The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library is located in Jerome L. Greene Hall on the east side of Columbia's Morningside Campus. The entrance to the library is on the third floor (campus level), near the western entrance of the building.
Address:
435 W. 116th St. Phone: 212-854-3922
New York, NY 10027 Fax: 212-854-3295
Monday-Friday: 8 AM - midnight
Saturday: 10 AM - 8 PM
Sunday: 10 AM - midnight.
From April 22 to May 17, access to the Law Library is restricted to faculty, students, and staff of Columbia University Law School, and to others using the collections of the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library. Extended Study Hall hours will be available for Columbia Law School students only. For additional information, please consult signs posted in the Library.
Eating, drinking (except from spill-resistant containers) and smoking are not permitted in the Library.
Please re-shelve case reporters to assist other Library users.
Please be quiet. Cellular phones, portable radios and similar devices which disturb other users are not allowed. Laptop computers may be used only at designated locations on the Third and Fourth Floors.
Please evacuate the building immediately at the sound of the fire alarm. Do not use the elevator.
Please do not leave valuables unattended. Materials found should be turned into the Lost & Found at the Circulation Desk.
The Library's Reserve Collection is located on open shelves in the Reserve Reading Room on the Third Floor. The turnstile to this area is keyed to accept the identification cards of Columbia Law School affiliated individuals; other readers who wish to use materials within this area should consult Circulation Desk staff.
On the left, or west side, of the RRR are the West Publishing Company case reporters, including the Supreme Court Reporter (S.Ct.), Federal Reporter (F., F.2d, F.3d), Federal Supplement (F.Supp., F.Supp.2d) and regional reporters. Additional copies of the federal and regional reporters are located on the south end of the Fourth Floor.
Across the aisle, on the right side, are "Permanent Reserve" items, i.e., materials in heavy demand, such as current hornbooks and nutshells and the Administrative Code and Charter of the City of New York. These are followed by the "Temporary Reserve" items such as required or collateral course reading, course evaluations, and materials for Moot Court. Consult the "Reserve Lists" option on PEGASUS's main menu or the blue, three-ringed binder at the Circulation Desk for more information on these items.
The next ranges hold the statutory and administrative codes of the fifty states and U.S. dependencies. (Session laws and superseded codes are available on microfiche on the Second Floor.)
At the north end of the room, all current (unbound) periodical issues, including law reviews and legal newspapers and newsletters, are shelved in call number order. Several bound periodical indexes, including the Index to Legal Periodicals (1789 to date), Current Law Index (current year only), and European Legal Journals Index (1993 to date), are shelved nearby.
These materials may not leave the Reserve Reading Room, but readers can copy portions of them using photocopiers near the entrance to the room.
Surrounding the reporters and the reserve materials are study tables and carrels; those on the west side of the Room are available for laptop computer use and are equipped for connection to the Law School's network. We do not permit use of laptops in other areas of the Room.
Recently the Diamond Law Library started a permanent offsite storage program for infrequently used items.
The initial move of materials from the basement to an off-site storage space is now finished. This material comprises pre-1979 legal treatises from the US and major common law jurisdictions. Before the move we culled from that group all items which had circulated at least three times in the last ten years. We are also keeping on site additional material which, although it hasn't circulated out of the library, would be awkward to use from an off-site facility, such as multi-volume sets and selected government documents.
We have also moved off-site one small sub-section of the International Law collection which had already been moved from the 2nd floor to the cellar as they were low use items. These are mostly older books on international relations peripheral to international law. As with the treatises, multi-volume sets and anything that has circulated 3 or more times will be kept on site.
The records in Pegasus clearly show which items are off-site. To request retrieval of a book, you can ask at the Circulation desk or fill out the Request Form for Items Located Offsite, a link to which can also be found by selecting "Pegasus, the Library catalog" in this website. Items requested before 3:30 P.M. are usually available the next day. You may call the Circulation Desk at 854-3922 to inquire as to whether your item has arrived.
In this initial stage, we have moved about 82,000 volumes, and this is all we will move off-site for the next two to three years. After that we expect to send roughly 10,000 volumes a year into the one-day retrieval storage program. This roughly matches our acquisitions rate.
The Greene Hall library space was designed to accommodate about 700,000 volumes. We now have over a million volumes in the collection, so you can understand why we've had to turn to off-site storage.
The Columbia Law School's computer lab is located In the southwest corner of the second floor. Open to Law School affiliates only, it is composed of networked, Windows XP-equipped terminals with access to a number of applications, including word-processing, Westlaw and Lexis and the Internet, and is staffed by a lab consultant during Library hours.
Scanners for Books and Papers The Library possesses three public scanners for use with books and papers. Two are located on the 3rd floor in the Reserve Reading Area, one is located on the 4th floor, in the corridor that crosses between the main corridors on the floor towards the 116th-St. end of the floor. The scanner software includes an on-line manual, and on one of the 3rd-floor scanners, a video demonstrating the use of the scanner plays regularly when the scanner is not in use.
Scanner for Microform Materials
The Library possesses a scanner for use with microfiche and microfilm materials. It is located on the 3rd floor, in the corner near the Handler Rare Book Reading Room. Instructions for its use are posted nearby.
Microfiche/Microfilm Reader/Printers The Library possesses two public reader/printers for materials in microfiche or microfilm format. One is located near the Video Room (rm. 209), the other is located at the north end of the 2nd floor (the end closest to SIPA, the School of International and Public Affairs.
Copier A photocopier is located towards the south end of the Fourth Floor, in the same cross corridor as the scanner. The copier is operated by the Library's copy card. These cards may be purchased--personal checks accepted--at the Circulation Desk in values from $1 to $50. Copy cards purchased at other libraries on campus will not work in the Law Library's photocopier. Please report photocopier problems to the Circulation Desk.
Exams given in the past five years by faculty members currently teaching the course are available in electronic format on the law student network. Also available for some foundation courses are model answers prepared by the faculty. Law students should consult the Computer Help Desk if in need of assistance in accessing these electronic files.
Print Titles: 411,779 -- from 135 countries and in 65 different languages
Microform Titles: 29,412
Electronic Titles: 33,653
Total Volumes and Volume Equivalents per ABA standards: 1,226,388
Number of Volumes in 24-hour Retrievable Off-Site Storage: 285,252
Seats: 396
73,672 Square feet in area
118,670 Linear feet of shelving
Entire space covered by wireless network.
Staff of 41, including 18 professional positions
General Description of the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library
The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library offers researchers one of the finest collections of legal materials in the country in both digital and paper formats. Besides a near comprehensive American Law collection, there are strong collections in International Law and Comparative Law and a special section devoted to Japanese Law. The Law Library has significant collections from at least thirty different countries and a useful core of materials from many other jurisdictions.
