Legal Research

Information Overload -- possible ways forward

Posted on November 29, 2010
The Boston Globe had an article today, "Information Overload, the early years," by Ann Blair. I have to say I began to read it with some reluctance. We have all seen a number of articles along similar lines, where they go back in history and pull up fascinating quotes that prove that Erasmus was disheartened by the sudden plethora of books, and thought it was all just too much...

Thanksgiving Day - counter traditions

Posted on November 26, 2010
At Plymouth yesterday, a varied group of Native Americans gathered for the 41st National Day of Mourning. The Boston Globe has a nice article by Erin Ailworth. Each Thanksgiving Day since 1970, they have been gathering to commemorate the day in a different ceremony...

2-L Book Thief at OSU Moritz Law Library

Posted on November 23, 2010
The story about the 2-L law student at Ohio State who was stealing books from the campus library and selling them online, allegedly netting more than $10,000, has got me steaming. There are also links at Above the Law and local news outlets: Columbus Dispatch...

Updating an old post: Typography for Lawyers

Posted on November 21, 2010
Dear OOTJers: In August, 2009, we featured a post about a website, Typography for Lawyers. Matthew Butterick, a civil litigator from L.A., runs the website. But before his life in the law, Butterick got a fine arts degree focusing on typography and graphic design...

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Librarians Add Value in Law Firms

Posted on November 20, 2010
Helane Davis passed along this ABA Journal news item, Does It Pay to HIre a Law Firm Librarian?. Patrick Lamb of the Valorem Law Group writes in the New Normal series his take on this question. Few firms now would need the physical space of a library since so much of what they use is online...

Why the Job Market is Changing - Full Version

Posted on November 17, 2010
National Jurist Magazine for Nov. 2010 features a really interesting article by William D. Henderson, professor at I.U., Bloomington, "Why the job market is changing." If you follow the link to the online version of the free magazine that is likely sitting in your law school lobbies right now, you can read it free by registering...

Building a Path to a Dream: Martinez

Posted on November 16, 2010
The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California that California law could provide in-state tuition to any student who proved residency in the state by attending a California high school for three years, and graduating...

Next Veteran's Day may have a different celebration

Posted on November 15, 2010
I'm a little late reporting this. Next Veteran's Day may have a really interesting and very moving way of honoring our veterans. There is growing support for the idea of following the lead of Israel in their celebration of their Memorial Day or Yom HaZikaron...

Libraries' using readers' choices in acquistion models

Posted on November 12, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice report at page A11 in print of Nov. 12 issue, "Reader Choice, Not Vendor Influence, Reshapes Library Collections," by Jennifer Howard. The article discusses two models being explored by libraries, one old and one new...

Law Librarians: Double Degrees Again!

Posted on November 09, 2010
Law librarians are debating that eternal, painful issue again: do we need to require double degrees? The issue has come up, not in the more usual venue of hiring reference librarians, but in the Director's suite. The ABA is undertaking a Comprehensive Review of its Accreditation Standards...

Update on Cushing Academy - The private school library that "dumped its books"

Posted on November 06, 2010
The Boston Globe ran another story updating its readers on Cushing Academy. In September, 2009, the Globe reported (and we blogged) about this story (here is a follow-up story from that time, when a big part of the story seemed to focus on the expensive coffee machine that was going into the library space)...

Brief & Exasperated: Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Even Thnk About it!

Posted on November 05, 2010
This OOTJ blogger keeps thinking it might be safe to start posting things about the litigation about Don't Ask Don't Tell. And then, more unravels. Or it doesn't. It just keeps getting more and more exasperating. So I keep putting off blogging about it...

Link Rot: DOIs, EZIDs, PURLs, and ARKs

Posted on November 05, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a Hot Type article on page A14, "Publishers Find Ways to Fight 'Link Rot' in Electronic Texts," by Jennifer Howard. In a previous article, the same author introduced her readers to the problem of link rot, with which librarians are all-too familiar...

In Celebration of Election Day

Posted on November 02, 2010
One of my colleagues mentioned to me last week that a former staff member was known for the "Election Cake" that she made for election day every year. The recipe was said to come from Hartford, Connecticut, and was very old. My curiosity piqued, I Googled Election Cake and found an entertaining article in The Washington Post...

Follow-up on Newspaper Paywalls

Posted on November 02, 2010
I have blogged several times about the erection of newspaper paywalls, especially the decision of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation to charge for The Times and The Sunday Times. Frankly, I was skeptical that enough people would be willing to subscribe to general news publications, even those of high quality, when there is so much free content available on the Internet...

Law Student Turns Book Thief

Posted on November 01, 2010
The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that a second-year law student at Ohio State University is believed to have stolen "more than 200 [books], one at a time, from the university law library and sold them online for more than $10,000." It is interesting to note that the books that were stolen were not rare law books; rather, they were "common titles" that most academic law libraries probably have in their libraries...

ARL's Future Visions for Libraries

Posted on October 28, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Association of Research Libraries previewed at their annual meeting and now has released their scenarios for different futures that research libraries may face. The publication, "Envisioning Research Library Futures: A Scenarios Thinking Project," includes a User's Guide, and is entirely open and free on the web...

Setback for Law School Clinics

Posted on October 27, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, that "has denied the legal clinics of that state's public law schools immunity from its open-records law, exposing them to new document requests that could greatly complicate their work...

National Digital Library Proposal

Posted on October 26, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an exciting article on a proposal for a National Digital Library. There are a cluster of related articles, but you may not be able to read them without a Chronicle password. Fortunately, Robert Darnton of Harvard, who is spearheading the proposal, has put a lengthy essay about his arguments, in a more accessible place, at the New York Review of Books...

Accidental Prison Librarian

Posted on October 25, 2010
On NPR this morning I heard an interview with Avi Steinberg about a book he just published titled Running the Books: the adventures of an accidental prison librarian. Mr. Steinberg, having graduated from college, wasn't sure what to do with himself. He answered an ad for a prison librarian at the Suffolk County (New York) House of Correction...

Blog Action Day: Clean Water is a Womens' Rights Issue

Posted on October 15, 2010
In too much of Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Asia, fetching water is the major life's work of girls and women. Easy access to clean water would transform the lives of the girls and women in these regions. Girls often drop out of school because they are needed at home to help haul water...

Research Guides on Bullying and LGBT Teens, Suicide Prevention

Posted on October 08, 2010
Thank our colleagues at Santa Clara University Law Library and the ALA's LGBT Roundtable for two very timely resources:http://lawguides.scu.edu/content.php?pid=116951&sid=1312795 http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/glbtrt/popularresources/bullying.cfmThe New York Public Library has a Gay Teen Suicide web page of Resources for LGBT teens and those who care about them, including 24-hour hotlines (for instance, 1-866-in addition to books...

Prosecutorial Misconduct--Part 2

Posted on October 07, 2010
USA Today's series on prosecutorial misconduct has continued with an article discussing whether prosecutors' offices that hid exculpatory evidence should be immune from prosecution. This issue is in the news because of the case--Connick v. Thompson (09-571)--that was argued before the Supreme Court on October 6...

A Response to Justice Scalia

Posted on October 06, 2010
Pace Law School hosted the Blaine Sloan Lecture on International Law on Monday, October 4. This year's speaker was the Honorable Michael Kirby, formerly a justice of the High Court of Australia; when he stepped down from the bench in 2009, he was Australia's longest serving justice...

False Confessions

Posted on October 06, 2010
Everyone in law enforcement knows that "nothing is more powerful than a confession." Robert Kolker, in the New York article "I Did It," goes on to state thatDecades of research on jury verdicts has [sic] demonstrated that no other form of evidence--not eyewitnesses, not a video record of the crime, not even DNA--is as convincing to a jury as a defendant who says "I did it...

COICA Internet Censorship and Copyright Bill

Posted on October 04, 2010
The "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" (COICA), Senate Bill 3804 was just introduced on September 20, 2010, but seems to be moving quickly through the Judiciary Committee. Much opposition has arisen to the bill, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which then offers links to:* an open letter to the Judiciary Committee from 87 (and a growing number of other) prominent concerned computer engineers in opposition to the bill;* a letter of concern to the Judiciary Committee from a coalition of library organizations, including AALL...

The Sound of Babylonian

Posted on October 01, 2010
Anyone who has ever studied a "dead" language such as Ancient Greek or Latin has wondered what it really sounded like when it was the vernacular. The problem is compounded when the language is Babylonian, which hasn't been spoken in several millennia...

A New Approach to Newspaper Websites

Posted on September 30, 2010
The survival of newspapers in the digital age is a concern for anyone who values the analysis and critical commentary that a good newspaper offers. Raw, unfiltered news is widely and freely available on the Internet, and newspapers and other print publications are struggling to survive in a world where people are hostile to the idea of paying for news...

Debtors' Prison Makes a Comeback

Posted on September 30, 2010
Debtors' prisons were outlawed early in the nineteenth century because people realized that debtors couldn't work and pay back their debts (or support their families) if they were behind bars. However, debtors' prisons may be making a comeback in the early twenty-first century...

Blog Action Day 2010 is coming!

Posted on September 29, 2010
Change.org|Start PetitionThe issue is Water -- Millions of people around the globe lack access to clean water.

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