Blog Action Day! Poverty

Want to make a difference to somebody today? Want to fight poverty? Look at the Kiva loans site here There are lots of other ways to make a difference. Some folks in our law library group participated in the mass read-to-kids and donate-a-book project with Jumpstart and the book Corduroy. You could donate a book and/or read a copy of the book to a child. Each child who attended received a copy, and many of these children had never had a book before. Of course, each AALL, the SR-SIS (Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section) co-ordinates a book donation project and often a library and school assistance project for the local school system. In Philadelphia, we helped clean a library and shelve books, in St. Louis and New Orleans, we cleaned and repaired schools and libraries. And always, donating books, either by wish lists from the school librarians or just donating money.

You can check your local law library organization here (if it's a chapter of AALL) to see if it has any community service projects. If it doesn't why not set up a committee to start some? I happen to belong to a fairly active group, LLNE and you can look here to see a list of recent service projects.

But non-AALL law library groups may have projects as well. For instance, the Association of Boston Law Libraries (ABLL) is an independent group in my area. It has an annual holiday project to donate money and gifts from a list for a local charity, Bridge Over Troubled Waters. This is a group that supports teens and young adults who are runaways, trying to live on the street. They provide a shelter, medical care, an opportunity to return to school or study for a GED degree, child care if needed, and emotional support. For many of the young people in this group, it is an opportunity to escape a family of violence or sexual abuse and a continuing nightmare as they fall into the clutches of pimps who exploit them here in Boston.

There are a lot of faces of poverty. How you define it depends on where you live. I understand that what looks like poverty to me here in Boston in may look pretty cushy to people elsewhere in the world. But you define your situation by your relative status compared to the people around you. You also feel the pain of poverty as a lack of power, of choices, of respect. And that pain hurts whether you define poverty by urban or rural US standards or urban Chandahar, Bangladesh or rural Soma in Gambia.

I always liked that little motto from the 70's "Bloom where you're planted." Fight poverty where you live.

News from New Hampshire

According to the story below, Franklin Pierce Law Center and the University of New Hampshire are in talks regarding a possible merger. I wonder if the economic crisis will cause the University to rethink a possible merger.

"Live Free or Die" State's Only Law School Looking to Get Hitched

New York Lawyer
October 10, 2008

By Karen Sloan
The National Law Journal

New Hampshire's only law school has entered merger talks with the state's largest public university.

Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord and the University of New Hampshire in Durham announced on Oct. 9 that they have formed working groups to explore the "benefits and risks" of a merger.

Officials from both institutions were not immediately available for comment, but said in a joint statement that the idea has been discussed for several months.

Franklin Pierce, a private school, is recognized as having a strong program in intellectual property law. Franklin Pierce's intellectual property instruction stands to benefit from access to UNH's research and engineering programs. Additionally, law school faculty would gain an opportunity to participate in wider research, according to the statement.

"UNH is interested in pursuing this relationship in no small part because of potential synergies with our business and engineering programs, especially in the area of intellectual property, a major strength at Pierce Law," UNH President Mark W. Huddleston said in the statement.

Conversely, partnering with the law school would create opportunities to incorporate law into UNH's existing programs.

"It would provide a tremendous platform for our law school to integrate both legal education and research opportunities into many of UNH's programs," said Franklin Pierce President and
in the statement.

It's not clear if finances are playing a role in the discussions. UNH wrapped up the last fiscal year with a multi-million dollar deficit, with the current year shaping up to be slightly over budget as well, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Huddleston said that any merger would be "cost-neutral" for the university. The schools will form separate working groups that will coordinate with each other. Final recommendations on a possible merge are expected in early spring.

Franklin Pierce grabbed major attention in 2006 when it established a program that enabled gradates to obtain a law license without passing the bar exam.

Connecticut Court finds DOMA law unconstitutional

Click on the title to this post to read a brief Reuters report that just came out this morning.

Have you been disenfranchised?

Click on the link in the title to this post to read a New York Times article about an investigation into the actions of a number of different states' removing eligible voters from the rolls.

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times. The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action.

Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.

The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid. Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.

Might be prudent to check now to see if you're still registered to vote! The article notes tens of thousands affected in various states, so this is a serious problem if you live in these states. Read the article! And, if you live in Ohio, you may want to know this:

On Monday, the Ohio Republican Party filed a motion in federal court against the secretary of state to get the list of all names that have been flagged by the Social Security database since Jan. 1. The motion seeks to require that any voter who does not clear up a discrepancy be required to vote using a provisional ballot.

Republicans said in the motion that it is central to American democracy that nonqualified voters be forbidden from voting.

The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, said in court papers that she believes the Republicans are seeking grounds to challenge voters and get them removed from the rolls.

Considering that in the past year the state received nearly 290,000 nonmatches, such a plan could have significant impact at the polls.

From the same Times article, which provides links to a PDF of the GOP motion and state response.

Boston Tea Party Deja Vu!

Up here, in the land of the Boston Tea Party, the anti-tax activists are pushing a measure that would remove income tax in our state. Talk about an item that would impact libraries! Mass Libraries Association is pushing hard against it (here). Public libraries, school libraries and libraries in state colleges and universities would all be impacted in a major way. Not to speak of those little items such as roads, police, firefighters, hospitals & emergency squads, schools, etc. We'll see if the well-intentioned people descended from the patriots who threw British tea in the harbor rather than pay the import tax come through now....

It's one thing to throw off shackles when you have no say in the government which is housed far away. It's something else when you have town meetings you can go to, where you can have a say in how your taxes get spent. The folks who think they are going to skip down the road free, free, free if income taxes are repealed haven't thought this through. States that don't have income taxes, like Florida, Alaska or New Hampshire, have other mechanisms in place that yield state income to fund the roads, police, emergency personnel and equipment, schools, and libraries that our income taxes are funding. You can't yank the plug without giving time to put a different system in place -- we'll have chaos in the streets, most literally.

Keep your fingers crossed. The library community is buzzing and rallying, as are the school folks. We'll see what happens.

See Vote No On Question 1 for a bit of info from the non-library opponents to the measure. The decoration of the Boston Tea Party is courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol, at http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/cox_corr/w_exp/boston.cfm I wonder what the original engraver was thinking about with the placement of that map?

Alright, Hein!

HeinOnline is doing interesting things. Besides blogging (HeinOnline.blogspot.com), they now have a Facebook presence, and they just commented on social indexing:

Some think of social indexing as social tagging or social bookmarking in which you bookmark your favorite websites, popular blog posts, or news alerts. HeinOnline is now looking at social indexing from a scholarly perspective, bringing to you for the first time in a digital environment the concept of viewing most cited law review articles. For example, when you run a search for "Right to Privacy" across the titles in the Law Journal Library in HeinOnline, you will be able to determine how many times each result has been "cited by" other scholarly law review articles in HeinOnline. This allows you to view articles that have had a heavy influence or high impact on the subject you are searching. From here, you can then view the law review articles that cited this article to further your research in the given subject area. This research approach ! is easy, using simple links available in HeinOnline. Future enhancements in the Law Journal Library will allow you to sort your results based on the number of times the articles are cited, thus bringing the most cited articles to the top of your search results list. Additionally, HeinOnline makes it easy to cross-reference other documents by linking citations if the material is available in HeinOnline.

Very interesting developments

So, here's the score

The six month medical leave I just took made a space in my professional and personal life to consider things. I have been thinking what my life is all about. This might be a sort of generic mid-life crisis question. But it’s MY mid-life crisis question.

What have I accomplished? Have I done anything that has made a difference?

Talk about a depressing question to ask oneself! What if the answer is a big fat NO?!

Why are we here? Is it enough just to exist? Is procreation the only imperative, if there is even that? Or maybe, considering the size of the human population right now, that’s the wrong thing to have done! Is there even any objective way to measure good and bad?

I think there is, in fact, good and bad. And I think we can probably come up with some agreements about examples that would even withstand voting by every culture and time through human time and space.

1. Live a thoughtful, examined life. You may not get things right all the time, but by making an effort, and thinking about things, I am sure we are doing the right thing.

2. Try to make things better where-ever you live. Whether you plant flowers, or a tree, or are kind to animals and people, or volunteer at a school or soup kitchen, or meditate or pray, or bring order or justice to the world, or build a house, or do art or poetry or writing I think you make things better. Even if it’s just temporary, or a tiny increment, I am sure it is important (though I am not able to explain why). I think this is one of the things we can agree universally is good, though we may disagree (sometimes violently) on some of the details, like what is justice.

3. Thus, I am not sure it matters whether we do something big and impressive, or achieve some “success” in our life. I think in the big picture, it is, oddly enough, the little things that add up to mean a lot more.

4. And I think it matters less WHAT we do, and more HOW we did it. If we do a small, everyday task with grace and love, meaning it to make things better, I think it probably counts for a lot more than if we make a grand gesture with selfish motives.

So, what's my score? This is hard, and a bit embarrassing. It's hard to tell. It's not as though what I do is very easy to measure. At the end of the day there is very rarely anything I can look at and say, "Wow, I did that!" Even when I worked as a legal services lawyer, it was not a transactional job, so there were not deals, there were small squabbles. Most of my clients, I could never point to and say that I made their life any better. That was sort of a bummer to realize that. There were one or two, but most of the time, I think I just used up court resources and the resources of landlords and other defendants. Hmmm.

And now, as a librarian.... Hmmm. At least I feel like each day I am doing more positive, happy-making things (at least most days). That's nice. I have helped law students feel more confident in their research skills (and maybe generally), and steered a few into librarianship. I may have helped some librarians feel more confident and networked. I don't know. When my daughter was in middle school, they learned about the ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, where after death, the heart of the deceased was measured against the feather of truth. If it was weighed down with lies and bad deeds, the person was doomed. It would be handy (and maybe a little scary) if we could get a mid- or late-life test to see how we are shaping up. You might see a lot of scrambling. I hope it would not be too bad, though.

As a mom & spouse I think I usually do OK (except when I get mad at Jim -- sorry, honey!). Pretty bad at keeping in touch with sibs, parents & old friends from the past... I don't know how much those things weigh in with the feather of truth.

What About the Supreme Court?

The always insightful Ellen Goodman has a good column in today's Boston Globe about the future of the Supreme Court. This election is crucial as it is possible that three justices (Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter) will step down in the next few years, giving the new president an opportunity to shape the Court for years to come, much as Bush has done with his picks of Roberts and Alito. Given the stakes, it is disheartening that very little attention is being paid to the Court during this election. Of course, with the economy in tatters and a two-front war being fought, it perhaps is not surprising that voters aren't focusing on the composition of the Supreme Court. However, it remains an important issue. I don't remember any questions about the Supreme Court during the first presidential debate, and I only remember one mention of the Court during the vice-presidential debate (although there was one fascinating comment by Sarah Palin about the possibility of enhancing the Vice President's powers, despite the limited nature of the Veep's role as laid out in Article I of the Constitution). I guess Governor Palin was too busy cramming for the debate to actually read the description of the job to which she aspires. Perhaps the next two presidential debates will address possible choices for future Supreme Court vacancies.

Born Digital Students

There's a good interview in today's Inside Higher Education about approaches educators might take in dealing with today's "born digital" students. The interviewees, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, are co-authors of the new book, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. We haven't received the book yet, so I cannot comment on the content, but I was interested to see that some of Palfrey's examples came from legal education, not surprising since he is a vice dean at Harvard Law School, where his duties include directing the law library. Palfrey and Gasser are opposed to classroom bans on laptop use, but believe that there are times when closing the laptops and engaging "in an intense Socratic-style dialogue with the professor or a structured discussion with peers..." is the most effective way to learn. I was also interested in Gasser's observation that because of their early experience with the Internet, born digital students are more engaged with information than students of the last generation. Palfrey and Gasser agree that libraries need to do a better job of making electronic resources available to users, and I think that's a fair criticism. They also say that librarians need to teach students and faculty how to "use...both rivers and oceans of information," and I think this is something that librarians, especially law librarians, are already doing, and quite effectively in many cases. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Social Networking

OK. I haven’t been blogging for a while. I”m sorry.

I am back at work after a 6 month hiatus. And at first, I had a surprisingly light schedule. It turns out a lot of what makes me busy is all the stuff that backs up because I don’t get to it, or it’s a long-term project, or is waiting for other people to respond, or.... It just is piled up. So, coming back after a 6 month medical leave, I didn’t have any of that. I had a lot of free time for a few weeks. It was amazing.

It must have been a bit like that when I first started each new job, except I was so busy learning where everything is, and who everybody is, and all the rules & procedures and favorite local tools that all the free time was absorbed.

I think I hadn’t had that much free time since before I went to law school. The first revelation was that I kind of liked it. Whew! I had been afraid I was not going to be able to retire. Not to worry. I kind of like unscheduled time, as it turns out. But I did feel a bit guilty once I got back to work and still had free time.

So, I started exploring social networking (see Social Networking in Plain English at YouTube) by signing up for Facebook and Twitter. It’s been fun. Again, I sometimes have felt guilty. I guess I have a big dose of work ethic, and have always had trouble just exploring. Jim Milles has tried to encourage me that this is a legitimate way to learn about new technologies. But I still feel a bit guilty. To tell the truth, it was Marie’s OOTJ post about the Alex Beam column trashing Twitter and the comments following that got me going on Twitter. I wonder how many other folks got on Twitter after those comments? The best explanation I ever saw about the value of Twitter is

Facebook users didn't think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive." I was surprised to learn that there is " name for this sort of incessant online contact. ... "ambient awareness." Of course, Facebook is not alone in offering this kind of contact. This is the sort of thing that Twitter offers its users. "This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update--each individual bit of social information--is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible... The ambient information becomes like 'a type of E.S.P.' ...an invisible dimension floating over everyday life."

One Twitter user was interviewed for the article. She is following 677 people on Twitter and 442 people on Facebook. This woman has two small children and travels a lot on business. How does she manage to follow so many people? Her take on this dilemma is that "[A]wareness tools aren't as cognitively demanding as an e-mail message. E-mail is something you have to stop to open and assess. It's personal; someone is asking for 100 percent of your attention. In contrast, ambient updates are all visible on one single page in a big row, and they're not really directed at you. This makes them skimmable, like newspaper headlines; maybe you'll read them all, maybe you'll skip some."

Of course, the reason she can do this is because many of the people she "knows" on Twitter and Facebook are "weak ties," which the article defines as "loose acquaintances." Here's what I found fascinating--these "'weak ties' greatly expand your ability to solve problems." Your friends--the real kind, not the virtual kind--probably have the same contacts you have and thus won't know anything you don't know. Your remote acquaintances, however, "will be much more useful, because they're farther afield, yet still socially intimate enough to want to help you out." One woman said that she "'can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes.'"

The other insight I gained from the article was that social networking tools may be fostering "a culture of people who know much more about themselves" because the "act of stopping several times a day to observe what you're feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It's like the Greek dictum to 'know thyself,' or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness.'" As the article concludes, "In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself."

(Marie Newman's OOTJ post Twitter Redux, citing a New York Times Magazine article about social networking, "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy," by Clive Thompson, Sept. 5, 2008.


To tell the truth, most of the time, it’s just like a sort of big room where you overhear everybody chatting to each other and catch a lot of cool new programs, websites, music and ideas. I have discovered some fun things on Twitter and Facebook. I’ve met some very nice younger librarians and feel like I am a sort of bridge between a small segment of poets and writers and the librarian community. That’s kind of cool.