Welcome Class of 2029

Carved in Latin above our entrance is Lord Coke's advice, “Prudentis est Petere Fontes,” that “it is wise to go to the sources.” In an age of information superabundance, I'd offer a friendly amendment: it is wise to go to the experts.

That's us. The librarians here have deep expertise in legal literature and legal research, and we're available to you as consultants, guides, teachers, and just as people to talk with. We can also help you cite those sources correctly, which is, as you will soon discover, very much a thing.

The library is also a place, and it is here for you. We had every chair in the main reading room reupholstered this summer, on the theory that you will be sitting for a great many hours over the next three years and should be comfortable while you do it. Above the reading room are two more levels; below it, more library still. If you truly want to disappear for a while, ask someone about the Lower East Side.

You'll also find a popular reading collection: fiction, biography, the occasional thriller in which nobody cites anything. Bibliotherapy has genuine clinical evidence behind it, which means that checking out a novel instead of a casebook is technically an evidence-based intervention. You're welcome to tell people we prescribed it.

Beyond our walls, you have access to Yale Library, one of the largest research libraries in the world, from the medical library at the south end of campus to Sterling Memorial Library next door to the Divinity Library at the north end. That includes the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, also next door. A current exhibition on patriotism, and how that idea has been used and abused across the decades, is in its final weeks. While you're there, you can see one of the few surviving original printings of the Declaration of Independence.

Welcome. We hope you'll consider the library part of your home here. We only ask that you help us keep it tidy for everyone who shares it.

Daniel Dollar, Interim Director