Legal Research

Great Programming on the Supreme Court! C-SPAN!

Posted on September 20, 2009
Starting Sunday, October 4, C-SPAN is offering law school's version of Sweep's Week! From their website: Beginning Sunday October 4 at 9pm and continuing through that entire week--each night at 9pm -- C-SPAN will present groundbreaking and unique programs on the Supreme Court...

Speak up! Learn how to be more effective

Posted on September 18, 2009
Government information is something that nobody but librarians seems to care about. By the time members of the public know they need a piece of government info, it's too late for them to advocate for it to be made public. Librarians are the folks who see the need ahead of time, so it's up to us to speak up and protect the public interest...

Now for something completely different...

Posted on September 18, 2009
My former colleague, Cheryl Conner, is interviewed on ABA Journal's series, "Legal Rebels." I have been kind of steamed about some of these so-called Legal Rebels, who often don't seem like much of a rebel to me. Or sometimes, I have a major bone to pick with the so-called rebellion, as with David Van Zandt's deanship at Northwestern...

Teaching Evaluations

Posted on September 18, 2009
I truly love to teach. I have taught Advanced Legal Research at three different law schools starting in 1984--a quarter of a century! At first, it was a responsibility thrust upon me, but over the years, teaching has become one of the most rewarding things that I do...

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Techno Rant

Posted on September 14, 2009
I have frittered away most of a day trying to get some simple technology running. This is undoubtedly the most frustrating single thing about the frontiers of our our brave new world. I started to limit this to librarianship, but in my experience, you can waste hours out of your day trying to get new technology to work in any part of your life, so, hey! Time-wasting frustration -- It's not just for libraries any more!I am sure that once I either figure out what I am doing wrong -- (It's always USER ERROR, isn't it?) -- or break down and call for help, the wonders of the new technology will fulfill its promise and my life will be better in all ways...

Facebook and Litigation

Posted on September 11, 2009
An article in the September 11, 2009 New York Law Journal, by Daniel L. Brown and Aimee R. Kahn on "The Perils of Facebook." (free with a trial registration) As a result of the explosion in popularity of social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, where members "post" and share information about themselves as never before, attorneys, and particularly litigators, have begun to take note of the potential utility of this new medium...

Google Books Opposition & Support Summarized

Posted on September 11, 2009
The Chronicle of Higher Education today has an online article in its Publishing section that provides a very nice summary of the opposition and the support for the Google Books Project as we near the latest deadline for Judge Denny Chin to decide whether he will authorize the agreement...

The Next Step Beyond DRM... How would it affect libraries?

Posted on September 08, 2009
Digital Rights Management, DRM, has been driving consumers crazy. The rights holders' attempt to protect their ownership interest in music, text, whatever, DRM has been a consumers' nightmare. If you have been foolish enough to sign up for Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, you have had a personal, up-close encounter with DRM...

The Florida Bar is Looking up Your YouTube Videos

Posted on September 07, 2009
If you are applying for admission to the Florida Bar, you had better clean up your social networking sites. The Florida Bar News reports that the Florida Board of Bar Examiners Character and Fitness Commission recommended expanding its current review of personal websites to include social networking sites...

Bookless Library

Posted on September 04, 2009
Cushing Academy, a prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, has decided to dismantle its 20,000-volume library and replace it with a $500,000 learning center, the Boston Globe reports today. According to a statement on the library's website, the Academy is in the process of transforming our library into one that is virtually bookless by 2010...

Interviewing Hints for Lawyers & Librarians

Posted on September 03, 2009
I am looking at the Brainstorm Column by Gina Barreca in Chronicle of Higher Education Ideas (What to do When You are Looking for a Job Part I, Sept. 1, 2009). She is writing specifically for English PhDs interviewing for faculty positions on faculties at colleges and universities...

League of Librarians Trading Cards

Posted on September 03, 2009
Just for fun! Evidently, the idea was pioneered at Carleton College, but these trading cards were posted to Flickr by the librarians at the University of Rochester River Campus. They used the cards as an orientation welcome to new students. What a hoot! I am not sure all the cards actually give a recognizable photo of the librarian, but still, it's a terrific idea! Way up there with Super Librarian! Take a look, here...

Celebrate Knowledge Day

Posted on September 01, 2009
This morning, I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from one of my students. She was born and raised in Russia, and is a dedicated, committed student. She will make a great attorney. She explained to me that flowers are traditionally given to teachers on Knowledge Day, which is celebrated on September 1 in Russia and other former Soviet republics...

Why MLS Candidates Don't Get Calls for Clerical Positions in Libraries

Posted on September 01, 2009
There was a thread on Law-Lib recently where an MLS who was laid off and looking for work bemoaned the fact that she was not getting calls for any of the clerical positions in libraries where she had applied. The discussion turned on why this should be...

Cyber Gender Harassment and the New Campus Gossip Sites

Posted on August 31, 2009
University of Maryland law Professor Danielle Keats Citron has an interesting article on SSNR, "Law's Expressive Value in Combatting Cyber Gender Harassment." Also at vol. 108 Mich. L. Rev. (2009). (A nice coincidence that this pops up right after Marie's post about the new dean at U...

Justice Souter's Papers

Posted on August 28, 2009
Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter has donated his papers, both personal and professional, to the New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord, of which he has been a member for many years. Read Tony Mauro's story in the National Law Journal here...

Ethics for Library Organizations

Posted on August 28, 2009
Gee, this is tough. Karen Schnederman asks what position do I think AALL should take regarding news items such as Denver Public Library to consider hour cuts, closingsTo make up for a budget shortfall of nearly $5 million next year, Denver Public Library officials are considering cutting back service hours, closing branches, and even selling buildings...

Law Student Summer Job Blues

Posted on August 28, 2009
The ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter has a group of stories that pull together to make a very bleak picture of summer jobs this year:Skadden Arps cuts their summer jobs by more than half here. For the summer of 2010, they plan to hire 100 (down from 225 this summer)...

Westlaw returning printers to Southern New England

Posted on August 28, 2009
I got a voice mail from Spencer Clough at Southern New England School of Law today saying that West is returning the printers for their Westlaw. He credits pressure from stories such as the ones here at OOTJ, but also hard work from their own academic rep...

New Dean at Maryland

Posted on August 28, 2009
I saw a posting about fellow alumna Phoebe Haddon in my Smith College alumnae newsletter. The posting linked to this story from the Baltimore Sun about Haddon, who is the new dean at the University of Maryland School of Law. I didn't have the pleasure of knowing Dean Haddon at Smith, which is a women's college; however, I was interested in her comments about the special insights women bring to the law: I think women bring new dimensions to thinking about the law, because we ask different questions ...

Stanley Kaplan's Legacy

Posted on August 27, 2009
Stanley Kaplan died recently, the entrepreneur behind the Kaplan test preparation company. The link above takes the reader to a lengthy obituary in the New York Times from August 25. Kaplan was born in Brooklyn, and continued to live in the New York area to the end of his life, with homes in Manhattan and Boca Raton...

Tough Times for Job Seekers

Posted on August 26, 2009
Today's New York Times features an article, "Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools," that makes clear just how tough the job market is this season. The dire situation is summarized in the opening paragraph: "This fall, law students are competing for half as many openings at big firms as they were last year in what is shaping up to be the most wrenching job search season in over 50 years...

Time to Change our Relation to Vendors? Johnny B's Call to Arms

Posted on August 26, 2009
Over at Johnny B: Renaissance Man, John Beatty wrote a terrific call to arms (click on the title to this post to go read it in full). After reviewing the dismal recent events in West's relations with librarians (AALL sponsorship refused; pulling printers from Puerto Rican law schools and non-ABA accredited law schools; and finally the ad stating that knowing your librarian's first name was proof that you were spending too much time in the library), John recalls for his readers that West is no longer a family-owned business, but part of a multi-national mega-corporation...

Change in Policy at Wikipedia

Posted on August 25, 2009
Yahoo News is reporting that Wikipedia is "testing a new method for curbing false information in its entries as the online encyclopedia seeks a balance between credibility and openness." Wikipedia will continue to allow anyone to write and edit articles, but it is experimenting with requiring changes to be run past experienced Wikipedia editors before they show up on the site...

PACER - RECAP

Posted on August 25, 2009
In an effort to jiggle loose the Justice Department's Pacer database, programmers from Harvard, Princeton and the Internet Archive have provided a Firefox Plug-in called RECAP (that's PACER spelled backwards). It tests the search you run in PACER against a database of already-retrieved documents that have been donated to a free "shadow" PACER database, RECAP...

Treasures at the Morgan Library

Posted on August 25, 2009
The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan has mounted a show entitled "Pages of Gold" which showcases leaves that were separated from manuscripts and sold individually to collectors. The New York Times reviewed the show in June, but it took me awhile to get there...

Something's Rotten in Brooklyn

Posted on August 25, 2009
The Washington Post ran an appalling story on August 9, 2009 about the Brooklyn Public Library, which hired a firm that specializes in coordinating layoffs to terminate thirteen employees. The firm, the Five O'Clock Club, coaches "businesses on how to execute mass downsizings and often visits companies on the designated day to help coordinate a layoff...

Library Chairs - the wood, the bad and the ugly

Posted on August 24, 2009
Reprinted from my e-mail response on the directors' listserve, to a query about straight, 4 legged wooden chairs, which is what we have in my library: Here is what I learned the hard way about sturdiness of straight 4 legged wooden chairs. You MUST have stretchers between the legs, or the legs will split...

The Christopher Baldy Prizes at the University at Buffalo Law School

Posted on August 24, 2009
The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York, is pleased to announce the establishment of three new prizes for innovation in the area of law and social science: Online Communication, New Scholarship and Distinguished Contribution...

Printing Reinstated in Puerto Rico

Posted on August 24, 2009
I just received an email from Maria Otero, Director of the University of Puerto Rico Law Library. She shared with me the good news that Thomson Reuters has decided to reinstate support of standalone printing at law schools in Puerto Rico. "Dear all:After a very good and thoughtful telephone conversation with Mr...

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