalog?  We can pinpoint what other libraries own by searching OCLC, an international database containing over 45,000,000 records of more than  38,000 libraries.  Let us suggest some options for obtaining your material as it may be possible to borrow from one of these libraries. 

A: When searching for legal information on the Internet, consider the type, source and date of the information. First, are you seeking primary or secondary sources? Primary law (statutes, court decisions, regulations) is very likely to be provided free of charge on the Internet. A visit to an official court page, legislative page or government agency page is usually the best method of finding primary law. Secondary sources such as ALRs, CJS, AmJur, Restatements, and treatises are unlikely to be found free of charge on the Internet. These resources are published by private corporations which sell legal expertise and analysis. The exception is law reviews and journals. Many law schools and bar associations are now providing articles free on the Internet. Also, keep in mind the date of the information. Most legal sites begin coverage in the mid-1990's. Some provide more historical coverage but, in general, legal information dated prior to 1995 is less likely to be found on the Internet.

If you need assistance searching the Internet or locating information, please phone our reference librarians at 608-267-9696 or 800-322-9755.

Send your suggestions for future legal research Tech Tips to the editor.

We welcome Julie Baldwin as the new Reference Librarian at the Milwaukee Legal Resource Center. Julie comes to us from the corporate library at Miller Brewing where one of her duties was a daily beer tasting. That was one perk we couldn't match!

Jane Colwin and Connie Von Der Heide recently traveled to Oshkosh to present their Legal Reference in a Nutshell Workshop to UW reference librarians. Several future workshops have been scheduled for WI public library systems.

Has Wisconsin ever had a law that requires serving a slice of cheese with apple pie?

It certainly sounds plausible since after all this is the Dairy State, but the answer is no. 1935 Laws of Wis., ch. 106 came close; it required serving a small amount of cheese and butter with meals in restaurants (eff. June 1935 – March 1937). And by the way, that was the first Wisconsin law with a sunset provision, i.e. a legislated ending time. Interestingly, Vermont just passed a law in 1999 designating the apple as the state fruit and apple pie as the state pie. It also requires a good faith effort to serve either a glass of cold milk, a 1/2 ounce or larger slice of cheddar cheese, or a large scoop of vanilla ice cream with a slice of apple pie. (Title 1 Vermont Statutes Annotated, secs. 512 & 513, eff. July 1, 1999)