The Bloomberg BNA Reporters can be accessed through the Law Library section of the Charlotte Law website and using the A-Z Index of Databases or at the link above. The Bloomberg BNA Newsletter Package provides you with BNA resources for nearly all areas of law and can all be customized for a personalized reference to current research.
The Bloomberg BNA Environment Reporter is a multi-part environmental resource that is published and updated weekly. The Environment Reporter is an excellent resource to stay up to date on rapidly changing developments in courts, Congress, federal agencies and environmental organizations. While this post focuses on the Environment Reporter, many of these features can be used for any of the other Bloomberg BNA Reporters of interest.
The Reporter can be customized in many easy ways in order to provide a user with relevant sources depending on their preferences. First, along the left side of the main screen, the Recent Topics, Agencies, States, Courts and Federal Statutes can all be customized to narrow the subscriber’s research results quickly. As you can see below, I have customized the Recent Topics Section to include topics of interest for an upcoming project on Renewable Energy Law.
After clicking on one of the Topics, a window opens with relevant research regarding that Topic only, organized by date from newest to oldest, as shown below.
This feature can be very helpful in narrowing results not only from topics of interest, but from articles pertaining to North Carolina only, specific jurisdictions or specific regulatory laws or federal statutes.
After locating relevant articles, BNA makes it very easy to save the research using the MyFolders tab and organize it by Project, Name or Date Added. Above the full text version of an article, BNA gives an option to Add to MyFolders, Share or Print, as shown below in the upper left hand corner.
The MyFolders tab is located at the top of the Reporter and will list all saved articles and organize the information by Project, Name or Date Added. This feature provides an efficient way to accumulate relevant research and save it for future use.
Finally, one of the easiest customized features provided by Bloomberg BNA is the BNA E-mail Registration. Each Reporter gives you the option to receive alerts outlining the current highlights in the news, as well as the ability to select how frequently you would like to receive them. Links are provided to the articles listed, and can be saved to MyFolders after opening for easy access later. Below is an example of the E-mail the Environmental Reporter sends each week, according to my preferences, organized by Topic.
With minimal effort, the Bloomberg BNA resources can be customized to each subscriber’s personal interests allowing an efficient way to stay up to date on areas of law for personal or professional use.
~Sara Garske, L’14~
