Research Assistance to the Public

The National Indian Law Library (NILL) provides personalized research assistance and information to the public for questions related to American Indian law. In addition, NILL has also developed a variety of Internet resources to assist the Indian law researcher. Please take a look at the Research by Topic page before contacting a law librarian for research assistance. If your question is not related to Indian law, please contact your local public, academic library or law library for help. If you need to contact someone at NARF for a reason other than research assistance, please see the general NARF contact page.

Research Assistance Policy

NILL serves the information needs of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and the public. While NILL devotes close to 60% of its time to serving the public and 40% of its time to serving NARF, NILL's highest priority is to provide service to support the work of NARF. Usually research questions are answered within 3-5 business days, but occasionally responses to questions will be delayed due to the library's commitment to NARF. General research assistance is provided free of charge -- up to ten minutes per person per request. During this time we will try to help you find relevant sources that will answer your question and/or give you tips on how to conduct research on your own. For this reason, it is helpful to take a look at the various online resources on our web site, because we try to develop as many resources as time permits to empower people in their research activities. The library also provides custom research for a fee for those projects requiring a significant amount of time to complete. See our cost-sharing policy for more information about customized research and fees.

Document Delivery Assistance

The National Indian Law Library can provide copies of documents from the library collection online databases or other sources for a nominal fee as per our cost-sharing policy. We can also loan copies of books from our collection to you through interlibrary loan service, so please check with us to see if the item can be loaned. If it can be loaned, you will need to contact your local public library to see if they can request the item through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is a service that most libraries provide to their patrons. This service enables a patron to receive library materials from another library when his/her library does not have the material. Usually reciprocal arrangements have been made between libraries in an area to loan materials to each other. This allows libraries to provide access to resources that they might otherwise be unable to afford. Most libraries will not charge the patron a fee to access materials through interlibrary loan, but some do. Usually materials can be retrieved from another library in 5-14 days. Your public library may be able to request the information resource from us on your behalf or they may be able to request the item from another library.

Contact a NILL Librarian for Assistance