JOHNSON CITY (January 7, 2013) – An extensive law library and more than one million government documents are available for public use at East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library.

“This is part of our service to the community,” said Patricia Van Zandt, dean of Libraries at ETSU. “Our Cooperative Law Library was established in 1977, and we have been a federal document depository for the First Congressional District of Tennessee since 1942. Through the years, these collections have grown tremendously and are available to anyone.”

The Cooperative Law Library is jointly maintained by ETSU and the Washington County Bar Association. Legal resources cannot be checked out but may be used by students, faculty, staff and members of the community during most hours when Sherrod Library is open, Van Zandt said. The law library maintains a computer used for searching an extensive range of legal databases.

Major resources in the Cooperative Law Library include The United States Code, The Code of Federal Regulations, The United States Statutes at Large, The Tennessee Code Annotated, Tennessee Decisions, American Law Reports, American Jurisprudence and American Digest.

Many of these resources, as well as other titles, are available in electronic format.

ETSU’s government documents collection is one of the six largest in Tennessee and is also part of a shared regional depository that is coordinated by the University of Memphis. The collection includes federal documents from a wide range of government agencies, as well as publications from the State of Tennessee.

“Our resources are especially strong in the areas relating to the environment, the Appalachian region, education, health, law and criminal justice, business, and veterans’ affairs,” Van Zandt added.

Most of the publications are available online, while others are still printed or are available in CD-ROM or DVD formats. Patrons can use the Sherrod Library’s online catalog,http://libraries.etsu.edu/" class='calendartext' onmouseover=this.className='calendartexthilite' onmouseout=this.className='calendartext' target="blank">http://libraries.etsu.edu/">http://libraries.etsu.edu/ and the OneSearch tool, http://libguides.etsu.edu/onesearch, to help locate publications of interest.

Both the Cooperative Law Library and the government documents collection are located on the third floor of Sherrod Library. For assistance in accessing these resources, contact Dr. Mark Ellis at (423) 439-4715 or ellism@etsu.edu.