Foster Business Library


Business Law Resources


Foster Business Library research guides are aimed at University of Washington students, faculty, and staff, highlighting resources available to them; users not currently affiliated with the university may be unable to access some of these resources.
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Foster Business Library Databases:

The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

  • Congressional Universe:   Go to Laws for full text access to public laws, Statutes at Large and the United States Code Service; go to Regulations for full text access to the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations.

  • LexisNexis Academic:   Go to Legal Research. Under this category, go to Legal News for articles from legal newspapers, magazines and newsletters; go to Law Reviews for articles from law reviews; go to Case Law for federal and state legal cases, decisions from all federal court levels as well as state high court and appellate decisions; go to Codes & Regulations for U.S. federal code, constitution and court rules, federal regulations, agency opinions and attorney general opinions, state statutory laws, court rules and state attorney general opinions; also included in this category are European Union law and the IRS Bulletin and tax regulations.   For an excellent guide to law searching in this database, see Babson College's Tips for Searching Case and Code Law. To identify what legal actions a company is engaged in, go to the major menu tab for Business and look up the company; go then to Legal Information for references to the company under the categories for Recent United States Cases, Recent Canada Cases, Recent UK Cases, Recent Commonwealth & Irish Cases, and the Martindale-Hubbard sources, Corporate Counsel and Outside Counsel.

    Web Resources:

    Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. When using web resources, be sure to evaluate the credibility of these resources. For a subject index to web resources, see Business Resources on the Web on the Foster Business Library homepage.

  • Duhaine's Law Dictionary:   A plain English guide to legal terms, provided by a practicing attorney.

  • Employment, Labor and Pension Law:   This site, part of the Internet Law Library, offers a long list of links to important legal cases and law in this area of business law.

  • FindLaw for Small Business:   This site provides information about the legal aspects of running a business as well as articles and guides on many topics such as employee rights and employer responsibilities, funding, and trademarks.

  • Gallagher Law Library:   The University of Washington's Gallagher Law Library is a short walk from the Foster Business Library and an excellent source for Internet Legal Resources, Books for Nonlawyers (over two dozen topics from Animal Law through Business Planning to Wills/Trusts/Estate Planning), and Legal Research Guides

  • Government and Law (King County Library System):   This site offers seven databases for legal and governmental research.

  • Intellectual Property Law:   This site, maintained by an intellectual property lawyer, is focused on intellectual property law, publications and copyright and patents, with many links to information in this area.

  • Intellectual Property Links:   This site, maintained by a European patent attorney, provides links to intellectual property resources, offices, organizations, database providers, official registers, guidelines, gazettes, and publications, courts, texts, case law databases, and dictionaries, for many countries.

  • Legal Information Institute (Cornell University):   The "Law About" section of this organization's homepage organizes the law about a great many topics into an alphabetic sequence by topic, from administrative law through workplace safety.

  • Legal Research on the Internet (Washington State Courts):   Online access to the Washington state constitution, legislature, Revised Code of Washington, Washington Administrative Code, Washington county, city and municipal codes, supreme court, attorney general opinions, as well as links to other states, cities and municipalities and the U.S. federal system.

  • Washington State Law Library:   The Washington State Law Library is part of the state Supreme Court. "It serves employees of all three branches of state government and provides some services to local governments. It is also open to the public. With over 55,000 titles and over 330,000 volumes, the collection is one of the largest legal collections in the Far West. It is one of the few law libraries in the Pacific Northwest to have primary materials from all 50 states, including published official reports and statutes. The collection includes a comprehensive set of primary federal materials. The Library has a large collection of legal periodicals." See their eleven informational brochures, in the left menu, as well as their E-mail Help. While they cannot "give legal advice, including interpreting legal materials, we can make suggestions about resources and research tools you can use," it is also possible to Ask A Librarian.

  • Wikipedia:   This free online user-created and maintained encyclopedia can be a good starting point for an orientation to a topic. See their overview entry for Commercial Law.

    Foster Business Library Reference Collection:

    The Foster Business Library Reference Collection consists of business handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other quick reference tools. It is located behind the Reference Desk in Foster, arranged by call number. Reference materials cannot be checked out; they may only be used in the library.

    Foster Business Library Reference Serials Collection:

    Foster Business Library Books:

    The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of over 70,000 books on all business topics. To search for materials on all three campuses of the University of Washington, go to the UW Libraries Catalog, in the upper left corner of the Foster Business Library homepage. Search by keyword, title, author, series, etc.

    To limit the results of your search just to materials in the Foster Business Library collection, use the Modify or Limit options at the top of the search results and change the library location to Foster Business Library. Availablity is indicated on the right of each online catalog record. First, note in which collection, within Foster, your materials are in, since the library has ten different Collections, each in a different location and often with differing arrangements. "Available" indicates that the book should be on the shelves under that call number and available for you to check out. "Due" and a date indicates that the book is already checked out to someone and is due back on the date indicated; you can have the "Request/Place Hold" feature to recall the book for your use.

    If the material you want is not in the collections of the University of Washington, you can use the "Search Summit" feature to repeat your search in the combined holdings of over thirty cooperating libraries in Washington and Oregon. Use the "Request This Item" feature in Summit to have books in those library sent here to Foster for you to check out.

    The Foster general stacks collection is located south of the main part of the Foster Business Library, through the two pass-throughs into the basement of Balmer. The arrangement is by call number, from A (at the east end, near the Copy Center) to Z (at the far west end).

    As an example, a search in the online catalog for the keyword Law, limited to the Foster Business Library, retrieved over 1,900 titles. A subject search for Business Law -- United States retrieved just 17 records in the Foster Business Library.

    Some examples of Foster Business Library titles include:

    Foster Business Library Periodicals:

    Foster Business Library Article Databases:

    Articles in academic journals, magazines, trade periodicals, and newspapers are one of the best sources for any kind of research. While the Foster Business Library offers a large periodicals print collection, comprising over 800 titles, articles are most easily accessed online, 24/7, in such fulltext article databases as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases are available in the library or from off-campus, and provide access to over 10,000 periodicals and millions of articles.

    Library access to most ProQuest databases will terminate at the end of spring quarter 2008, except for ProQuest NewsStand, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Historical New York Times, and the Historical Wall Street Journal. For more about this change, see UW Libraries Providing New Databases. After this change, comprehensive article searches should be performed in EBSCO Business Source Premier, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest NewsStand. Also, after this change, links to the articles below will be broken.

    ProQuest Databases:

    This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.

    Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article.

    As an example, a subject search for SUB(Commercial Law) retrieved over seven thousand articles, including over two thousand articles in scholarly journals, over 290 magazine articles, over 2,500 articles in trade publications, and over 1,400 newspaper articles.

    Examples of articles from these searches include:

    Help:

    6 January 2000; last updated 30 April 2008.   Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu