Escape to Alcatraz: What Self-Guided Museum Tours Can Show us about Teaching Legal Research

This article discusses how the pedagogical principles underlying prerecorded, self-guided museum tours, like the cellhouse tour of Alcatraz Island, can be applied to teach students how to use the law library. This article describes the limitations of bibliographic and process-oriented legal research exercises and suggests that prerecorded tours combine the best aspects of both, make research instruction more interesting, encourage active learning, and help students develop better research skills.