Regulatory Capture and Professional Associations

I do not mean to hurt the feelings of long-time friends and colleagues, with whom I disagree on this point about the bylaws change by that last OOTJ post. I apologize, though I will not remove my earlier post.

But I do want people to stop and think deeply about what would the future face of AALL look like, what would its activities be, if we truly changed the bylaws, in the way being proposed?

Maybe folks who say they are too busy to have anybody spend much time doing AALL business because they are a profit-making organization, are telling the honest truth. But they would also say that if they wanted to take control of an organization that has haunted them...

Does the phrase ‘regulatory capture’ mean anything to you?

We ain’t actually doing much regulatory function, to tell the truth, here in AALL, and we should be ashamed of that fact.

We hold ourselves out to the world as so called professionals.

And one of the things we as professional law librarians are supposed to be good at, is understanding the markets for legal information.

We are supposed to be the folks who speak up when the GPO is under-funded.. And we do that OK, mostly, thanks to our wonderful Washington office, and the many librarians who will respond to the alerts that go out and contact their senators and representatives about this issue.

We are supposed to be the folks who speak up when there are laws proposed that affect the rights of all information users to access the Internet or government information, or other information issues. And again, thanks to our AALL Washington office, and members, we do pretty well, along with the members of ALA and SLA on these issues. We reacted to a number of issues lately, such as SOPA and PIPA, and ACTA, for instance.

But, we have been falling down in a major way in speaking up for consumer rights. ALA has been a leader in this area, lately, and I have been admiring them, a great deal. AALL, meanwhile, is mired in silly arguments over antitrust that seems more and more specious as we watch ALA and other library organizations of various sizes move ahead where we should be as well.

And I can’t help but feel that this change in the bylaws is one of the major nails in the coffin for this association that has been getting weaker and weaker as I’ve been a member.

I think I would be less suspicious of the change in definition of “active members” if the change had not been discussed in such a non-transparent way. I am sorry, but it’s darned hard for me to envision way that Board Books are a handy and open way to notify the general membership of ANYTHING that the Executive Board is discussing. I had never heard of Board Books until very recently... And I find them difficult to locate on the AALLNet website. I think it’s difficult to locate any topic in the Board Books. Please understand that discussion of a single agenda topic may cover more than a hundred pages. So, if you are trying to locate a particular discussion, it is not easy, and it’s not a good way to make board action transparent.

Are we on the verge of giving our association away to the profit-seeking corporations whom we are supposed to be balancing on behalf of our employers? If we do not speak up on behalf of legal information consumers, who else is left? I suspect that calculation may already have been done in some minds. Let us keep it in our own minds and stay true to our duties as legal information professionals.

Selling your association for a mess of pottage

Excellent post by Joe Hodnicki at Law Librarian Blog, about the AALL Executive Board proposed bylaws change.

One of my big questions is, if this bylaws change to broaden the definition of “active membership” is such a great development, why was it being slithered in such secrecy? Would they have actually announced it to the membership in a realistically transparent way if Michael Ginsborg had not stumbled upon it in the Board Books and said something on this Caucus list? And thanks to Gail Daly for speaking up as well.

I am not completely against the idea of vendor membership, but I am deeply troubled by the way this has been brought in... and it is making me more and more suspicious of the motives and future plans for the bylaw change. The more I think about this the more uneasy I become....

Our association already has a great deal of trouble separating the interests of our user groups -- the Consumers of legal information -- from the its own (or perhaps HQ's own) interests in deriving revenue from vendors, having comfy relations with vendors, and not antagonizing vendors! They have truly lost their credibility with me as far as INTEGRITY goes. Sold for a pen and a plastic cup.

The illustration is from Wikimedia Commons, originally from the 1728 Figures de la Bible, illustrated by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733) and others, and published by P. de Hondt in The Hague.

AALL changing definition of Active Members!

AALL members have been changing their duties. Firm librarians as well as law school librarians have changed their titles and their duties, sometimes entirely dropping more traditional librarian sorts of duties. We thus have law firm marketers, competitive intelligence workers, and academic deans who still identify with AALL and would like to still be active members of the association. Headquarters staff had asked for a change in the bylaws because the old definitions no longer fit current reality.

According to a conversation with Darcy Kirk, the Bylaws Committee first offered an amendment that tightened the definition of an active member. The Executive Board sent them back with directions to broaden the definition, instead. And did they broaden it! The new definition is so broad that it would extend the rights to vote and hold office to any employee of a legal publisher or other company that has consistently violated basic consumer protections in our Association’s Guide to Fair Business Practices. Some members are concerned that a significant ethical problem would unfairly burden such employees elected or appointed to offices in which their activities could directly or indirectly influence AALL policy or action on consumer advocacy, or could reasonably sustain the perception of conflicted influence. Of course, the issue remains debatable. In fact, our colleagues debated a similar issue of conflict of interest in 1987. The debate ended without resolution, but such acrimony accompanied it that repeating the controversy now seems to concerned members no small risk that our Board can and should avoid. The Board would effectively confer its imprimatur on the expanded definition of active definition by approving it in its present form for the membership’s vote, even though some members do not agree that the proposal should carry this de facto seal of approval.

As a result, a number of calls to various Executive Board members have been made. It appears that the Board still plans to vote on the Bylaws Committee change at its meeting this July. They may accept the proposal as is, or may change the language themselves, table it for later consideration, or send it back to the committee for more work.

Darcy points out that a change to the Bylaws this close to the annual meeting means that the 60-day waiting period would prevent any membership vote at the 2012 AALL meeting. So, if the Executive Board votes to accept the Bylaws Committee proposal, there will be a 60-day waiting period for members to consider the change. Members will have the ultimate say on whether to accept any change! Pay attention!

There will also be an opportunity for questions at the Business Meeting and Members' Forum on Monday, July 23, at 4:15 PM in Hynes Convention Center Ballroom B! If you will be at the annual meeting, and have questions, you can e-mail your questions ahead of time to ambusmtg@aall.org. The deadline for submitting a resolution passed on July 2, sadly.

Here are some talking points:

• Members were not well-apprised of the initial proposal to change the bylaws at the Board's March, 2012 meeting. Relying on the Board Book to tell general membership about important issues is NOT the kind of transparency members reasonably expect of the leadership!
• Members were not adequately informed of the request to the Bylaws Committee to broaden the active membership definition that took place at the March, 2012 meeting. Ordinary members should NOT have to dig through the Board Books and sift through 149 pages in them to find information that bears on ALL of our interests! This DOESNOT satisfy a reasonable expectation of transparency, but invites a suspicion, however misplaced, that the Board has tried to sneak a change past the membership.
• This has been a very divisive and rancorous issue in the past – when the issue of vendor membership was raised more than 20 years ago in 1987, it was a very bitter, emotionally charged town meeting.
• Changes to the Bylaws require a 2/3 approval of the full membership. An active minority will spare no procedural effort to defeat the proposed change in its present form. No one wants an avoidable conflict. The Board can still has means to avoid precipitating a conflict that otherwise seems inevitable..

They never give up! ACTA... now CETA

The EU sounded like they had some sense about IP and the Internet when they passed on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Well, maybe they just knew a loser for PR when they saw one. Now comes Michael Geist, Professor of Law at Ottawa University to explain that the EU thinks they can slither around the dark edges and sneak a different trade agreement, the Canada-EU Trade Agreement(CETA). According to Prof. Geist, who provides in this blog post a handy section-by-section comparison, the two agreements are eerily similar. I hope EFF and its Canadian and European counterparts are paying attention! Ahoy out there!!

Law Reviews: Rest in Peace?

Walter Olson, the always provocative legal commentator, has struck again with an article in The Atlantic.  Entitled "Abolish the Law Reviews!", the article uses the Harvard Law Review to illustrate the plummeting circulation and stunning irrelevance of even the most prestigious of the academic law reviews in the twenty-first century.  Olson touches on the arguments for law reviews moving away from print and becoming digital publications--cost savings plus publishing articles as soon as they are ready to be published--but his real "question is whether the law review model of content--with its long lead time to publication, editing by students, and format that's resistant to after-publication editing--yields enough scholarly gems to deserve surviving in its present form even online."  Olson answers this question in the negative, stating that "the page volume of law reviews has proliferated beyond reason with no corresponding rise in compelling content."   He makes the point that "talented legal academics are headed ... to blogs and other short-form online publications."    The reason for the shift is obvious according to Olson; such publications are distinguished by their "clarity, concision, relevant, and wit, and [avoid] pedantry and mystification."  Commentators can "get their arguments gefore an intelligent audience in hours rather than weeks or month," thereby giving them a voice in ongoing policy discussions.

Before he relocated, Walter Olson was a regular user of the Pace Law Library.  He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the well-known conservative think tank.  He blogs at Overlawyered, and he is the author of The Litigation Explosion and Schools for Misrule:  Legal Academic and an Overlawyered America.  A quick glance at the latter book will tell you Olson is no fan of American legal education! 

Academic Elitism - William Henderson in the ABA Journal

The July, 2012 issue of the ABA Journal has a great cover story, "The Pedigree Problem" by William D. Henderson and Rachel m. Zahorsky. Henderson, a professor at Indiana University, has been an interesting thinker about the future of legal education. Here, he is talking about how brand bias and elitism in legal hiring is choking off innovation and change in the legal academy. It's a great read!

The Fine Art of Writing Supreme Court Opinions

With so much attention justifiably focused on the Supreme Court this week, it is worth considering how Supreme Court opinions are drafted.  The public assumes that the justices write their opinions themselves, but most lawyers know that what actually happens is very different.  Forrest Wickman's column in Slate sheds some light on the inner workings of the Court, and might be worth sharing with students in Advanced Legal Research courses.   

Wickman speaks in mostly general terms about the opinion-writing process because there is a "code of secrecy" that governs it and most of the other internal workings of the Court.  (We certainly know that the code of secrecy is alive and well based on the fact that there were few or no leaks about how the Court would rule today in the Affordable Care Act case.  The only leak that I heard was that Chief Justice John Roberts would write the opinion, which turned out to be true.  I think most commentators believed the Court would find the Act unconstitutional in whole or in part.)  What we know is that "justices are responsible for the substance of their opinions in each case, [but] their clerks usually do the majority of the writing."  Wickman refers to the Sorcerers' Apprentices, a recent book that

found that about 30 percent of the opinions issued by the Supreme Court are almost entirely the work of law clerks, with clerks responsible for the majority of the court's output.  This is a relatively recent development:  The Supreme Court began to institute clerks only in the 1890s, but by the mid-20th century they were already playing a significant role in drafting opinions. 

Once a case has been argued and an initial vote taken by the Court, one of the justices is selected to be responsible for the opinion, and Wickman discusses how this decision is made.  Justice Scalia sometimes writes decisions himself, but most of the other justices assign one of their four clerks to write the first draft of the opinion.  (Chief Justice Roberts has five clerks by virtue of his office).  The justice will direct the clerk to a greater or lesser extent, and then the clerk will begin the drafting process, which "may involve painstaking research and working nights and weekends."  The clerks arrive at the Supreme Court expecting to work hard and they do; after their clerkships, however, they are much in demand at law schools and law firms and their hard work pays off.  Another intangible benefit must be the opportunity for clerks to have a lot of influence on our legal system so early in their careers.  It must be a very heady experience.

After the clerk submits the first draft, the justice reads it and may request small revisions or wholesale rewriting.  Once it passes the justice's muster, it is transmitted to the other justices, and this may lead to more revisions.  If there are concurrences and/or dissents, they too are circulated.  Eventually each opinion gets one last proofreading from the staff of the Court, citations are checked, and a syllabus is prepared for the majority opinion (also reviewed by the justices and clerks).  The opinion is posted on the Supreme Court's website and printed as a slip opinion.  Further corrections and changes may be caught before the official United States Reports volume is printed.  Some commentators feel that the clerks "have contributed to a decline in the quality of the court's writing," but it's hard to be sure whether that observation is true.

The illustration is a fragment of Chief Justice John Marshall's handwritten opinion in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).  It comes from the Exploring Constitutional Law website, which is a service of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School.

Where to begin? Judges Gone Wild!

There are so many hot stories today:

The Supreme Court just announced its 5-4 decision on the Affordable Care (Health Care) law... ABC News site
and a PDF of the decision)
The firestorm of criticism over Justice Scalia's bitter dissent and announced diatribe following the Arizona Immigration decision... Toobin in The New Yorker is really mild, actually. What was surprising was when Judge Posner came out swinging on Slate!)

But what I figure there will be plenty of time to chew these over & lots of folks chewing... what really want to focus on is:

Judges Searching on the Internet

The Boston Globe ran an interesting story, both on its online Brainiac blog and eventually in its Sunday Ideas print section. The story, by Josh Rothman, is actually distilled from a scholarly law review article by Alison Orr Larsen, "Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding," forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review. Apparently, Supreme Court justices, and judges at all levels are finding it nearly irresistible to pop onto the Internet to flesh out the information they are given in the briefs and arguments by the parties.

On the one hand, you can look at some of the online research as "taking judicial notice of publicly known facts." It's also fed by the way all law students and lawyers are taught to write. We feel the NEED to provide a citation to back up ALL our statements. So if a judge wants to say the sky is blue, he or she feels nearly compelled to find some authoritative-sounding statement somewhere to support that comment.

But it goes much farther than that. We all know -- especially librarians! -- how seductive it can be to do a little research.

But! This research is in such a different context. When statements and facts are suddenly being introduced, with no ability for parties to examine the source's:

1. Authority or accuracy -- nobody can cross-examine the "witness" when Judge X or Justice Z googles for some info!

2. Fairness -- no lawyer can stand up and object, "Your honor, that is prejudicial to my client, and filled with innuendo!" Just consider that this fact-finding amounts to evidence, and may be hearsay!

3. Impermanent Nature.... The webpage relied upon by Justice Z or Judge X may not look the same or even exist the next day when other justices or the parties want to go and look at it. Librarians and scholars of the Internet call this link-rot. And it is a very poor way to write an opinion, and especially unfair to the parties and to later courts and researchers who may not be able to locate the page at all or in the form that it was used for the decision.

The American Bar Association has actually provided quite an excellent opinion on the matter: Judicial Ethics and the Internet: May Judges Search the Internet in Evaluating and Deciding a Case? by David H. Tennant and Laurie M. Seal. The opinion goes into considerably more detail than this brief blog post. It also links the reader to the Ethics Rules, The Code of Conduct for United States Judges and the American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct. None of these codes specifically mention searching the Internet, but the authors do pull out of the language and commentary some guidance on the matter that seems very helpful. The ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3, for instance,

("A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently") The commentary to that canon states, "A judge must not independently investigate facts in a case and must consider only the evidence presented." This comment suggests that judges who obtain information from the Internet and apply the information in resolving factual disputes may be acting inappropriately

The authors also go on to alert the readers very helpfully that

The ABA Joint Commission to Evaluate the Model Code of Judicial Conduct has recently proposed a revision to the Model Code that more specifically restricts judges from accessing the Internet. The Commission's 2004 draft of the Model Code states within its rule 2.09 that "a judge shall not independently investigate facts in a case." The commentary to that rule provides as follows: "The prohibition against a judge investigating the facts of a case independently or through a member of the judge's staff extends to information available in all mediums including electronic access."

Note that I have removed some footnote references from within the text that I am presenting here, in order to make it easier to post to a blog. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend following the link to the full report, which is excellent, and not overwhelming.

The illustration of the line of British judges in their new brilliant red robes and wigs marching in what looks suspiciously like a prisoner line is from a story in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jan/10/judgebeatricebolton-alsatian

Eric Holder on the hot seat

The Boston Globe Opinion page today, Sunday, June 24, 2012, has an excellent essay by Carol Rose and Matthew Segal both of the ACLU of Massachusetts. (you may need log-in to access; try googling for it on the Internet if this link does not work for you)

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is coming to Boston next Tuesday to give a speech at a civil rights symposium. The writers note that he has been recommended to be cited for contempt of Congress, and they call upon him to “do the right thing,” and then explain what they mean by that. They also precede that by praising him for the good things he is doing right already, in their opinion.

Here are their points with links to legal documents which support or illumine the matters:
I. Hooray for Holder:

A. Generally transformed the widely discredited Justice Department into an agency that has been doing good work upholding the rights of ordinary people, viz:

B. Refused to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

DOMA text. PL 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419 and 2420, 1 USC Chapter 1 and 28 U.S.C. Chapter 115

1. Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services
for all filings and decision in full text

2. Wikipedia has a nice, clear discussion about the case, but be sure to check the edits history to be sure you are looking at a version that has not been vandalized. In this court case (companion case to Gill v. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), filed by GLAD in the same Federal District Court for Eastern Massachusetts, plaintiff same-sex couples argue that the federal DOMA law prevents them from being treated on an equal basis as other couples legally married in Massachusetts. For instance, under this law, same sex couples may not use the jointly married tax status, which can save couples a good amount of money on income taxes. The surviving spouse may not claim Social Security benefits. And federal employees may not share any of their employment benefits with same sex spouses, such as health insurance coverage. It meant a good deal that the Justice Department, under Attorney General Holder, refused to defend DOMA in these cases.

C. Challenged the Arizona immigrant profiling law: Arizona v. United States for full text of documents, some links to press coverage and transcript and audio of oral arguments; opinions as they become available.

D. In other civil rights areas, Holder deserves credit:

1. Voting rights – In March, 2012, for instance, Holder used his powers under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to block enforcement of a new law in Texas that would require voters to show identification at the polls. Critics considered it would disproportionately deny Hispanics and other marginalized populations the right to vote. According to the article in Ms. Magazine, “[L]ast year, 34 state legislatures, mostly GOP-led, introduced strict ID laws, and seven states–Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin–enacted them.” Here is a link listing all the consent decrees and settlements the Justice Department details under its work under Voting Rights at its website. There are no cases listed since 2009.

2. Police practices

a. Maricopa Sheriff’s office where discriminatory practices against Latino citizens and prisoners were a problem, and then retaliatory actions against critics became a problem. May, 2012.

b. New Orleans, LA, prison system, prisoner safety, health, well-being, including rape, prisoner-on-prisoner violence and officer misconduct. 2011 – 2012.

c. Berkeley county Sheriff’s Office and Berkeley County Detention Center Charleston, S.C., consent decree to provide access to prisoners to receive Prison Legal News and religious publications. April, 2012.

d. Sharpe v. Baltimore City Police Department, statements and correspondence regarding case over whether individuals have a First Amendment right to record police in the completion of their duties. (Jan. and May 2012)

3. Racial justice

a. (see Maricopa Sheriff case above – racial profiling)

b. Justice warns Los Angeles Police Department on racial profiling, November, 2010

c. Agreement with University of San Diego to protect African American students from harassment on campus (together with Dept. of Education) April, 2012.

4. Fair sentencing – under the new Fair Sentencing Act, P.L. 111-220, 124 Stat. 2372, Justice Department lawyers ultimately argued to the Supreme Court for a less strict reading of the timing of the new law, allowing judges sentencing crack cocaine defendants to use the new guidelines earlier. This also should be credited under “racial justice.”

II. BUT the authors of this essay criticize Attorney General Holder, and the Justice Department. He made a vow during his confirmation hearing . Critics thought that since he was already a Justice Department official, he would be too ready to cater to the Obama administration’s desires. In his confirmation hearings, Holder, promised to “do the right thing,” rather than the easy thing, by giving in to the administration. He promised to he would make decisions as Attorney General regardless of “…the impact that it’s going to have on the administration that you serve…” because the attorney general must keep some distance from the other executive branch officials, “even from the president that the attorney general serves.”

The authors give Holder credit for trying to keep that promise in the early days as Attorney General. But say that he quickly changes his methods. Here is a list of FAILS:

FAIL 1: Close Guantanamo – Both Holder and Obama backed off in the face of Congressional opposition.

FAIL 2: Release top-level Bush-era torture documents – abandoned promise after Congressional opposition.

FAIL 3: Try torture suspects in civilian courts instead of military tribunals – Holder abandoned this, as well.

The authors now note that Holder has moved so far into the Obama administration’s pocket that he is now arguing to expand presidential powers:

Pocket 1: Suggest that a presidential signing statement excused President Obama signing the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, P.L. 112-81

Signing statement text.

Litigation to block the bill: Hedges et al., v. Obama et al., (S.D. NY)

8 page memorandum decision from Judge Forrest.

a few articles: N.Y. Times, L.A. Times.


Pocket 2: Endorse presidential prerogative to target and assassinate civilians

Pocket 3: Justice Department under Holder has overseen an expansion of domestic surveillance

Pocket 4: Increasing militarization of law enforcement

Pocket 5: Justice has aggressively pursued government whistleblowers, “Particularly those who expose illegal or wasteful homeland security schemes.” (quoting Boston Globe essay).

. Pocket 6: Justice Department has expanded state secrets doctrine to prevent courts from reviewing warrantless wiretapping or official acts of torture. and a more recent article here.


And now, the “Fast and Furious” scandal for which Holder has been recommended to be held in contempt of Congress.

A. “Fast and Furious” was a sting operation run out of Phoenix, Arizona between 2009 and 2011, with the approval of the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents purposely did not intercept more than 2,000 weapons they knew were being purchased at gunshops by illegal buyers. They intended to trace the weapons, but lost track of them. Many have since surfaced at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States. But the crime scene that turned the problem in to a firestorm was the murder of border patrol agent Brian Terry

B. The contempt citation is over an unwillingness to turn over material to Congress. There are allegations that some members of Congress are making personal attacks against Holder and using the issue as an election year bludgeon against the President. The vote marks only the third time in 30 years that an Attorney General has been held in contempt of Congress.

3. Joint House Report on Fast and Furious

Libraries of Dublin

The image above is of the cages for readers at Archbishop Marsh’s Library, still looking much as they did in 1701.  The skull adds a nice touch, don't you think?

Our recent trip to Ireland turned out to be something of a busman’s holiday for my librarian husband and me.  In Dublin, we made the obligatory trip to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, but we also visited the National Library of Ireland, Archbishop Marsh’s Library, and the Chester Beatty Library; these three libraries, also in Dublin, are not a typical tourist destination (i.e., we saw no tour buses parked outside), but are well worth a visit even if you're not a librarian.  

The National Library of Ireland is housed in a stunning nineteenth-century building, one of the good things the English did for Ireland, as a guard told me.  The reading room is very handsome, but the collection is very much out of date, and the whole facility is in need of updating and sprucing up.  Not surprisingly, there are many sources, both print and online, for genealogical research.  In the ground-floor gallery, there was a major, comprehensive exhibit devoted to William Butler Yeats, one of Ireland’s greatest poets.  I wish I had had more time to devote to it. 

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with Trinity College.  We waited in line about twenty minutes to buy tickets so that we could see the Book of Kells, which I hear is not bad compared to the waiting time in high season.  There is an exhibit in the space leading up to the case where the Book of Kells is displayed, but it was so crowded that it was difficult to see, let alone read, the signage.  The display case itself isn’t particularly well designed to facilitate traffic, and there was a huge cluster of people leaning over the Book of Kells; between the crowds and the (appropriately) low lighting, it was hard to see much.  Nor could I linger as long as I would have liked.  It was, however, a thrill to see the actual physical volume which embodies so much history. 

We then proceeded upstairs to the Long Room of the Trinity College Library, and were treated to a special exhibit on the history of the Old Library, which was founded in 1592 by charter of Queen Elizabeth.  Rare books and manuscripts that are significant to the development of the collection of the Old Library are on display, as are artifacts relating to the construction of the Library.  Most of the visitors didn’t linger over the display cases, so we had a chance to look around and talk to the very friendly guards, who were proud of the beautiful facility where they worked and happy to answer our questions.  For instance, we learned that starting in 1845, all of the Library’s porters (i.e., shelvers) had to take an oath before a magistrate that they would safeguard the collection.  The porters started out as cleaners in 1708, but in 1732, when the Library moved into its new building, the porters assumed new duties pulling books for readers, reshelving, and supervising readers who had to sit in certain designated areas in the Long Room.  At first, readers sat in bays between the windows, but eventually, large tables were installed in the middle of the Long Room, and this is where readers had to sit.  According to a regulation promulgated in 1842, only the porters were allowed to retrieve books for readers.  All of the readers had to be registered, and they too had to take an oath that they would handle the materials with care.   

Trinity College Library began to experience space issues fairly early in its history, and the problem was exacerbated when it became a legal depository library in 1801, a status it retains today; Trinity College receives a copy of every book printed in Ireland and the United Kingdom and it has the largest collection of any library in Ireland.  To deal with the space constraints, James Henthorn Todd (1805-1869), the visionary library director and respected scholar, devised what I think might be the earliest version of compact shelving of at least the earliest of which I am aware.  Todd removed the tables between the window bays in the Long Room and installed bookcases in the space; these bookcases were hinged and swung out on metal tracks, allowing storage of twice the books in the same space.  Some are still operational and in use today.  Another way space was conserved was shelving books by size, oversize books at the bottom, smallest books on top, just as is done today in mass book storage facilities.  Todd is known for several other accomplishments in addition to his ingenious shelving innovation.  It was he who turned Trinity College into a major research library and expanded readership beyond the College itself.  He appointed catalogers and asked foreign scholars to assist the catalogers in their work.  In fact, Todd considered his greatest achievement to be the printed catalog of the collection.  Librarians who visit Trinity College Library should be sure to visit the gift shop, which is full of library-related merchandise and has a robust online presence.

Archbishop Marsh’s Library was built in 1701 and was Ireland’s first public library.  Because the Library was founded by a clergyman, it is not surprising that its collection (about 25,000 books, most from the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, and about 300 manuscripts) is very strong in religious works.  However, it also includes books on medicine, law, science, travel, navigation, mathematics, music, surveying, and classical literature, some printed by the earliest English printers.  During our visit, digitization projects were under way in a public area, and we also saw conservation work being done on the premises.  What was particularly fascinating was the Library’s appearance—it has barely changed in over 300 years.  To quote the Library’s brochure,

The interior of the Library, with its beautiful dark oak bookcases each with carved and lettered gables, topped by a mitre, and the three elegant wired alcoves or “cages” where the readers were locked with rare books, remains unchanged since it was built three hundred years ago.  It is a magnificent example of a seventeenth century scholars’ library.  Originally many of the books were chained.  Each book had a small metal clasp attached to a chain on the end of which was a ring, which ran on a wooden rod attached to each shelf. 

We were the only visitors and this meant we could take our time, linger over the nicely displayed special exhibit (Marvels of Science), and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.  Archbishop Marsh’s Library is near St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was used by Jonathan Swift when he was Dean of St. Patrick’s; he also served as governor of the Library.  Marsh’s Library has a small exhibit devoted to Swift, which features his death mask and other memorabilia, as well as first editions of A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels, and complements what is on display at St. Patrick’s.

Finally, we visited the Chester Beatty Library, which is part of the Dublin Castle complex and housed in a renovated eighteenth-century building.  Beatty (1875-1968) was a wealthy American industrialist who moved to England and later settled in Ireland.  Beatty collected widely, including manuscripts, early printed books, icons, miniature paintings, stamps, and snuff bottles as well as other objets d’art.  Like J.P. Morgan, Beatty wanted to buy only the best, and had the money to do it.  I was particularly interested in the first-floor gallery devoted to the Art of the Book, which includes a large collection of Korans, Chinese jade books, which are extremely rare, Japanese scrolls, illuminated manuscripts ,and early printed books, as well as superlative Old Master prints.  The second-floor gallery is devoted to Sacred Traditions, and the focus is on religious books and manuscripts from most of the world’s major belief systems.   Everything was impeccably presented, with helpful labels in English and Gaelic that provide context and history for each object.  There is an attractive gift shop and a café that seemed very popular.  Visitors have money to spend because admission to the Chester Beatty Library is free.

For two librarians, Dublin provided a wealth of riches, much more than we had anticipated.  It also offered great theatre, good food, and stunning Georgia architecture to admire on our rambles.