Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian presents …Beginner’s Guide to Legislative History (Rebecca Hyman, Reference and Outreach Librarian, and Steve Case, Access Services Librarian, State Library of North Carolina)
The Government Resources Section of the North Carolina Library Association welcomes you to a series of webinars designed to help us all do better reference work by increasing our familiarity with government information resources, and by discovering the best strategies for navigating them.
On November 9, we will be exploring legislative history (mostly from a North Carolina perspective, but all are welcome). Legislative history attempts to answer 2 questions: (1) *What* does the law say (or, more often, what did it say in the past), and (2) *Why* does the law say what it says. Being able to track legislation from inception to General Statute is vital to answering these questions. This session will explain more fully what legislative history is (and is not), look at the print and online resources available, show what roadblocks may prevent patrons from finding complete answers, and provide suggestions for alternative sources of information. Familiarity with the NC General Statutes and NC Session Laws is helpful but not required.
Rebecca Hyman is the Reference and Outreach Librarian and Steve Case is the Access Services Librarian, both at the Government & Heritage Library. Before working at the Government and Heritage Library Steve worked at the UNC Law Library for 12 years.
We will meet together for Session #9, online on November 9 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. (ET). Please RSVP for the Session by November 8 at 5:00 pm using this link: http://tinyurl.com/grs-session9
Technical requirements: We will be using collaborative software called Elluminate. It requires that you be able to download Java onto your computer, but you do not need any special software. After you RSVP, we will send you a link that you can use to test the software. If you have any questions, please contact Lynda Kellam (lmkellam@uncg.edu). You do not need a microphone as a chat system is available in the software, but you do need speakers or headphones.
The session will be recorded and made available after the live session, linked from the NCLA GRS web page (http://www.nclaonline.org/government-resources).
