Instructions for Bookpullers

Yale Law Journal Volume 131 First Year Editors from Josh Altman & Sammy Bensinger, Managing Editors August, 2021

This should serve as your guide when pulling sources throughout your time as an Editor on YLJ. All FYEs are responsible for bookpulling on a weekly basis in advance of their weekly sourcecite. Bookpulling is the process of gathering the sources that are cited in a particular piece, labeling them according to our conventions, and saving PDFs in the Shared Drive and/or copying the URL into the bookpull spreadsheet. These steps make it easy to locate sources during sourcecites to confirm the accuracy of citations. Several days in advance of a sourcecite, you will receive an email from the source coordinator assigning you particular sources to pull. If you have difficulty locating any sources, please email Josh, Sammy, the lead editor, and the source coordinator.

I. General Guidelines

A. VPN & In-Person vs. Remote

To access many of the following resources and the Shared Drive to which you will upload your sources, you must either be on the Yale wireless network or access the Yale system using Virtual Private Networking (VPN). Instructions for logging into Yale’s VPN can be found here.

If the law school has resumed in-person operations, please note that you will be required to pull all book sources in physical, hard-copy form. If the law school is still operating remotely due to COVID-19, you will pull scans, PDFs, or online versions of book sources instead. More detailed instructions are included in Section II.I.

B. First Sourcecites versus Second Sourcecites: A Critical Difference!

Whereas Forum pieces are only sourcecited once, print pieces are sourcecited twice throughout production. If a piece is in its first sourcecite, no sources will have been pulled nor placed in the Shared Drive. Thus, you will pull each source according to this guide and place it in into the “First Sourcecite” folder in the piece’s main folder (e.g., Post & Rothman Article).

If a piece is in its second sourcecite, you will use the bookpull spreadsheet’s first column, “First FN,” to locate the source in the “First Sourcecite” folder in your piece’s main folder. Within the “First Sourcecite” folder, sources previously pulled are numbered in accordance with the “First FN” column. To prepare these sources for the second sourcecite, copy each source into the “Second Sourcecite” folder, and renumber it according to the “Second FN” column. Any sources in the second-sourcecite bookpull spreadsheet that do not have a “First FN” number must then be pulled according to this guide.

II. How to Pull Different Types of Sources

The sourcecite spreadsheet should provide a link for many sources automatically; you should always check those first. These instructions provide a manual for accessing certain categories of sources in case the sourcecite macro does not work properly or does not recognize a source.

A. Cases

  • For U.S. Supreme Court decisions, use PDFs of the United States Reports, which HeinOnline indexes. You can go straight to the first page of a Supreme Court case by clicking the “Citation” tab above the search bar on HeinOnline. For example, if you type “5 U.S. 137” into the Citation Navigator, you will go to the first page of Marbury v. Madison. Click on the PDF icon in the top left corner of the screen to download the PDF of the case.
  • For federal appellate and district decisions (not for U.S. Supreme Court decisions), as well as state court decisions, Westlaw PDFs that provide original images of opinions are acceptable sources. For example, if you type “413 F. Supp. 1281” into Westlaw Next’s search field, you will be taken to the page for the relevant case. Click on “Original image of [citation] (PDF)” to download a PDF that meets our sourcecite standards.
  • PDFs that merely print Westlaw or LEXIS information with star page numbers and generic formatting are only acceptable if the decision is not reported in a federal, regional, or state reporter.
  • Ensure that the PDF is of the preferred reporter for the citation. The preferred reporter for each U.S. jurisdiction can be found in Table 1 of The Bluebook.
  • PDFs of very recent cases may not yet be available on Hein or Westlaw. For these cases, use PDFs of the official slip opinions from the court in question only after confirming that the case is not yet available in any (not only the preferred) reporter.

B. U.S. Constitution

  • Use the transcript on the National Archives website. There is no need to pull citations to the U.S. Constitution; adding the URL to the bookpull spreadsheet is sufficient.

C. Federal Statutes (U.S. Code)

  • The U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO) FDsys U.S. Code Collection has the simplest interface for pulling PDFs.
  • HeinOnline PDFs are also acceptable.
  • Finally, you can often find official GPO PDFs of the U.S. Code simply by googling the relevant U.S. Code provision (here is an example; the acceptable result is the third hit as of this writing).

D. Federal Legislative Materials

  • For bills and resolutions, search first on Congress.gov.
  • For session laws, use HeinOnline’s index of the U.S. Statutes at Large. If a session law has not yet been published there, you will often be able to find it on FDSys.

E. State Statutes and Legislative Materials

  • State codes may be pulled from Westlaw.
  • For state session laws, use HeinOnline’s Session Laws Library.
  • Unenacted state bills and resolutions can sometimes be found on official state government websites, but keep in mind that, as always, only official PDF versions are acceptable.

F. Federal Regulations and Administrative and Executive Materials

G. Law Reviews and Other Academic Journals

  • PDFs of most law review articles can be found through the HeinOnline Law Journal Library. Use the “Citation Navigator” function on HeinOnline to go straight to the first page of the article. For instance, if you toggle the main search bar to “Citation,” and search “107 Yale L.J. 1467,” you will be taken directly to John Fabian Witt, Note, Transformation of Work and the Law of Workplace Accidents, 1842-1910, 107 YALE L.J. 1467 (1998). To download the PDF, click on the PDF icon above the piece.
  • PDFs of many law journal articles are also available through JSTOR and other databases indexed on Google Scholar. If these databases reproduce the final version of the relevant print journal, then they are acceptable for bookpulling purposes as well. Note, however, that Google Scholar also indexes unpaginated proofs of law journal articles. These are not acceptable for sourcecites, since they do not reproduce the final version of the journal and therefore do not include page number information.
  • When all else fails, you can try a “filetype” search in the normal, non-Scholar version of Google. For example, if you type “filetype:pdf Nora Engstrom the Lessons of Lone Pine” into Google, the first hit (as of this writing) is a PDF version of a YLJ Article that meets the standards for sourcecite use. Again, what’s most important is that whatever piece you pull is an exact scanned image of the original source.

H. Newspapers and Magazines

  • For recently published newspaper articles, you may just Google the article and paste the link to the original in the bookpull sheet.
  • For older newspapers, first try Archive of Americana, which has a library of PDFs of old newspapers. PDFs of New York Times articles dating to 1851 are available here (100 or more PDFs a month are free for New York Times digital subscribers).
  • Other old newspapers may be available through the Yale’s eJournal collection here or through newspapers.com. To access newspapers.com, follow these steps:1. Connect to the Yale VPN.
    • 1. Connect to the Yale VPN.
    • 2. Go to https://search.library.yale.edu.3. Search “newspapers.com.”
    • 3. Search “newspapers.com.”
    • 4. Under the first hit (entitled “Newspapers.com”), click “Online database.”
    • 5. Assuming you are properly connected to the VPN, you will see a banner that says “Welcome, YALE UNIVERSITY” on the homepage and a search bar. You should be all set.
  • For newspaper articles otherwise unavailable, please try Googling to see if you can find an original PDF that way. If that doesn’t work, you may need to search the Yale library’s microfiche collection. Please contact the lead editor and the Managing Editors if this is the case.

I. Books

If the law school has resumed in-person operations:

  • Please check out the book from the Law Library; you must pull the physical book from the Law Library shelves yourself. With the volume of books we request, we cannot rely on the library staff to do our bookpulls. When you bring the book to the circulation desk, all you need to do is tell the librarian on duty that the piece is for a Yale Law Journal sourcecite. Once you have pulled the book and checked it out with circulation, find the correct shelf for that piece in the L3 reading room. If you enter the library on L3, make a left, and continue all the way down, YLJ’s shelves are located in the smaller reading room.
  • For books in other Yale University libraries, you should request delivery to the Law Library circulation desk and then request to check out the book to the Yale Law Journal. The other university libraries do not allow you to check out books to the Journal.
  • Bookpullers must pull all sources, regardless of whether they are in the Yale library system. Sources not found in the Yale system, such as ones requested through BorrowDirect or InterLibrary Loan (ILL) should be checked out on the bookpuller’s ID and bookpullers are responsible for renewing and returning these materials. If you need to use BorrowDirect or ILL, please try using ILL first, as it is easier to renew books requested through ILL. Please do not return books until instructed to do so after the piece has gone to print. If a book is recalled that is checked out to you, please contact the lead editor and the MEs and we will advise you whether we need you to obtain another copy.

If the law school is still operating remotely OR if you were unable to find a hard-copy version of the book:

  • You will need to be proactive in requesting scans of hardcopy sources. Due to library delays, you should always search for the book online or request scans within twenty-four hours of receiving your bookpull assignment. It is your responsibility to track the scans and place them in the Shared Drive even if they come in after the sourcecite. Notify the lead editor and CC the Managing Editors when you add them to the Shared Drive if they come in after the sourcecite. We expect you to be diligent with this assignment. The Managing Editors will take note of outstanding, missing scans.
  • When you request a scan, always request twenty pages before and after a pincite (or a range). You can request a maximum of one hundred pages per book. If a source does not have a pincite, and it is not available through Step One, please request the cover; pages listing publication information (e.g., page listing editors and date of publication); and the first fifty pages.

Follow this four-step guide to obtain a hardcopy source:

1. Step One: check all book sites for online copies of physical books (make sure you are logged into Yale’s VPN).

  • Is it available through Yale as an ebook?
  • Is it available from HathiTrust?
  • You need to be on the Yale network with VPN to view what Yale has access to.
  • If an item is available in HathiTrust but you cannot access it, contact a librarian. Is it available for free on other websites?
  • Is it available for free on other websites?
  • Internet Archive Open Library
  • Internet Archive National Emergency LibraryOpen Library
  • Open Library
  • Check the YUL Free Resource Guide (updated regularly)

2. Step Two: if the book is not available from any of the resources listed under step one, please submit a Yale Scan and Deliver (preferred) or ILL Scan Request.

  • Yale Scan and Deliver
  • ILL Scan Request

3. Step Three: if the scan has not come back 72-hours before the sourcecite, email your LE asking them to reach out to the author for a scan of the source.

4. Step Four: if you cannot submit a request and the author has not produced a scan, contact a Reference Librarian for help.

  • Email a librarian at reference.law@yale.edu.
  • Speak to the Librarian on duty via the virtual reference desk.
  • Reach out to individual Librarians or make an appointment to meet via Zoom at a day and time that is convenient for you here.

IV. How to Upload Electronic Sources

Upload all electronic copies of sources in .pdf format in the appropriate folder on the YLJ Sourcecite Shared Drive. Consult the Guide to Sourceciting and Common Editing Errors for instructions on how to connect to the Shared Drive.

Please label the sources you upload to the Shared Drive as follows: [footnote number].[source number in footnote].[citation]. For example, if footnote 37 cited a piece from Volume 123 of the Yale Law Journal that started on page 266, you would label the source as “37.1.123YaleLJ266.” The “1” in the middle indicates that this source is the first (and perhaps only) source in footnote 37. If one footnote contains more than one source to be pulled, the spreadsheet will automatically renumber the source with a decimal (e.g., if the source were the second source from footnote 37, you would label it as “37.2.123YaleLJ266” following the spreadsheet). Not everything fits neatly into this format, but please make sure every label begins with the footnote number.

Once a source has been pulled properly and placed in the appropriate Shared Drive folder with correct footnote numbering, mark “Y” next to the source on the bookpull spreadsheet. You may also mark “Y” for sources with functioning internet links, as described above, that have been pasted into the bookpull spreadsheet.