Say you want to see a specific article published in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. You're fairly sure the courthouse library doesn't have it sitting on the shelf in print—but maybe it's available online on courthouse library computers.  How can you find out? 

Now you can quickly find out which journals are available online at BC courthouse libraries by searching our catalogue or website, just as you would to look for books.  This is because we've made HeinOnline, our main source for journals, searchable from our website and catalogue. (You can also find HeinOnline's classic legal treatises this way as well as LLMC Digital materials).     

 Once you've found your journal, if you are in any of our libraries, you can click on the URL in the catalogue record to access the current and past issues.

Once you've found the article that you want, you can use the Print/Download button to save a pdf version that you can email to yourself.  No need to print, and you don't have search multiple places online to find the article.

Adding HeinOnline to our website search and catalogue brings us one step closer to "one stop shopping" for search - but there's still a lot of journal content available online at Courthouse Libraries BC libraries that isn't easily findable through our website search, such as the law reports and journal articles in CriminalSource, Quicklaw and LegalTrac.  Please ask us for help if you can't find something.

As of April 1st, Courthouse Libraries BC now offers Westlaw Canada's CriminalSource for our clients to use in all BC Courthouse Libraries (except Golden).  If you are familiar with using LawSource in our libraries, CriminalSource will be easy to use: searching, printing and emailing all work the same way.  What's new is the criminal content now available online in courthouse libraries: CriminalSource includes annotated criminal legislation, sentencing digests, and many well-known and heavily-used criminal texts. 

What's in CriminalSource

The following publications are now available online at BC courthouse libraries via CriminalSource:

• Tremeear’s Annotated Criminal Code
• Tremeear’s Annotated Related Criminal Statutes
• Cournoyer & Ouimet’s Code criminel annoté
• Crankshaw’s Criminal Code of Canada
• Nadin-Davis Canadian Sentencing Digest
• Watt, Criminal Law and Evidence Newsletter
• Gibson, Canadian Criminal Code Offences
• Gibson, Criminal Law Evidence, Practice and Procedure
• Segal, Disclosure and Production in Criminal Cases
• Segal’s Motor Vehicle and Impaired Driving Newsletter
• Neuberger-Rose, Criminal Law Advisor Newsletter
• Cournoyer-Oumet en bref
• Watt’s Manual of Criminal Evidence
• Canadian Criminal Law Review
• National Journal of Constitutional Law
• Articles from the Criminal Reports and Motor Vehicle Reports

Getting Started Using CriminalSource

Starting at the CriminalSource homepage you can note up the Criminal Code with links to content from Tremeear's, Crankshaw's and Cournoyer & Ouimet.

You can find criminal caselaw by subject using Carswell's Criminal Law Digest.

If you are familiar with the Carswell criminal law texts listed above and want to access them directly via CriminalSource, you can browse the Tables of Contents by choosing Commentary.  You can also search a specific text using the Search Template: Other Commentary.

Need help using CriminalSource?  Please ask staff and we can help you (although CriminalSource is new to us too so we're still learning). 

Our website, catalogue, library computers across the province, and access to online products and the internet are now restored.  Thank you for your patience as we worked to fulfill your requests and orders using a limited toolkit of print materials only.  

We've never had an outage of this length before (30 hours) and are very sorry for the inconvenience this outage has caused for our clients.  While the problem turned out to be external to us as it related to the connection between our two internet providers, the length of this outage was not acceptable.  We are looking into measures we can take to reduce the impact of any future outages on courthouse library services. 

If you've sent an order or asked a question yesterday or today and haven't heard back from us, please let us know.