To all my friends and readers who are keeping the Jewish Holy Days, L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu, and a Good Sabbath, too. For Gentiles, (Goyim) like me, I wanted to attach a picture of Challah, the beautifully braided bread that is served with Sabbath and many holiday meals. I found a very beautiful image at www.makunas.com/aliveone/challah.JPG Other traditional foods for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, are sliced apples and honey (cool) and sweet wine (all Kosher, of course).
Every so often, I feel somewhat discouraged about the employment prospects of law librarians. My husband, also a librarian, predicts that Google Print will inevitably put most librarians out of work, and that we will join the ranks of extinct professions in the dustbin of history--future generations will have no idea what librarians did.
As a useful corrective to that doomsday scenario, check out the following. In "Deconstructing the Law Library: The Wisdom of Meredith Willson," 89 Minn. L. Rev. 1381 (2005), Bob Berring says that "law libraries can no longer be defined as buildings, and can no longer be viewed as synonymous with the collections of information that they contain." Id. at 1402. He goes on to say that libraries "are no longer the institutions that define legitimate information." Id. If libraries are not buildings or collections, then what are they? Berring supplies an answer. According to him, the "soul of law libraries consists of law librarians." Id. Berring discusses the role librarians play in helping people find information and interpreting it once they have it in hand. Librarians will be crucial in managing the flood of information released from the Internet, and helping people understand issues of authority. What I found most heartening was Berring's reminder that librarians have been evolving for centuries and embracing new technology all the while, and will continue to do so in the future. Equally heartening was his assertion that of all the players in the information scene today, only librarians "have invested themselves in the quality of the information and its equitable distribution." Id. at 1403. If you ever forget why you chose to become a law librarian, read Berring's article and you will be reenergized.
Another publication worth your consideration is the Libraries section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2005. Particularly inspiring is Steven J. Bell's article entitled "Electronic Libraries Can't Be Academic" on page B14. Bell discusses Questia, a commercial vendor of electronic books and journal articles, which claims to provide "the world's largest online academic library and research resource." Id. After disputing this claim, Bell goes on to discuss what librarians bring to their institutions. "[L]ibrarians' involvement in the life of their institution is the catalyst that brings the groups together." Id. Without librarians, Questia cannot claim to be a library. This article is another good reminder of what we have to offer our institutions.
Here's a thought: using blogs instead of Powerpoint.
Cindy Chick has a very useful post on using blogs as presentation media. She discusses advantages and disadvantages and links to a presentation that she recently did in Blogger. I've been going back and forth on this for a while and I think I'm at the point that I will never present using PowerPoint again. Last week, I spoke at the Nassau Library System and used a blog for my presentation and loved it because the presentation flowed better. Cindy Chick writes:
"The organization of a blog forced me to think, not in bullet points, but in speaking points. I've been skeptical at claims that PowerPoint dictates a certain undesirable structure upon it's users, but after working with a blog, I'm starting to think there may be something to that idea."
I think libraries are full of people who feel like they are square pegs in round holes. The world is not kind to us. Guys who are sweet and kind. Women who just aren't cut out for Suzy home-maker. Those of us who don't quite fit our gender roles as our society defines them. And all of us who are defined, defined, defined by the color of our skins or the texture of our hair, our height, our weight, our stutter, our deafness --- geez, all of us just want to be the person we are.
And somehow, libraries have been like safe harbors in a lot of ways.
Libraries make a safe place, and an interesting place for people to work who might not like working at GE or the mall or Dewey, Cheatem & Howe. It seems to me that libraries thrive because they offer this safe harbor and intellectually stimulating work, and accept a broad range of people.
There is a real strength in having a variety of people. Our strengths complement one another. In many workplaces, there is a there is a tendency to hire clones of the boss, and everybody looks and acts the same. In workplaces like that, everybody has the same strengths and the same weaknesses. In libraries, we really do work together, like an interlocking clockwork, where one piece pushes as another piece pulls, and it makes the whole go around.
From Inside Higher Ed:
The date is set. A message sent to all Tulane University Law School students last week made it clear that they are expected back in New Orleans in January. They will not be permitted to remain elsewhere as visiting students for the spring semester, and Tulane will not help them transfer....
The Tulane letter is the first of what may be a series of difficult negotiations between New Orleans colleges and their students. In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, flexibility was the name of the game, and colleges encouraged students to find any appropriate place to spend a semester. But with colleges’ finances and reputations on the line, institutions may start bending a lot less....
Some are not following the marching orders happily. E-mail messages seeking to organize a class action lawsuit to force Tulane to release students have circulated among displaced students. An anonymous post on the Tulane law discussion board proposes making a pitch for a story to 60 Minutes detailing what some students think is unfair treatment.
The Institute for Law School Teaching is pleased to announce that its next conference -- "Inspiring Students and Facilitating Learning" -- will take place on June 2-3 in Chicago. The conference will be co-sponsored and hosted by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and will include workshops on, among other things:
A. Inspiring Students
How do we as teachers motivate students to want to learn (as opposed to merely get a good grade or prepare for the bar exam)?
B. Learning by Doing: Service Learning & Field Observation
A discussion of how to incorporate into courses a service learning component or observations of the real world and the people in it. Such discussion will also deal with the benefits to students of such experiential learning.
C. Facilitating Learning in Small Groups
A discussion of what teachers can do to facilitate learning in small groups outside the classroom. Such groups may be used anywhere along a long continuum of activities: anywhere from completing an assigned and graded project to functioning as an informal study group. A component of such discussion will be how to teach students to be effective teachers to their peers.
D. Metacognition: Getting Students to Think About How They Learn
A discussion of what teachers can do to assist students in thinking about how they learn and how to learn.
E Tapping Creativity to Aid Visual Learning
A discussion of what teachers can do to assist students in synthesizing information by getting them to create charts, illustrations, and other visual displays.
F Learning by Doing: Drafting Exercises and Simulations
A discussion of how to incorporate drafting exercises and simulations into courses along with the benefits to students of such experiential learning.
The Institute is eager to have additional workshops and presentations on topics related to the conference theme and will waive the conference registration fee for workshop facilitators and presenters. Teachers interested in facilitating such a workshop or making such a presentation should send a proposal to Professor Stephen L. Sepinuck, Co-director, Institute for Law School Teaching, at ssepinuck@lawschool.gonzaga.edu. Please indicate in the proposal whether you would prefer 45 or 75 minutes for the workshop or presentation.
Professor of Law
Gonzaga University School of Law
P.O. Box 3528
Spokane, WA 99220
(509) 323-6379
(509) 323-5840 (fax)
In this networked age, the printed textbook has likely reached the end of its useful life cycle, but a robust digital competitor has yet to emerge. The next\text project seeks to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook. The work presented here offers multiple visions of what might be possible.
A few weeks ago Lyonette Louis-Jacques announced that she was ceasing the maintenance and distribution of Law Lists, her once-essential compilation of law-related email discussion lists. Now Rory Litwin says farewell to his long-running email publication, Library Juice:
After 330 issues of Library Juice over close to eight years, I find that it is time to close the covers.
There has been a lot of change over the years that Library Juice has been in publication. The environment in which it exists has changed,
and I have changed, too.
Originally, Library Juice was primarily a digest of material that circulated via email and didn't otherwise have an existence on the net,
and couldn't be accessed except by email connections. Most of the things that at that time would be circulated only by email are now also
accessible on the web, in part because of web-accessible email archives, but moreso because web publishing has expanded and become
easier, in part through blogging technology. So, over time, more and more of what would have been part of a typical issue of Library Juice
in the first years became just something to link to, perhaps with a comment (along with two dozen bloggers). As this change took place I
began publishing more original content and longer pieces, and Library Juice became less of an email digest and more of a magazine or journal. My decision in 2002 to go from a one-week to a two-week publication cycle was a part of this trend....
I have changed in this time as well. In terms of Library Juice, the nature of my inspiration has changed. When I started Library Juice I
was still in Library School, and filled with enthusiasm and excitement for a lot of things that, though they still deserve enthusiasm and
excitement, are now simply features of the landscape for me and often objects of my skepticism. Skepticism is now also a major aspect of the way I regard initiatives undertaken by young librarians on the web, where eight years ago I simply would have found them cool. This change in my outlook has changed the tone of Library Juice and made it something different from it was originally. I'm less interested in reporting enthusiastically on the cool things that are going on in the library world (and there are a lot of them) and more interested in
publishing more extended, and I hope somewhat deep, reflections on questions of progressive librarianship. Library Juice can sometimes be a good format for doing that, but it is very difficult to do it according to a regular publication schedule. I would be more content
to be able work on these reflections over longer periods of time and publish them in other venues....
I am not exactly retiring from the scene, however. Out of Library Juice you will soon see the emergence of a couple of new things. One is a blog, to add to all the other blogs, which will also be called Library Juice, and will be updated irregularly with some of the same kinds of
things that you're accustomed to reading here. With the blog I will have the freedom not to update it during times like this when I don't
feel like saying much, and to publish things on it heavily at other times. A year ago I would have been opposed to starting a blog, but at
this point I feel that blogs are here to stay and are the beginning of something important and ineluctable. When the blog is online you will
be able to find it at the Library Juice website, and I will send out an email announcement of it to Library Juice subscribers. I plan on
keeping back issues of Library Juice online, at least in the near term.
The second new thing that's coming up, which will take slightly longer to realize, will be a book publishing company called Library Juice
Press. I have this venture fairly well planned out, and have five titles in the editing stages for publication in 2006 and 2007.
Over at Legal Affairs Debate Club. Laura Appleman and Dan Solove are debating the ever-popular question: do we need a third year of law school? Earlier postings on this topic may be found here, here, and here.
In law school, for the first time in my life, I became a little superstitious. If people asked me how I thought I did on an exam, I would try to avoid speculating. If I ever said I thought I did well, I would always knock on wood, just in case, to dispel any evil spirits lured by such a display of hubris. I still knock on wood. It has become a second nature to me. I knocked on wood just recently as I was speaking with an emeritus faculty member who is Jewish. He noticed and told me that the Yiddish version of that would be "keine ahore" (though I have probably spelled it wrongly -- anybody with Yiddische out there?). He explained it's pronounced cane-uh au-hore-uh. And derives from the German word keine, which I recognize, meaning none, or no; and the Hebrew word Ahore (again, sorry about spelling!), evil eye. So, the saying is to avert the evil eye. He said no Yiddish speaker of his youth would ever say their son was successful without adding, "keine ahore," to avert the evil eye. Knock on wood!
We do these things, I guess, to give ourselves the feeling we have some control in times when we feel that our world is out of our control. Perhaps the fact that I began to be superstitious in law school tells me that for the first time in my academic career, I felt that I did not know whether my previous success or skills learned would carry me through. Law school is different from any other school, and is set up in an insane way to allow the entire grade of most classes to hang on a single final exam. How crazy is that? No wonder our law students get a little nutsy at exam time. It's been so long since I've been there, done that, that I have sometimes been less sympathetic. Of course no amount of stress excuses the outrageous behavior that some students engage in, but I do need to remind myself of the stress they are under as law students. Knock on wood!
