Finally, this is the place where you can check out circulating library materials. The Ninth Floor is probably the most heavily used location in the Information Center because it houses many of the primary and secondary sources that we'll be discussing in our tours. You'll also find a complete set of Shepard's Citations, a set of books that will be essential to you in updating your research. Let's begin our tour of secondary source materials with legal dictionaries. These are kept both on the shelves to the left of the library services desk and in the stacks on the Ninth Floor.
Legal dictionaries are nothing more than dictionaries that define legal terms.
Many of you have probably purchased a legal dictionary and have already looked up unfamiliar legal terms that appear in the cases you are reading for your classes. Legal dictionaries, however, can also be very useful in starting your legal research. Your mind goes blank. Not wanting to reveal your ignorance, you nod agreeably and you run straight for a legal dictionary to look up the term. The two principal legal dictionaries are Black's Law Dictionary and Ballentine's Law Dictionary .