Law Librarian By Day

Libraries: Bigger on the Inside

2011-03-18T10:20:00.000-04:00

Library = TARDIS[1].

Image from the BBC

Think about it: just like the Doctor's famous Police Public Call Box, people have preconceived notions of what a library is. Libraries are viewed as antiquated and quaint institutions of the past that people completely ignore. And when we do catch their attention, they assume they know exactly what to expect. But as our most loyal supporters have realized, there's a lot more to libraries than what appears on the outside.

Come inside and there are countless programs, resources and, yes, books -- enough for years of exploration. When the time comes to change, we do. And just as the Doctor never tires of introducing new companions to his home, librarians can exude that same glee about our professional homes.

Image from the BBC

What happens when someone new discovers the TARDIS? Disbelief quickly gives way to wonder. They learn where the wardrobe room and the pool are. And as they become comfortable there, TARDIS becomes their home too. They want others to experience it. And yet, no matter how much time they spend in the TARDIS, there is more to discover.

That's what we want people to think about the library: come in, join us on the adventure; invite your friends and there will always be more to explore.

[1] Yes, this is the kind of stuff that comes to me at 6 a.m. when I'm brushing my teeth.

nook: The Afterparty

2011-03-14T09:52:00.000-04:00

I have owned my nook just about six months now. Let's look at some numbers.

In that time, I have read a total of 51 books. 12 of those (roughly 1/4) were eBooks read on the nook. Part of me look at that and thinks "Only 12? Pshaw!"[1] But then again, it was never my intention to go digital-only. Not to mention I've yet to do any significant traveling since I bought the nook.[2] So when you think about it, 1/4 is actually a pretty major shift in the way I read.

I've also been tracking how long it'll take me to "pay off" the purchase too:

Spent: $197.91 (nook, protective cover, reading light, $2.98 in digital-only content)
Saved: $136.83 (12 books)

Not there yet, but it's getting close. I've currently got 116 free books in my digital library that haven't been read yet (I check two sites pretty regularly to get new stuff). I'm sure I won't actually read all of those, but having options is good.

So what do these numbers teach me? I made a good decision. Having an eReader adds convenience and diversity to what I read. The up-front cost can seem a bit steep, but it can pay for itself without a lot of effort.

[1] In my defense, one of those books was over 800 pages long. It took awhile.
[2] Just road trips so far, and road trips are for audio books. The way this summer is shaping up, though, it'll be getting some significant usage soon.

New wiki collecting legal research/pop culture examples for use in class

2011-03-08T12:11:00.001-05:00

I’ve Got a Hit! is a new wiki which collects examples of legal research concepts found in movies, TV shows, songs and print. Entries give detailed information about where to find the example, which research concept it demonstrates, how it can be used in class and more.

Please join us! We’re looking for new contributors and listings. If we’ve missed that classic example you use in class – or if you run across a new one the next time you’re watching TV – feel free to add it. Editing access is available for law librarians, professors and others interested in expanding this area.

More information is available at the wiki itself, or you can email me directly with any questions.

HULK SMASH REDUCTIONIST VIEW OF FANGIRLS

2010-12-14T09:11:00.001-05:00

(This has been bothering me for weeks now. And has nothing to do with law. Sorry.)

by Flickr user marv117

It started with rain boots. The intersection in front of the law school tends to flood during heavy rains, so I wanted a pair. I saw an advertisement for some officially-licensed Marvel rain boots in a comic book. My first reaction was delight. Then I actually looked at the boots.

I hate them. The comic images are of a woman in some sort of troubled romance. There is a lot of pink. And tears. I don't know if they come from an actual Marvel comic or not. I suspect not. But regardless of the source, I scoffed at ever owning a pair. If I bought a pair of Marvel-related rain boots, they'd have Storm on them chasing the bad weather away (AMIRITE?) or something, not some weepy woman proclaiming her relationship problems to the world. Trying to buy a comic book t-shirt is no better. The official Marvel shop barely has any "women's cut" shirts. And most attempts to get licensed shirts into brick-and-mortar shops focus on the "X Male Superhero is My Boyfriend" type design.

The boots and shirts are only representative of a larger problem. Comic book companies do not know how to sell to women. No, strike that. They only know how to sell to a certain type of woman: the stereotypical one that spends all her time thinking about her nails and her boyfriend. I am sure there are customers out there who love these products. Yay for them (really). I don't have anything against pink or girly rain boots in general. Heaven knows the pair I decided on instead is pretty darn feminine too.

My problem, I think, is that there is no viable alternative. You want a comic book t-shirt cut for women? I hope you think Iron Man and the Hulk spend all their time fighting over you. But me? I want the hilarious Hammer Time shirt and the Deadpool logo one. They're fun and clever and, you know, about comics I actually read.[1] Why do I have to buy the unisex version that will not really fit me and therefore make me look like I'm wearing a tube sock? Why can't they just produce their "guy" products in women's sizes too? Or consider more licenses to companies like Tokidoki, that tread the line between gender and design with more thought?[2]

by Flickr user notamaiar

Comic book companies are trying to reach out to their female audience. Good on them. But they still don't seem to understand that lumping us together under the target audience header "women" is lazy and reductive. It's like when your parents suggest you should be friends with somebody because "you're the same age". Age is an immutable characteristic that generally does not give off much of a spark in the quest for kindred spirits. So why assume the audience you're marketing yourself to can be won over by appealing to a characteristic like that?

This is a snapshot of me: I love reading comics. I'm a huge fan of "literary" series like Fables and The Unwritten, and I dabble in ones like Ed Brubaker's pulp stories and Brian K. Vaughan's stuff[3], but mostly? I read Marvel superhero comics[4]. I like the adventure and the optimism and the fact that writers can actually make me care about the characters under those garish costumes. And yeah, I also dig the occasional romances that are thrown into these stories[5]. Chocolate and peanut butter. But when you take the adventure stuff out and just try to make it all about the romance, you lose me. And this is what the products I'm sulking about do: give you one or the other.

I'm not saying every woman who reads comics is like me. Exactly the opposite, really: not every reader/buyer is the same. And if there are pulp comics and superhero comics and literary ones and tie-in-for-TV-shows-that-died-before-their-time ones and zombie comics and Jane-Austen-and-zombie comics, then clearly the comic book industry is smart enough to have recognized that diversification of products is a really clever business strategy. And here's when I belabor my point a bit just because I want to throw in a quote I like. I realize that trying to define an audience is a lot like the Doctor trying to describe time:

from The Medusa Cascade

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly ... timey-wimey ... stuff.

It's complicated. Very complicated. So keep selling the shirts you've got. Keep licensing the boots that started this whole thing. Somebody is obviously buying them. But take a page from Threadless and TeeFury and offer your other current designs for men and women both. Get somebody to design those Storm boots. Think about your female audience like you do your male one: not just as a gender group, but as a discerning aggregate made up of a lot of smaller, often quite diverse factions. Comic book fans are well-known for being willing to drop significant amounts of money on products they like. So give 'em what they want. What they all want.[6]

[1] Weeeell, I don't currently read Thor. I've been planning to. But that t-shirt makes me want to start right now.
[2] I will take one of each, please.
[3] Just bought the last couple Y: The Last Man TPBs. So excited.
[4] Hence the beating in this post. Sorry, Marvel!
[5] Seriously. Bigby/Snow? Bucky!Cap/Black Widow? MOAR PLZ.
[6] I realize that I am being extremely optimistic in my vision. The reason there are products like this at all is because comic book companies are trying to make more money. And when a product line is not making enough, they stop selling it. Trust me, I've watched a lot of series I like go under the ax. But this is my rant, okay? And even within that framework, I still think there's a lot of room for improvement.

I heard the news today, oh boy

2010-11-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

My local[1] Borders is closing. I am slightly sad because I actually prefer shopping at Borders to the Barnes & Noble experience. They’re better stocked (and organized), don’t require me to ask a difficult-to-find employee for help just to see if a book’s in stock, and are often cleaner and better maintained. But it’s also often more difficult for me to get to Borders. I know this is not the end of Borders everywhere, but it is another loop in the downward spiral.

Sigh.

[1] And when I say "local" what I mean is "the Borders I sometimes drive 25 minutes this direction to visit" not "the Borders I less frequently drive 25 minutes the other direction to visit".

Impressions on the nook, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the ebook reader

2010-09-08T09:58:00.000-04:00

Image by Mostly Muppet
I bought a nook the other day.[1] In recent months I've gone from thinking I'd never buy an ebook reader to considering it at length to one day just waking up having decided to buy one.[2] I resisted buying one for a long time because I am so very attached to my physical book collection. But there is no denying that they are heavy and bulky and not conducive to travel.[3] Prices on ebook readers have dropped significantly in recent months, well into the impulse range for that sort of item. And my new job[4] now involves a good hour of subway riding every day. The reasons for considering the purchase were a lot stronger than they'd been.

It is not my intention to replace my physical book collection with ebooks, but the nook will supplement it. My plan is to use it for free public domain classics and renting ebooks from the library. I may occasionally buy a new book for it[5] but mostly it will be a space-saver when travelling and a convenient way of getting through books I only intend to read once.

There. Philosophy and self-censure out of the way, I can talk about my impressions so far.

I like it. The eInk is easy to read, and it doesn't take any longer for the new text to appear than it would for me to flip a page and refocus. I have not had much experience with touch screens, but navigation is becoming a more natural process than when I first demoed it. I think the cover flip feature will become more handy as my collection size increases. At present, it's mostly flair. I'm struggling a bit with typing on the keypad, but I've also just graduated to a full QWERTY keyboard on my cell phone too. Behind the curve a bit, me. Actually, most of my impressions can be summed up as: no, it's not reading a book, but it's a decent approximation. I don't trust myself to take it out with me until the protective cover arrives, but once it does, it'll start the daily commute with me.

I did not do extensive comparison shopping before deciding on the nook. I was firm on wanting two features and the nook was the only viable option to offer both. I) I don't currently own a laptop, so being able to download books independent of another fixed-location device was important. Most of the more basic Sony readers do not offer a wi-fi feature. II) Public libraries have jumped aboard the ebook train, and most loan ebooks in .epub format. Kindles don't support .epub. After knocking those two options out of contention, only the nook was really left standing. Decision made.

So how am I faring in terms of selection? I've already added about 60 titles to my elibrary. I've paid a combined total of $2.98 to add two digital-only titles. The rest I've gotten for free from a variety of sources, including the B&N ebook store, Project Gutenberg and Girlebooks. I have not started borrowing from any libraries yet. My elibrary is heavily slanted toward classics at the moment, understandably, but I probably have about 10 current fiction titles from several genres. I might not have decided to read all of them had they not been free, but hey, they're FREE.

The experiment will continue, and I'm sure I'll form more decided opinions the more I use the nook, but for now I am happy with my purchase.

[1] Not typing a capital N is really bothering me.
[2] This is how many of my decisions regarding techie items are made.
[3] I bought so many books the summer I was in Oxford that I nearly toppled over when I first put on my roller bag/backpack the morning I flew out. And I'm not a tiny, weak person.
[4] Did I tell you I got a new job? Well, I did. I'm living in Atlanta now. O HAI East Coast!
[5] If, say, it is only available in digital form. Or on sale for 99¢.

So I've been reading from the popular collection ...

2010-07-02T14:24:00.000-04:00

I went on a library kick a few weeks ago, and in the process read a number of the newest additions to our popular collection. They were all pretty fluffy (hey, it's summertime), but still a fun dip into what the collection has to offer.

She-Hulk, vol. 1: Single Green Female; She-Hulk, vol. 2: Superhuman Law by Dan Slott
Legal Elements: Mild-mannered attorney Jennifer Walters prefers her life as brassy She-Hulk, but when her increasingly raucous behavior gets her kicked out of the Avengers mansion and tossed from her high-powered firm job, her only option is to accept a new position: serving superhuman clients as Jennifer, not She-Hulk.

This is the first She-Hulk story I've read, but it was pretty obvious the legal aspects were incidental to most prior She-Hulk stories. Here, they're front and center. I most enjoyed the first volume, when the stories take place on Earth, in a normal courtroom. Spider-Man suing J. Jonah Jameson for libel? Yes, please. The second volume goes to outer space (and inter-galactic law), a fun idea that fizzled in execution.

Murder on Nob Hill by Shirley Tallman
Legal Elements: Sarah Woolson is one of the first female attorneys in the country, trying to be taken seriously in 1880 San Francisco. After some clever maneuvering gets her a place in a local firm, she sets out to defend a young widow accused of killing her rich, older husband.

A decent enough start to a new series, though the story is often lurid for what seems to be no other reason than to be lurid. And the constant "I am woman, hear me roar" litany got old.

Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts
Legal Elements: The hero is a lawyer. And he's nice to an older client in a brief scene, I think? I really couldn't be bothered to remember.

I'm not saying I was expecting this book to be all about the law, but I was at least hoping to, you know, root for the couple? Roberts put way more energy into the gal pal moments and the wedding planner bits than the rest, which made for a bland, forgettable read.

Solomon vs. Lord by Paul Levine
Legal Elements: Steve Solomon, a solo practice defense attorney, teams up with blue-blooded recent grad Victoria Lord to defend a young widow accused of killing her rich, older husband (waaaait....). Steve is also trying to gain custody of his young nephew.

I completely enjoyed this one. Light and breezy with good dialogue and local color. Levine, himself a former attorney, throws in all kinds of genuine Florida law (Fla. Stat. citations!) for an authentic feel. And the ending isn't your typical legal thriller ending, for which I give it extra points.

The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
Legal Elements: Three sisters and their mother create stories in which they know many famous (and real) people, including a High Court judge and his wife. When the eldest daughter actually meets the Toddingtons, no one is sure of how to reconcile the imagined with the actual.

I loved this book in places. I also wanted to throw it across the room in others. Then it would suddenly be charming again. It was often very difficult to know if what you were reading had actually happened or was part of an imagined history. And the family is disturbingly unsympathetic to those who do not buy into their fantasies. Hrm.

Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer
Legal Elements: Frank Amberley, a barrister, comes upon a murder on an English country road and takes it upon himself to solve the crime (to say nothing of snarking on the attempts of the local police to do the same).

Wow, I finally found a Heyer book I really enjoyed. I keep trying to read her books (both the regencies and the mysteries) because everyone from my mother to Michael Dirda recommends them, but I'd yet to hit on one that really interested me. Mr. Amberley didn't really do any barrister-y things here, but he was excellent company along the way. Success!

So. You can see some definite themes to my recent selections: mysteries and feminism, oh my. Yet despite their similarities of theme, the books were each distinctly their own. Whoever started this popular collection is brilliant! Oh wait. Never mind.

Aborted Musings on Book Browsing

2010-05-20T17:05:00.000-04:00

I have had a half-completed post sitting in my text editor for over two weeks now. It was partially on browsing for books (and how that doesn't really happen in academic libraries) and partially on how I judge books by their covers all the time. I really did intend to share deep thinky-thoughts with you all, but I just can't seem to get them written in a coherent form. Instead, I'm stuck saying things like "thinky-thoughts".

Anyway, so what I'm going to do is share all the links that got me ruminating on the topic, and maybe it'll get you pondering too.

The Guardian recently ran an article explaining why books often get different covers depending on where they are printed.

And there's a related post on books with similar covers but different prices over at Inklings.

The North Carolina State University Library has released some open source software which allows users to virtually browse shelves.

And the American Libraries website posted an article tackling The Myth of Browsing, which maintains, among other things, "Because the books in highest demand are most likely to be in use and, thus, off the shelf, browsing academic library shelves is the equivalent of hitting the sale tables on day three of a three-day sale."

Unlike most public libraries, we don't keep the dust jackets on our books. So rather than browsing our physical shelves for monographs, I browse the catalog -- pictures and descriptions, oh my! And when I go to bookstores, I rarely browse anymore -- I go in knowing exactly what I want, that it's in stock, and once I've located it (not always the easiest task in most chain bookstores -- I'm looking at you, Barnes and Noble), I leave again; on the rare occasion I do go to browse, I tend to just look at the books on display or which are faced out.

I used to spend hours browsing the bookstore, library or bookmobile shelves. Is it just me? Or have you noticed a change in your browsing behavior too? Are we doing our students a disservice by tossing book covers?

The Popular Collection, Nine Months On

2010-05-10T19:37:00.000-04:00

The students are all busy with exams, and the library is quiet as another semester draws to a close. Sounds like a good time to take a quick look at how the popular collection has grown and changed over the last term. We're in a fairly steady rhythm when it comes to ordering now; a dozen or so titles are added to the books each month, and we've just doubled the size of the movie collection (from ~30 to ~60) after a successful first six-week run. I don't expect any big changes in that respect at this point. There have been two major modifications to how the collection is managed, though: the list is now updated automatically, and we aren't just ordering the books from YBP anymore.

Managing the Lists
The original layout was simple: a webpage listing titles and links to their catalog records. The list was split in two (books and movies) as more titles were added, but each page was still updated manually as every new order arrived. That, understandably, got unwieldy. Visit the book[1] page now and you are presented with a series of links to the catalog, one for the complete title list and the rest for various genres. These lists are automatically updated each time a new title is added to the collection, thanks to the local 690 field. Each record is augmented with a collection description as well as a broad genre listing[2] (e.g. legal classics or mystery and thrillers); these genres were added to help book browsers quickly locate the type of book which interests them. The links on the collection page are subject/keyword searches based on that information. Although it creates a tiny bit of extra work to add this information once we grab the record, it also makes the webpage cleaner, more accurate, and takes readers directly to the record (and therefore more information about the book) without the intermediate step.

Ordering
Our first orders for the popular collection were placed with two companies, Amazon (movies) and YBP (books). Every so often I'd run across a book YBP didn't carry, but the selection seemed generally good. As we moved beyond popular titles like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Pelican Brief, though, it got harder to find everything through Yankee. If it wasn't a perennial seller or new, it wasn't there. We buy a lot of mysteries and thrillers because they're checked out most often, and many of those authors write series. You can see where this is going, yeah? We could get #8 in the series through Yankee but not #1. We needed another source. There was a brief flirtation with the idea of getting books through Baker & Taylor, YBP's parent company, but we already had an Amazon account and got the movies there anyway, so Amazon won. When it comes time to place another order, I check YBP then Amazon as needed. Between the two, we can find pretty much any title we want to add.

I can't say how happy I am to see the collection continue to grow. Learning to manage that growth has been been a fantastic learning experience too, from deciding what to purchase and how to present the collection to navigating the vendor waters. Looking forward to what I learn next. As the Doctor said to the TARDIS, what have you got for me this time?

[1] At present, the movie page is still updated manually; that will change as more titles are added.
[2] Now, technically, the genres should be listed in the 655 (specifically a genre field), but our system isn't set up to search that, so the 690 it is.

Schadenfreude, Online Privacy and Me

2010-05-04T12:12:00.000-04:00

I had a bout of self-induced schadenfreude yesterday. I wanted a quote for a piece of correspondence, but could only remember a portion of it. So, being the well-trained researcher I am, I Googled it. The first hit was exactly what I needed. And from a website I created in 2004 and subsequently completely forgot about. After some thought, a bit of trial and error and a few visits to the FAQs, I was able to login and delete the site.

Now, there was nothing shocking posted on that site, nothing that could make my mother blush. (One of the nice things about not drinking alcohol is that you never have to worry about people having crazy!drunk pictures of you.) But it was ... young. It also featured some really rubbish early graphic design work, and a picture of an acquaintance whom, I'm sure, is clueless I even have that picture. Had some employer/colleague stumbled upon it rather than me, the worst I could have been accused of was unequivocal glee.

So why did I delete it? Well, okay, the bad graphic design is a bit embarrassing. But I deleted it for two reasons: 1) it was digital clutter I no longer wanted and 2) it's not my place to have a picture of someone I hardly know up on a website without their permission.

1) Digital Clutter.
I'm a librarian. Part of my job is educating people about data privacy. I advocate crafting an online presence rather than willy-nilly posting for the world to see. And when you find something about me online that I didn't post myself, it's fairly reasonable to assume I know about it and don't mind it being there. So suddenly finding this old relic brought me up a bit short; here was some data I'd lost track of. A quick evaluation said it no longer represented my primary interests or provided the service for which I'd originally crafted it (for myself or anyone else). There was no reason to keep it, and deleting it would make it easier for people researching me to find pertinent, up-to-date information. (My argument is a bit specious in this case, since you'd have to have really known me to find it. But the principle stands.)

2) Privacy.
Social networking was in its infancy when I created that site. Tagging was a mere twinkle. I neither advertised my site, nor even told another about it. So when I posted the picture of that acquaintance (100x100 px, baby), it was rather unlikely that a) it would be found or b) recognized. It wasn't embarrassing, and it amused me. But today, an era in which people tag photos of each other, conduct Google searches on themselves and data is cached for long-term storage, our responsibility to others' privacy is a serious one. Forcing someone to opt-out rather than opt-in is just not how I like to do things. And sure, if I'd decided to keep the site up, I could have just taken down the picture. It just reminded me of how much things have changed online since 2004.

So, what did I learn? Keeping track of your data is an on-going process. You never know what might pop up. And be mindful of how you present others online as well. Technologies and opinions change; you have to be willing to leave them behind sometimes.

sigh

2010-03-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

The problem with working in a library is I want to read all the time. When we first started the popular collection, for example, I decided I'd read every book in it so I could knowledgeably answer questions about it. Great idea, except I order new books at a faster rate than I read them. Then there are the related books in our main collection on literature and censorship. That one about frontier justice. And the new book on Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells that just arrived this morning. See?

Oh, and did I mention the public library is literally next door?

Horatio Hornblower and the law of the sea

2010-02-10T12:24:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a Barnes and Noble sale and a moment of weakness with my credit card, I picked up the complete Horatio Hornblower series on DVD last week. My well-travelled VHS copies may finally be retired, bless. And rather than be productive around the house I had a marathon; the 1999-2003 series is comprised of eight 100-minute episodes, plus I capped it off with the 1951 Gregory Peck movie. Both are based on C.S. Forester's 11-volume Hornblower book series. Set around the Napoleonic Wars, they tell the story of a young naval officer who rises through the ranks almost as rapidly as Captain Kirk did Starfleet (a not-unfitting comparison, considering the Hornblower series' influence on Star Trek). There is plenty of swashbuckling to be had in the series as you might expect, duels and swordfights and sea battles galore. The production values are also excellent, with the greatest attention paid to detail. And let's not forget the cast. Oh, the cast!

But this blog is about law in literature, you say? There is plenty of that too. The legal code these sailors are subject to can be a harsh one. Men are flogged for theft, negligence and questioning orders while the entire ship's company watches on; officers must justify their command decisions before a court martial; and Hornblower's own daring tactics often test the extremes of interpretation under the Articles of War. The Admiralty is always the ultimate authority, but we also see repeated examples of the ship's captain being his own law enforcer when at sea. During one episode a French ally announces his intent to lodge a complaint about his treatment aboard ship with one of Hornblower's superiors; Hornblower responds with finality, "On this ship, I am the admiral." Yet even Hornblower, for whom duty is all, struggles to carry out some of the naval code's edicts, most notably when an otherwise good man is automatically sentenced to death for striking a superior officer.

The series never calls any particular attention to the role of law at sea, it is simply ever present. To be at sea in His Majesty's Royal Navy is to be subject to its laws, and those laws are enforced with swift regularity.

Now I realize this post is about the TV adaptations, not the original texts. I read the first book in the series, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower about ten years ago and, while every adaptation takes liberties of course (*cough* the elves coming to protect Helm's Deep *cough*), do remember thinking the TV adaptations were fairly faithful. I'm planning to get more of the books read in the near future.

Fire as you bear, Mr. Bush.

Creating a popular collection in a law library

2010-01-06T17:15:00.000-05:00

Our library recently started a law-related popular media collection. Which is just a fancy way of saying we're now buying books and movies featuring (mostly) fictional accounts of the law and lawyers. Okay, technically, it's just books for now, but we've got about 30 movies to add to the collection soon as well.

I had an English professor in college who advocated the following writing process: When you've got a paper to write and you've gotten stuck, take a break from writing by doing some related activity. For example, if you're writing about The Importance of Being Earnest, see a production of it. Or read about the trial of Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia. Make yourself some cucumber sandwiches. Soon enough you'll be ready to get back to the main task, now with a slightly broader outlook.

It's an idea I thoroughly embraced. It stayed with me, in slightly adapted form, throughout law school, and when it comes to work was one of the guiding principles behind the new collection. Law students need a break too. But for various reasons they're often unwilling to take one. By providing them with law-related stories, we're offering an alternative to studying without taking too much of a step away.

We piloted the collection during the Fall semester, choosing a wide range of books: from legal classics that every law student feels they should read (One L, To Kill a Mockingbird) to Shakespeare and Plato and Grisham to books professors often recommend like Bleak House and The Once and Future King.

About a third of the collection was checked out at least once, and it was obvious from the broken bindings that many more were read here in the library. We declared that a success, and doubled the size of the collection for the new semester. The legal thrillers in particular were popular so I emphasized that on the last order. I'll also be making a regular monthly order to keep the collection growing.

The next step will be adding the movies to the collection. I expect them to be checked out even more than the books, but that's just a hypothesis for now. I'd also like to fancy up the collection's webpage. The layout is pretty bland at present.

It's been an interesting process, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the collection grows.

The Man Born To Be King: Illuminating the legal procedures propelling the trials of Christ

2009-11-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

In addition to writing mysteries, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a variety of religious works as well. Perhaps chief amongst these is The Man Born To Be King [1], her 12-part radio play cycle about the life of Christ. The 1941/1942 broadcasts were groundbreaking for many reasons. The stories were told in "modern" English (and, oh, what a ruckus there was about that), and the rehearsal period was significantly truncated because of the war (a practice which went on to become a BBC norm), for example.

I've read The Man Born To Be King at least half a dozen times since my dad introduced me to it in high school, but it wasn't until this weekend that I was really struck by the legal procedures driving the action. The tenth play, "The Princes of This World", focuses entirely on Jesus' trials before the Sanhedrin, Pilate and Herod. I knew about the trials, of course; they are a part of the events leading up to the crucifixion, but my brain always glossed over why it all happened as it did -- "He suffered under Pontius Pilate" generally being enough. Suddenly, though, it was clear: we're looking at the interplay between Jewish ecclesiastical law and secular Roman law. Two different legal systems had to be satisfied.

I'm relying on Sayers's own always-excellent research for this, but for those of you who find this sort of thing interesting too, here's a bit of detail.

There were two ways to bring evidence against someone under Jewish law at the time: 1) the testimony of two or more witnesses and 2) the Oath of Testimony, which the accused had to answer himself. The former was by far the more standard approach. For the testimony to be considered valid, however, "Jewish law required the exact verbal agreement of at least two witnesses". [2] When the Sanhedrin was unable to get two witnesses to exactly agree on the statements needed for conviction, Caiaphas turned to the rarer Oath of Testimony.

1st Elder: [B]etween witnesses who all say different things and a prisoner who says nothing, we shall be here until tomorrow.
Caiaphas: I will interrogate the man myself.
Nicodemus: My lord, that is barely legal.
Caiaphas: Barely legal, Brother Nicodemus, is still legal. He shall answer under the Oath of Testimony. If he still refuses to speak he is self-condemned. [3]

Jesus, who had remained silent to that point, was essentially forced to implicate himself. The next part was always the clearest to me: a death sentence ordered under Jewish law had to be ratified under Roman law.

Caiaphas: By our law he has already been convicted and condemned to death. But by Roman law we are denied authority to execute the sentence. [4]

Which leads us to Pilate. To Pilate, most of the charges Jesus was facing would not have seemed like proper violations because they had no real equivalent under Roman law.

Pilate: Ye gods! What's all this stuff?--Blasphemy, sabbath-breaking, witchcraft, law of Moses--pages of it. I suppose they know what it's all about. [5]

It wasn't until the charge of treason is raised that Pilate sees anything to consider truly dangerous or requiring his signature.

Pilate: By what offence [sic] has he incurred the death-penalty?
Caiaphas: He pretends to be the Messiah.
Pilate: What does that mean?
Caiaphas: It amounts to a claim to be king of all Israel.
Pilate: There is nothing about that in your court proceedings. I understood he was condemned for blasphemy.
Caiaphas: To us, such a claim is blasphemy, but in Roman eyes it is presumably treason.
Pilate: I see. This is a new charge: treason to Rome. [6]

The treason charge was thrown in to ensure Pilate's conviction under Roman law too. [7] The subsequent back-and-forth between Pilate, Herod and the religious leaders shows the Roman reluctance to deal with a foreign legal system.

The events which are recounted in the Bible and which are further explained in The Man Born To Be King are an old example of the juxtaposition of two different legal systems, one a preexisting religious system and the other a secular system laid atop the native laws. The two systems are concerned with enforcing different laws and violations, and while the interplay between them may sometimes be clumsy, the story of Christ's trials and conviction shows how two different systems can be melded together to achieve one end.

Part of Sayers's reason for insisting on writing these plays in modern English was to strip away the remoteness and rigid sanctity through which most people viewed Jesus' story. "[T]he language about him and the worship offered to him seem utterly remote from the speech of men today and from their pressing needs," the BBC's director of religious broadcasting wrote at the time. [8] Sayers succeeded in this remarkably well -- the characters truly do come to life again, particularly for people who are just used to the text of their preferred Biblical translation. And more than just the characters are illuminated in a new way -- the events are as well, allowing us to see the facts like ancient legal procedures clearly as well.

[1] Sayers, Dorothy L. The Man Born To Be King (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1943).
[2] Ibid, at 261 (emphasis provided).
[3] Ibid, at 274.
[4] Ibid, at 278.
[5] Ibid, at 277.
[6] Ibid, at 278.
[7] Ibid, at 270.
[8] Ibid, at 12.

Libraries: The New Bookstores! Wait, What?

2009-10-09T19:47:00.001-04:00

Britain's culture minister, Margaret Hodge, recently suggested that public libraries might consider teaming up with Amazon to sell books as well as loan them. Not surprisingly, booksellers have deemed this idea Not Cool. [The Guardian story] This suggestion came a week after public libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland began piloting an open library program, allowing library users to borrow from more than 4,000 libraries. [Again with The Guardian]

I can understand booksellers' reluctance to accept this new model; they face enough competition from each other these days, after all. But from a library patron's/consumer's standpoint? It may well be a welcomed change.

To my mind, there are two types of books: the books you're happy to read once and then dispose of again without a qualm (Tossers), and the books you want on your shelf forever (Keepers -- My names! Aren't they clever?). It's never quite clear which a book is going to be either, so I've started using the library as my first line of defense against Paying Good Money For Rubbish Books, a battle I lost time and again for many years. If I'm interested in a book or an author, I'll check it out from the library. If I really like it, then I'll go out and buy a copy.* And if I could return a borrowed Keeper and order a copy for myself, all in one fell swoop? Or order a copy for someone else I think would like it? Sweet! I'd be even more of a library fan than I am now.

The downside to a library teaming up with Amazon, though, is you still have to wait for the book to be delivered. What if libraries also sold copies on site? There's no way a library could stock at the same scale as a bookstore, but it could keep copies of the current hits and bestsellers and supplement through Amazon. Logistically, this idea could be a complete nightmare: Who sells the books? Do you give up library-book space for sale-book space? How do you decide what to sell? What about delivery fees? Does the book go to your home or the library?

The article does not go into detail about Hodge's suggestion (and it may not have been particularly detailed to begin with), so these questions really can't be answered yet. But the fact that the suggestion was made at all acknowledges a change in the way libraries may need to operate in the 21st century. We expect to be able to run five errands in one store or have information delivered right to our phone, thanks to the changes technology has brought to our lives. The convenience factor can't be overlooked. I'll be very interested to see if this idea actually does take root, be it in the UK or elsewhere.

[*Then there are the days I import thousand-page tomes sight unseen solely because of a title change. ::headdesk::]

The Law and Lord Peter Wimsey: More of an Introduction Than an Analysis

2009-09-30T12:24:00.000-04:00

I have recently begun rereading the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers's mysteries are intricately plotted, elegantly written and feature one of my favorite literary characters. Over the course of the series Lord Peter becomes so well-drawn a character that it can be hard to remember he only ever existed on paper. (Particularly when his portrait hangs in Balliol College, Oxford, from which he was to have graduated, and he has his own memorial suite at the Park Lane Hotel, which sits on the site of his flat in London.)

Like many mysteries featuring amateur detectives, the Lord Peter books are considered "cozy" mysteries (rather than hard-boiled or police procedural, the other two main subgenres), though they do contain many descriptions of formal police work because of Lord Peter's friendship with Chief Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. This interplay between the amateur detective and the police force is hardly unique to this series, of course. What interests me more is Sayers's inclusion of various other legal proceedings in many of the books as well. In Clouds of Witness, for example, the House of Lords assembles under antiquated procedures to try one of their own for murder, and in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club Lord Peter must determine who died first, a brother or a sister, in a significant inheritance matter.

My favorite of these legal storylines, however, is in Unnatural Death, which hinges on statutory interpretation. Statutory interpretation! (Sorry, geek moment.) Not only that, but the act in question is the very real Law of Property Act 1925, which is still in force today.

Sayers's in-text illustration of the legal meaning of words v. their everyday meaning wouldn't be at all out of place in a first semester law course even today:

"Then again, words which are quite meaningless in your ordinary conversation may have meaning in law. For instance, I might say to a young man like yourself, 'You wish to leave such-and-such property to so-and-so.' And you would very likely reply, 'Oh, yes, absolutely' -- meaning nothing in particular by that. But if you were to write in your will, 'I leave such-and-such property to so-and-so absolutely,' then that word would bear a definite legal meaning, and would condition your bequest in a certain manner, and might even prove an embarrassment and produce results very far from your actual intentions."

Just because something is classified as fiction doesn't mean it can't contain a whole lot of truth, whether about the law or human nature. The fact that I can sit down to read as an escape and garner some knowledge of real life as well delights me.

(Sidenote: For some reason, I have never really liked the first book in the series, Whose Body?, overly much. It pales next to the others somehow. I don't say this to discourage anyone from reading the series, or to taint your opinion before you even start. I'm just trying to say that if you start there -- and, honestly, they should be read in order because Lord Peter ages in real time -- and feel a bit underwhelmed, know the series only gets better from there.)

A Change in Direction

2009-09-16T18:50:00.000-04:00

This blog has gone in a number of different directions since I started it, but I've belatedly decided upon one in particular.

Much of my job revolves around the Internet, computers and current technology. I could write about how those topics interact with law librarianship, but you know what? Others already do that, better than I. Instead, I'm going to focus on another one of my loves: reading. The myriad portrayals of law, lawyers and the legal profession we see in print (okay, and in movies/TV too) are endlessly fascinating, from cautionary tales and chilling indictments to simple appreciation. This is where I'll muse upon these stories: What do they reveal about the legal profession? Where might they fit in a law and literature class? What power does fiction in particular hold?

Is this really much different from your typical law and literature class? Not really, no. It's just my individual perspective, where I clarify my own thoughts and, perhaps, jump start someone else's ruminations. Posts may be short, they may be quite lengthy. I'll probably post on other topics occasionally as well. As my whimsy takes me, you see.

---

And now, for having read the previous, I reward you with this link: 20 Neil Gaiman Facts.

5. Neil Gaiman once did the New York Times crossword puzzle in pen. In fifteen minutes. He won two Hugo awards for it.
12. The pen is mightier than the sword; Neil Gaiman has mastered fourteen different styles of penmanship.

Because if anything will prove my new resolve to you, it's a link that has nothing to do with the law at all.

DailyLit

2009-09-10T13:12:00.000-04:00

I've been using DailyLit for about a year now. It's an innovative service which provides 5-minute chunks of books to your email or RSS reader each day. Most of the books offered are from the public domain, though there are some more modern options as well, such as romances from Harlequin and titles from authors like Cory Doctorow (who releases his books under a Creative Commons license).

DailyLit lets me read books I'm interested in but doesn't interfere with my normal (and always overwhelming) "to read" book list. The short selection is a nice break from all the work-related feeds I'm following. For people with Smartphones and train, etc. commutes, it's an extremely manageable option too. I have my daily dose sent to my Google Reader account, where it gets read along with the rest of the feeds I subscribe to. My current subscription is delivered M-F, though you can select other options, such as every day or M/W/F, as well as the delivery time.

The variety of selection is part of the fun too. I started out the service reading Emma by Jane Austen, followed that with Doctorow's Little Brother and have just started Agatha Christie's first Tommy and Tuppence book, Secret Adversary. The time it takes to finish a book depends on its length and how often you choose to receive selections. Emma, for example, has 191 parts; Secret Adversary has 102. War and Peace, if you're so inclined, is a mere 663 parts.

Much as I appreciate the service, it breaks down for me on two fronts: 1) when I go on vacation and 2) when I near the end of a book. The first is my own fault -- you can suspend and restart delivery at any time. I just never remember to do so and then have to play catch up. The second comes from the excitement of nearing a denouement -- I want to know what happens next and don't want to wait. DailyLit provides for this as well, actually. You can choose to receive another snippet immediately, though Google Reader itself will make you wait an hour until it checks the feed again. If you receive your books via email or from a reader application like FeedDemon, this isn't a problem. With both Emma and Little Brother, I had easy access to a physical copy and wound up finishing both up that way before my subscription ended. I'm sure I'll be doing the same with my current book.

Lessons from journalism

2009-09-09T18:36:00.000-04:00

At one point in my life I wanted to be a copy editor. Given the state of newspapers today, it's a good thing I decided that wasn't the life for me well before graduation. Still, I've held on to remnants of that dream in the form of news and feature articles I wrote during college; I run across them every so often and wind up spending an hour or so thumbing through them and being generally nostalgic.

I'm posting one such article here, mostly to remind myself of a few lessons I learned. This was the first time I interviewed a complete stranger -- just walked into the shop and asked, very unusual for me -- for one thing. And I need to be reminded to get out of my comfort zone sometimes. I also learned to look at problems from another angle. I banged out most of the text for this article fairly easily, but it just didn't hang together right. The article was technically fine, but the story was dull, lifeless. Eventually, I swapped some of the paragraphs around, used a different lead, etc. and voila! It was the same text, but a completely different article.

Is it perfect? No. I'm itching to change some bits right now, but I'm not going to. I'm just going to nod and remember that the past can still teach us.

---

Greg Moorin was given an antique cash register nearly 30 years ago. At the time, he and his father were running a dry cleaning business on Flower Avenue. A gentleman couldn't afford to pay for his dry cleaning bill and offered the register as a partial payment. Moorin accepted the offer and added the register to his antique collection, where it sat for years. Now he uses it everyday at Summer Delights, his 1950s/1960s ice cream parlor in downtown Takoma Park.

"I never thought I’d ever use it," Moorin said. "But it fits the arrangement."

Moorin sits sideways at a table in his shop, back against the wall, sipping caffeine free Coca-Cola from a Santa Claus can, happy with the niche the shop has found. He almost seems like a modern-day Santa himself, even if he doesn't have a beard. His short salt-and-pepper hair is neatly trimmed, and his eyes twinkle with laughter even if the rest of his face is somber. He doesn't even give his last name until asked. He's just Greg, the ice cream man.

When a blonde little girl, 7- or 8-years-old, offers him a piece of gum, he accepts, only to hear her mother warn, "It'll turn your mouth blue."

"Give me a hug," he demands after a moment’s contemplation, but the girl refuses. "Okay, then you can have your gum back," he smiles.

The hug would have made the blue mouth worth it. The little girl slips the gum into her pocket for later and says goodbye to Moorin. "Say hello to your brother for me," he tells her as she scooters away.

This personal touch is what makes Moorin’s shop so unique -- it's almost an extension of himself. The walls are covered with collectibles from the 50s and 60s, and the front window showcases Babe Ruth softball and baseball team announcements. His reason for the air of nostalgia is simple.

"That's the period in life when I had the most fun," he said.

Behind him, an Elvis doll, still in its box, hangs next to the April 1933 mortgage slip from the Takoma Park Ice and Ice Cream Company. The collection he started himself has blossomed into donations from customers all over town.

"We're not finished yet," Moorin said, glancing around at the walls. "We're still developing and creating."

Moorin doesn't just want to help kids recognize 50s and 60s icons, though. He wants to help them create their own memories. Every Christmas he has a gingerbread house decorating contest and displays the entrants, 20 this last year, in the front window for everyone walking by to see. Sign-up sheets and Babe Ruth league t-shirts covered in team members' signatures hang around the store.

"We hang 'em up so that in 10 years they can come back and say 'That’s the team I was on,'" Moorin said, looking up a the shirts with a little smile. "We’re creating their own memorabilia."

Behind the relaxed demeanor, however, is a man who does a lot of work. In a few days he’ll be getting a new ice cream machine to help speed things up. With his current machine it takes him between an hour and an hour and twenty minutes to make eight quarts of ice cream. And this needs to be done repeatedly nearly every day to keep up with the demand. Moorin hand feeds the harder extras, such as cookies and nuts, into the creams because the machine can't mix them well.

The new machine will make this all much easier. But even it will not be state-of-the-art technology. It is a non-computerized, 50-year-old-style machine. Moorin prefers it that way.

"It forces me to maintain consistency and continuity with the products. The customers also get what I produce, not what the machine produces," he said.

Summer Delights is not Moorin’s first small business, and it's not his first ice cream parlor. For years he helped his father run a dry cleaning business on Flower Avenue. When Moorin's father decided to retire in 1983, his father decided he didn't want to completely give up working, though. Instead, the two opened a small 200-square-foot ice cream shop next door to the dry cleaners, which Moorin continued operating himself.

For 16 years the two men served soft ice cream and hot dogs to customers through a small window at the front of the store. There was no room to set up tables and chairs for patrons to sit at.

"It was literally a fish bowl," Moorin said.

In September 1999, Moorin lost his lease to the two stores and moved his ice cream equipment into a larger store on Carroll Avenue.
"I figure 31 years at anything, it's time to move on to something else," Moorin said. "The landlord that owns the strip center and I are friends," he said. "Luckily for me, this was a component missing from Takoma Park."

Kids and adults alike come in to Summer Delights, for a bit of ice cream and a smiling hello from Moorin. Many he knows by name. Jetting around the store in his yellow apron he dispenses advice about the best mechanic to go to, how to satisfy the tastebuds of many different people and why to have a two-seater car when you have more than one child, "You’ll only have to cart one of them around."

This is the man who signs his gift certificates "Greg the Ice Cream Man." This is the man who gave a customer free ice cream because she thought the soup wasn't spicy enough. And this is the man who makes Summer Delights a delightful place to visit.

Recent Readings

2009-07-13T18:07:00.000-04:00

Just a few links this time, miscellaneous topics:

The Library of Congress is now on iTunes U
How to Meet and Woo a Nerdy Girl
Newsweek: What To Read Now and Why & Top 100 Books (meta list)
Star Wars, Iron Man, etc modern vintage posters
Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief
Google's Cloud: How to Cope With the Disappearance of the PC
We Chose To gear

Farragut North: a review/reaction

2009-06-22T22:25:00.000-04:00

I saw Farragut North at the Geffen Playhouse last night. It is a relatively new play by Beau Willimon, about political staffers working on a presidential campaign. It played off-Broadway last year, and this marks its West Coast premiere. It features a small cast of seven, led by Chris Noth as the campaign manager and Chris Pine as the wunderkind press secretary.

It's been nearly a year since I last saw a play live, by far the longest lull since I was probably 14, and I've missed it. Add to that the chance to see Noth and Pine together, and I was all too happy to buy a ticket. It is rare these days for me to go into a musical or play or movie without having first aggressively read up on it; I generally know what I'm getting myself into, even if I don't know the specifics. Here, I just knew I was seeing a political play which I vaguely remembered getting good reviews off-Broadway (four of the cast members reprise their roles from that production). So I spent the evening often on the edge of my seat, mentally anyway, wondering how it was all going to end.

(This play, by the way, dispels any worry that Star Trek was the exception rather than the rule: Pine is an accomplished, intensely watchable actor. See also Smokin' Aces, in which he plays a redneck neo-Nazi assassin with horrible teeth, the oddest of haircuts and a penchant for goggles to deflect all the blood.)

The linchpin on the story is Stephen (Pine), a 25-year-old man with 10 years of political experience already under his belt. During a close primary race in Iowa, he suddenly finds his perfect little plans collapsing around him. How does he react? Will he fall prey to the same machinations he subjects others to? We never see the man he is working so hard for; we see the behind-the-scenes people instead: the staffers, the journalists in the press corps, the interns, men and women for whom spin and quick thinking and backroom intrigue are the only way of life. It is utterly fascinating to watch.

As Stephen, Pine is on stage for nearly two hours straight (excepting the intermission and one brief scene change). The word I seem to be searching for here, to describe his presence, is bewitching. With animated speech after profanity-laden speech, he demands your attention, and you are all too happy to give it. You can see exactly how this kid got where he is; confidence exudes from him in waves, making his later self-doubt even more compelling. Even when he is just listening, letting another character take the focus, his very stillness is meaningful. Simple gestures, from talking on the phone to touching someone's arm convey so much. And when he is going point-for-point with his boss Paul (Noth) the two are riveting. There is real camaraderie and real tension on that stage, crackling between them. The dialogue is rapid and often very funny, and when things do become quiet, you can't help but feel nervous.

There are tiny things I liked too: how Stephen clutches his cell phones to him, one in each hand, throughout the play -- an obvious but effective prop; the profanity was rampant, but never out of place; and I just plain fancied the theatre, for example.

As much as I enjoyed the play, it is not a perfect production. The blocking led to sound issues from time to time, which the actors did their best to compensate for (the show is still in previews). Some twists were truly unexpected, but a few were also fairly predictable. And while Olivia Thirlby was completely competent in her portrayal, and I liked her, she never quite seemed to be the person the other characters were awed by.

The friend whom I attended the show with and I spent the entire ride home again talking about the play, debating actions and characters, mining for what was beneath the surface. I can't remember the last time I've had such an animated, engrossing conversation after a show, and I just want to go back again.

Web 2.0 Challenge -- Registration Open

2009-06-22T13:20:00.000-04:00

Registration is now open for the CS-SIS Web 2.0 Challenge 2009! Visit the CS-SIS website for more info.

Firefox Add-ons: An Addendum

2009-06-10T19:00:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, Bonnie Shucha sent out a request via Twitter for Firefox add-ons that law librarians find helpful. Her compilation can be found here on the CS-SIS wiki. It's a fantastic list and really runs the gamut of tools available. One of the reasons I like using Firefox so much is its customizability. I can set it up to do what I want a browser to do, and it could look entirely different from your copy of Firefox, set up to do what you want.

As I said, I highly recommend taking a look at the complete list, but here are a few of the add-ons I mentioned (and a few I didn't) and why I use them.

Adblock Plus
What can I say? Ads are annoying. Adblock doesn't catch quite everything, but it still does a mighty fine job.

Add to Search Bar
The FF search bar is handy, but the default set of browsers and sites to search doesn't quite fit my needs, so with Add to Search Bar I can customize my search options. If the site has a search bar, it can be added, from Google to Wikipedia to Amazon.co.uk to WorldCat.

FireFTP
I need an FTP client just enough to need a handy, lightweight option. FireFTP is perfect for me.

Flagfox
This add-on shows you the country of origin for a website's server via a little country flag in the address bar. It's just a tiny bit of information that can help when considering the legitimacy of a site. Or even just where the outsourcing goes to.

Flashblock
Just as I don't like ads, I also don't like videos to just start playing unexpectedly. Flashblock stops Flash files from starting until you click on a little icon -- you can decide for yourself if you want to see whatever the site wants to show you. I must admit to a bit of a love/hate relationship with this one. It's great when I don't want to see the file, but for Flash-heavy sites, clicking a bunch of little icons to even get the teensiest bit of info is annoying (particularly when every page is run on Flash). (Actually, this is probably a problem I have with Flash-reliant sites more than the add-on itself.)

IE View
I actively bury IE on computers I use -- I just don't want to deal with it. But there's always that one site that insists you browse using IE. And instead of having to dig around to find it, copy and paste a URL, or follow a trail, I just use this add-on, and I'm right where I need to be. And as soon as I'm done with IE, it disappears again.

Morning Coffee
Like many people, I have morning rituals, and that includes checking a set of websites every morning. Instead of keeping a bookmark folder of them, I just add them all to Morning Coffee and it does all the work for me with one click of the mouse. You can tell it to open certain pages on certain days, in what order to open the tabs and more.

Tabs Open Relative
Bless whoever invented tab browsing. And bless whoever thought "Well, maybe people don't want links from Tab 2 to be opened at the end, after Tab 11 -- they're probably related, so let's open it right next to Tab 2!" My late night Wikipedia binges are suddenly a whole lot more organized.

WeatherBug
It's a little icon! That tells me the weather!

Xmarks
I've tried using sites like Delicious, but Xmarks just works the way I work. I jump between two computers at work every day (reference and my office), and the pages I bookmark there are completely unrelated to the pages I bookmark at home (where I jump between XP and Ubuntu and back). Instead of having a jumble of personal and professional bookmarks, I have two Xmarks accounts, which automatically sync everything I bookmark, whatever computer I'm using. (Unlike Delicious, Xmarks is a personal, not a social, bookmarking program. I guess I like to keep my bookmarks to myself?)

The Web 2.0 Challenge 2009

2009-06-05T13:14:00.000-04:00

Last summer I participated in a fantastic program: the Web 2.0 Challenge -- an online course designed to give law librarians a working knowledge of Web 2.0 programs, sites, etc. Even when I was already familiar with some of the technologies we discussed, I still found the information presented well worth the time -- and the chance to learn about other technologies I hadn't yet tried was invaluable.

The Web 2.0 Challenge was a true success, so CS-SIS will be repeating the program again this summer. Information on how you can participate is below.

Announcing the Web 2.0 Challenge 2009: A Free, Online Course to Introduce Law Librarians to Web 2.0 Technologies

Last year the AALL Computing Services Special Interest Section sponsored the first Web 2.0 Challenge, an online course to introduce law librarians to social software and how to use it in their libraries. The course was so popular CS-SIS is sponsoring it again in 2009.

The Web 2.0 Challenge will provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity designed for law librarians that incorporates hands-on use of these technologies. The course is intended for law librarians who have little experience with these technologies but are interested in learning more.

The online course will take place between August 3 and September 6. The five week course will cover these areas:
Week 1: Blogs & RSS
Week 2: Flickr & Social Bookmarking Software
Week 3: Social Networking Software and Twitter
Week 4: Wikis and LibGuides
Week 5: Web 2.0 @ Your Library

Participants will be required to complete a series of weekly activities, including viewing an instructional screencast; completing hands-on exercises based on the lesson; weekly blogging about their experience; and participating in a weekly small group chat session. The course will culminate with each participant developing a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library.

Full enrollment will be limited to approximately one hundred participants. However, course content will be freely viewable to anyone who wishes to follow along. Enrolled participants who complete all activities are eligible for final prize drawings (prizes provided by CS-SIS). Certificates will also be awarded to all participants who complete the course.

We anticipate opening enrollment June 22nd. There is no charge for this course and enrollment will be offered on a first come first served basis.

For more information, visit the CS-SIS website. If you have any questions, you can contact Meg Kribble (mkribble AT law.harvard,edu) or Sally Irvin (irvinsa AT wfu.edu).

Recent Readings

2009-06-04T19:58:00.000-04:00

Education, Law, Culture

Technology

A GeekSon’s Guide to Sharing Facebook With Your Kids
Color Scheme Designer
Sarah Glassmeyer's Social Networking Webinar Links
20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know
Most Influential Women in Web 2.0
Sourcetone (music based on your mood)
5 Ways To Share Your Social Media Identity

Fun Times

Twitter and Me: An I-like-you-do-you-like-me-check-yes-or-no Story

2009-06-02T16:10:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't been around much lately. Work has kept me pretty busy, of course -- some proposals, a writing project, getting a new law-related popular collection started for the library -- though I've also been on the outs with social networking too. Nothing bad happened, I just have yet to strike a comfortable balance with it. I am still getting used to being online in my "official" persona, which seems to mean I often only post impersonal comments -- I can point to random drive-by posts and say "See, I contributed," and everyone thinks "So you did, my dear. Another one about Star Trek, wasn't it?" And I'm sure that's not doing anything for my professional reputation either. Heh.

Not to mention, social networking sites, particularly Twitter, are so rooted in the present that I am constantly missing good opportunities to speak up. Due to a time zone difference, I miss most the discussions that begin in the morning on the East Coast, for example. Or I was answering a reference question. Or I was just busy doing something else. By the time I come across something interesting, every one's talking about something else. To some extent, Twitter allows for the occasional "re: last night's comment" tweets, but you still spend 1/3 of your 140 characters apologizing for being late to the discussion.

Do I like Twitter? Is it providing excellent insight into what's happening in my profession? Yes. Is it the be-all-and-end-all of communication? Am I providing good content in return? Not really, no.

Part of this is my own fault, of course. I don't own a Smartphone, so I'm reliant on a computer for my Internet access. I check Twitter like I check my email and my Google Reader accounts, which is to say frequently but certainly not constantly. It's just not an integral part of my life yet.

Twitter and I are in one of those relationships you have in second grade: someone slips you a note that says "I like you. Do you like me? Check Yes or No." If you're lucky, there's a stenciled picture of a fighter jet on the bottom of the page under the check boxes too. And you check the Yes box, and the note winds its way back to the sender. You smile at each other during Handwriting, and you make some awkward small talk by the drinking fountain, and maybe you single each other out to be It during tag, and the next day, you get another note with a different stenciled fighter jet and repeat the process. Sure it's great, but we're not exactly talking a marriage of true minds here, are we?

Twitter is all about instant communication. It works delightfully well as such. But for me I think it works better in tandem with other asynchronous networking tools, such as this blog: I read something on Twitter that interests me, I mull it over and post about it here. I'm still taking part in the conversation, it's just in a way that fits my circumstances.

Recent Readings

2009-05-06T13:17:00.000-04:00

Just a few items I've run across on the Internet recently:

Education, Law, Culture

20 Law-Related Questions Every Blogger Should Know
The Legal Workshop (a joint effort from several law reviews)
Force Behind New Copyright Law (tribute to Barbara A. Ringer)

Technology

Using Twitter to Find Info About People
TweepSearch (Twitter bio search)

A Little on Design

2009-04-29T12:40:00.000-04:00

I'm a sucker for good design work, particularly when one style is adapted and used throughout a series.

Just a few examples:

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction website, which displays the covers of, I believe, every SF title Penguin published. They are instantly recognizable and distinctly different from other editions.

The National Theatre's poster series. Its older posters did not follow the same style (which does not mean I couldn't spent a lot of money at that store), but in recent years, the website, programs and marketing materials have all been aligned under a simple, striking style.

In the Interest of Openness

2009-04-28T18:52:00.000-04:00

After spending most of my time online either as a lurker or under an alias, I've decided to bring my online identity out into the open. I've recently started a number of social networking accounts, and I set them all up under my real name. Now when you Google me you'll find me, silly bits and all. You can find out what music I'm listening to, what I'm reading, what my Facebook status is, etc.

I'm still wary of being so open online -- surely, there is Something Not Good About It -- but I can't think of how to overcome this except to just do it and see how it goes.

You can find links to all of my profiles in the "elsewhere" section to the left, including my new Goodreads account and my newly-discoverable-via-search Facebook page.

So. Here I am. How about you?

Recent Readings

2009-04-15T17:29:00.000-04:00

I often run across interesting, useful and fun links from my blog reading, friends, etc. Rather than keep them to myself, I'll re-post them here, for you as well. [And in future posts, I'll try to be better about remembering where I came across the links too.]

Education, Law, Culture

Tate art made available on iTunes [BBC News]
Free-access World Digital Library set to launch [Guardian - via Walkingpaper.org]
LIS Publications Wiki [?]
Copyright Law Quiz [?]
Flickr stream: Penguin & Pelican Collection covers [?]

Technology

Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities [Lifehacker]
Power replacements for built-in Windows utilities [Lifehacker]
Portable Ubuntu Runs Ubuntu Inside Windows [Lifehacker]
Google Advertising cookie Opt-Out Plugin [?]

Fun Times

Yard Sale Treasure Map [?]
Time Travel Essentials print ("Hang this up in your time machine") [?]
Wolverine Art Appreciation Month (Wolverine in the style of great artists) [Marvel]

Added to the RSS Feed

Smashing Magazine

CIL2009 notes

2009-04-02T18:01:00.000-04:00

I've typed up my notes from the Computers in Libraries conference I attended 30 March - 1 April. They are available online through GoogleDocs:

Monday, 30 March

Tuesday, 31 March

Wednesday, 1 April

Overall, it was a very good conference: that odd mixture of excellent, inspiring content with just a bit of "huh?" thrown in.

There is no frigate like a book

2009-03-19T16:52:00.001-04:00

I've been in the mood to read recently. Unfortunately, though I want to read, I'm not often engaged by what I try to read. I've got an ever-increasing pile of library books sitting on a shelf. Two books have already been tossed aside; I plowed through the first 75 pages of a third, stopped to sleep, and haven't picked it up since.

This is a two-fold problem. 1) We live in an era where there are so many choices for leisure activities that something always loses out. "Do I read? Or catch up on TV? Or play a video game? Or go for a walk?" 2) Law school led to brain overload, so for awhile all I wanted to read was fluff. And now that I've recovered, I find myself seemingly incapable of reading anything else. (Which is not to say I'm against fluffy reading. Fluffy reading is great. I just want to read some other stuff as well.)

I (did manage to) read "An Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett earlier this month. In it, one character concludes that reading is like a muscle: you have to work at developing it; the more you read, the more you find yourself capable of reading. Not an uncommon thought, but one which gave me a bit of a "eureka!" moment.

Basically, my reading muscle has contracted from lack of use, and I need to redevelop it again. I shouldn't be frustrated by it taking a bit of time to get back into a certain level of reading.

An Introduction

2009-03-18T18:23:00.000-04:00

It's been almost a month since I set up this blog; it's probably about time I introduced myself.

I'm Deborah, and I'm a law librarian. I work in a small, private law library, so my duties are fairly general: answer reference questions, assist faculty and co-teach research classes. I also do a bit of web work, graphic design and what-have-you.

I've been wanting to do a bit of blogging for awhile now, but I could never settle on a niche; I struggle with the same problem when it comes to getting started on professional writing as well. I'm very interested in copyright issues, but then again, I'm also very interested in foreign and comparative law. Oh, and law and literature. And some other legal topics. You see the problem.

Then I thought of something: why force myself to settle on one thing yet? I'm still very new to this profession (about 18 months in, ATM). Why can't I ruminate on that for a bit? So, this blog will probably be a hodge-podge for awhile: a new law librarian, thinking about where to go from here.

I'm also a boring, normal person too, so you'll see that reflected somewhat as well. I'll probably discuss non-law books, for example. If you're very lucky, I might even say words like "adorable" and "so cute" in conjunction with mentions of my nephew? But I don't think I'll stray that far.

I'm also not putting myself on a writing schedule. Bask in the glow of my unpredictability.

There. I feel properly introduced. And I just whacked my knee on the desk quite nicely. Time to stop.

Filler Post

2009-02-22T13:01:00.000-05:00

This space will eventually be filled with so much exciting information you won't want to do anything but hit refresh all the time.

Law Librarian By Day

Libraries: Bigger on the Inside

nook: The Afterparty

New wiki collecting legal research/pop culture examples for use in class

HULK SMASH REDUCTIONIST VIEW OF FANGIRLS

I heard the news today, oh boy

Impressions on the nook, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the ebook reader

So I've been reading from the popular collection ...

Aborted Musings on Book Browsing

The Popular Collection, Nine Months On

Schadenfreude, Online Privacy and Me

*sigh*

Horatio Hornblower and the law of the sea

Creating a popular collection in a law library

The Man Born To Be King: Illuminating the legal procedures propelling the trials of Christ

Libraries: The New Bookstores! Wait, What?

The Law and Lord Peter Wimsey: More of an Introduction Than an Analysis

A Change in Direction

DailyLit

Lessons from journalism

Recent Readings

Farragut North: a review/reaction

Web 2.0 Challenge -- Registration Open

Firefox Add-ons: An Addendum

The Web 2.0 Challenge 2009

Recent Readings

Twitter and Me: An I-like-you-do-you-like-me-check-yes-or-no Story

Recent Readings

A Little on Design

In the Interest of Openness

Recent Readings

CIL2009 notes

There is no frigate like a book

An Introduction

Filler Post

sigh