New Peer-Reviewed Online Journal

Indiana University has announced the launch of the Museum Anthropology Review, a free, online, peer-reviewed anthropology journal made possible through collaboration with the University libraries. The editor is Professor Jason Baird Jackson, who called the librarians "among the most engaged supporters of the project." For more information about the project, see this article from Inside Higher Ed.

Inside Higher Ed points out that this new journal "may represent a larger challenge in the end to the traditional model of scholarly publishing." Since the experimental launch of the journal one year ago, it has already attracted over 20,000 visitors, more readers than the traditional subscription-based journal, Museum Anthropology, which is also edited by Professor Jackson. Professor Jackson notes that "he is hearing interest in the model especially from libraries, which find themselves struggling to pay for journal subscriptions and yet realizing that they have the technology infrastructure to support journal publishing and to in effect become the publishers (except for the part of the old role about charging to read)." He also looks forward to a day when every university library plays this support role for journals edited locally. If this happened, "Our scholarly literature would be accessible to humanity in a way that it's not now."

I was particularly interested in the reaction from Patricia Steele, the dean of libraries at IU, who views the "publication of Museum Anthropology Review as a 'natural extension' of the library's role, and one she would like to replicate with other journals."

The "Deadwood Report"

The Green Bag, self-described as "an entertaining journal of law," has announced plans to join the arena of law-school rankings, reports today's edition of Inside Higher Ed. The announcement came in an editorial which will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Green Bag. This spring the journal will begin work on the "'Deadwood Report,' which it envisions being an annual assessment of 'whether faculty members do the work that the law schools say they do.'" In attempting to assess what faculty do, the Deadwood Report will take dead aim at the phenomenon known as "law porn," the orgy of puffery that law schools engage in every fall as part of their efforts to raise their profiles. Much of the puffery revolves around faculty achievements, an area not covered by the U.S. News & World Report rankings, and the Green Bag will look carefully at such indications of faculty activity as recent scholarship in traditional scholarly journals. In other words, editorials in the New York Times will not "count"; nor will publication in the law reviews of your own school. The Green Bag will be looking carefully at law schools' websites and other marketing tools as part of its evaluation process, so schools will want to make sure that their websites accurately reflect what their faculty are doing. I know I can't wait to see if I quality as "deadwood"!

Details of SMU-Bush Library Agreement

Southern Methodist University has released the master plan for the Bush presidential library and institute. This is a follow up to yesterday's post on the Bush library.

National Grammar Day

As the Boston Globe points out, "March, though a long month, is sadly short on holidays." It is a month that seems to drag on endlessly, even though April and the promise of better weather are just around the corner. To enliven this dreary month comes a new holiday all teachers of writing can celebrate--National Grammar Day, to be celebrated on March 4. Click here to read an article about the holiday. National Grammar Day was declared by The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG), founded in 2004 by Martha Brockenbrough. SPOGG "seeks members appalled by wanton displays of Bad English' and threatens 'mayhem, misery, madness' all around if we ignore the rules. On the other hand, says its manifesto, 'we also encourage having a sense of humor about language.'"

I agree that a sense of humor is important, but I also think it is a shame that so few students today seem to receive formal instruction in English grammar. How many students learn how to diagram a sentence? Although I hated it at the time, I now realize that sentence diagrams made me understand how to apply the rules of grammar. My students know I am a stickler for good grammar; I often have occasion to discuss lapses in correct usage when meeting with students to go over drafts of the research guides they do for my course. Besides not having been taught grammar, students often do not read good writing, which is probably the best, least painful way to learn grammar. So while we are celebrating National Grammar Day, let's also celebrate reading.

Bush Library Redux

Southern Methodist University agreed on Friday to a unique arrangement that would make it the home of the George W. Bush presidential library and also of an independent institute that would promote President Bush's views and not be controlled by SMU. Inside Higher Ed has the story, and here is the press release from SMU. Some "experts--at SMU and beyond--think the university has agreed to terms that undercut the ideal of presidential library centers as places to promote scholarship."

From the very beginning, the proposed library has been controversial. Faculty concerns focused not on the library, but on the institute which will have an explicitly partisan agenda not usually associated with presidential libraries. As today's article points out, the institute will be "independent of academic governance of the university [and] 'celebrate' the president and his tenure in office." Frankly, it's hard to imagine what there will be to celebrate at the end of this presidency except the departure from Washington of Bush, Cheney, and their cronies.

Commercial Law on the Internet – Is Integrity Sustainable in Cyberspace?

With the recent SocGen scandal and the problems in the economy, the Internet and globalism have been topics. A Reuters’ article said that the SocGen scandal was possible because traders didn’t interact over lunches and the trading floor anymore. Another article said that banks were in crisis because globalism had removed not just borders, but also obligations and reciprocity. Fear was no longer immediate—the “animal factor” was gone.

This is a different world we are in. It is so uncertain. Now uncertainty has been a part of human life forever, but this is an uncertainty resulting from technology being used as gadgets to enforce solitude.

When I say uncertainty, I mean situations like Marco Polo on the Silk Road, Cortez burning his boats, and the experience of the Brits in the regions of empire. Think of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Jim broke the code of decent behavior – “He was one of us.” That expectation of behavior showed up in strange ways. My father left London for Australia after World War II for about ten years. Last week he told me a story of strangers helping each other out in the Australian outback. Dad closed with, “That wouldn’t happen today, Jack. It was only possible because he was white with an English name.” Dad y meant that Marlowe’s code still held up the late 1940s.

Cyberspace isn’t an empire. People go into Second Life expecting to make money in a free environment and then are horrified when the open system allows crime.

It may be that open systems without mutual obligations cannot support commercial law. MIT Tech Review has a series of articles on this. They are worth reading

Blogs -- Questions about them

In my readings, I have run across contradictory comments on social software. Some writers and participants think it promotes increased communication. Others think the pressure of 24/7 commentary hinders publication of questionable and difficult facts. One commentary was that blogs failed to develop critical communities unless the participants failed to reinforce connection through meat-world contact. I know that I have been surprised by how my requests for comments have failed to start discussion. The Future of the Book Blog http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/ gets lots of commentary.

It would be interested to survey library-land blogs and see which have the most in-depth commentaries, the interests of the participants, how the blogs get started and changed over time.

Seeking 2008-2009 Graduate Assistant, Law Library

University at Buffalo Law Library
JD/MLS Program in Law Librarianship
2008-2009 Graduate Assistant, Law Library

The University at Buffalo Law Library seeks exceptional candidates for a graduate assistant position in Reference and Faculty Services.

Responsibilities:

A twelve-month, renewable appointment, requiring 20 hours per week of service, distributed as follows:

Reference (13 hours):

Provide reference service as needed by library patrons, including five hours on Sundays (noon-5:00pm) and eight hours Mondays through Fridays, possibly including one evening (5:00-9:00pm) per week.

Update legal bibliographies, assist in identifying and updating links for the Law Library’s homepage, preparing new web-based research materials, and preparing teaching materials for first year research and writing classes and other Law School classes.

The graduate assistant will complete a research project, such as an annotated bibliography, in-depth webpage, or article, which could be submitted for publication or included on the Law Library’s webpage. The topic will be determined in consultation with the Head of Information Services and the Director of the Law Library. Research for the project may be performed either when the Library has an abbreviated reference schedule or during quiet times at the Reference Desk.

Mercury Faculty Document Delivery Service (7 hours):

Assist with monitoring and filling faculty requests for library materials. Maintain statistics on the use of the service.

These are the hours expected while classes are in session during the fall and spring semesters. Adjustments will be made during intersession and summer.

Qualifications:

Applicants must be enrolled in the joint JD/MLS program, or hold either the JD or MLS degree while completing the complementary program. Applicants should have completed the first year Research and Writing course or one or more Legal Bibliography courses in the MLS program. Also required: knowledge of legal research and the Internet; demonstrated ability to interact well with individuals. Applicants must be available the week prior to the beginning of the fall semester for training.

Educational Benefits:

Graduate assistants will gain a full range of professional experience in law library reference services, including in-depth knowledge of the legal research process and both print and electronic research sources, experience in serving multiple and diverse patron populations, and expertise in using bibliographic databases and the Internet to respond to reference questions and to fill Mercury requests. Graduate assistants will observe varying styles in responding to reference queries, and will have the opportunity to prepare their own research for publication.

Salary: $10.00/hour, plus 9 hours graduate student tuition per semester. Graduate assistants in the JD program may also qualify for scholarship awards.

Applications, including a cover letter, resume, and the names and contact information for three references, must be submitted by April 4, 2008, to:

James Milles
Vice Dean for Legal Information Services
Director of the Law Library
Professor of Law
University at Buffalo Law School
208 O’Brian Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260

Email: jgmilles@buffalo.edu

Free Online Catalog?

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting in its February 22, 2008 issue on Aaron Swartz's initiative to build a competitor to WorldCat--a "free online book catalog that anyone can update." You will need a Chronicle account in order to read the story online. Mr. Swartz is only twenty-one, but has already helped to write the code for RSS. His project is called Open Library, and it is expected to go live in March. At that point, Open Catalog should have records on about 20 million books. Its goal is expansive--"to create a comprehensive Web page about any book ever published. Each page will include not just author, title, and publisher but also links that direct users to the nearest library with a copy and to related. Other links will allow users to buy a book online or write a review of it. The pages will be created or updated by anyone, in the style of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Some Web pages will also connect to the full text when its copyright has expired. Or users will be able to pay about 10 cents a page to have an unscanned out-of-copyright book at a college library digitized." There are similarities to WorldCat, but while WorldCat includes only records from OCLC libraries, Open Library will include records from anywhere. WorldCat is a fee-based service, while Open Library is free. Finally, WorldCat records are presumably created by librarians using established standards, while Open Library records will be created by the public. Mr. Swartz has other ideas about integrating Open Library with Wikipedia and LibraryThing, a site that enables the public to catalog their books. Should his project succeed, it could well change the way libraries maintain catalog records. At the moment, however, many librarians are cautious about Open Library, and few libraries have contributed their records. I am left with the question I often have when I read about innovative ideas for facilitating access to information--why are they coming from outside the library profession?

Drexel Law School Wins Accreditation

Congratulations to the folks at Drexel! Here is the story:

New JD Factory Gets Provisional ABA Accreditation

New York Lawyer
February 20, 2008

By Gina Passarella
The Legal Intelligencer


While some law schools may not have been thrilled about decisions that came out of the American Bar Association's midyear meeting a week and a half ago in Los Angeles, Drexel University School of Law came home with some good news.

The school was given its provisional accreditation more than four months ahead of schedule.

Although Roger Dennis, the law school's dean, didn't expect there to be any problems with the process, the provisional accreditation does allow the campus to utter a collective sigh of relief.

The first class, set to graduate in 2009, will now be able to sit for any state's bar exam. Having the provisional accreditation will also allow the school to receive funds from Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts for clinical programs - something Dennis said Drexel is very committed to but from which the school has not been able to receive the extra funding other area schools have seen.

Drexel law students will now be eligible for various fellowships that only go to students at accredited schools and certain employers may be less hesitant to invest in Drexel 1Ls and 2Ls for summer associate programs knowing that they will be able to sit for the bar, Dennis said. The school will also be able to better recruit on a national scale, he said.

Prior to joining Drexel, Dennis was with Rutgers University and had sat for six years on the council of the ABA's section of legal education and admissions to the bar - the section that handles the accreditation process. While he knew what to expect of the process and was pretty confident that Drexel was more than prepared, he said a bit of doubt began to creep in at the ABA's meeting on Feb. 9.

Dennis and a few other Drexel representatives went before the council of the ABA's section of legal education and admissions to the bar a little before 9 a.m. that Saturday. It was a relatively short, uneventful meeting before the council to go over a few last- minute things before the provisional accreditation could be granted, he said.

The council then went into private deliberations to vote on Drexel's accreditation. Dennis said those occasional doubts began as the hours passed by and he hadn't received a phone call. At about 1:15 p.m., he finally heard what he had been waiting for. Drexel easily achieved its provisional accreditation.

As it turns out, Dennis' suspicions for the cause of the delay were accurate. The council took only a few minutes to vote on Drexel's status and moved on to discuss the ABA's more controversial issue at hand - proposed interpretation 301-6.

The interpretation was passed and requires law schools - in order to meet the accreditation requirement - to reach a 75 percent bar passage rate of the school's graduates sitting for the bar over the past five years. In addition, at least 75 percent of the graduates sitting for the bar each year must pass in three of those five years.

Dennis said the school, being unaccredited at the time, didn't take a position on the proposed interpretation prior to the vote.

He said he is "a bit of a hawk when it comes to bar passage rates" and said law schools should be accountable for their individual passage rates.

Students spend a lot of money and give up three to four years of their lives for law schools. Not passing the bar by the second try is bad for their careers, he said.

The new interpretation will only affect a handful of schools, Dennis said, and is probably not going to create as much of a change as the "brouhaha" over the vote might have indicated.

While he wouldn't hazard a guess in terms of where Drexel's first class would be in terms of passage rates, Dennis said he would be disappointed if the students weren't very similar to those of Villanova, Temple and Rutgers on their first try.

As would any law school, he said, Drexel looks to achieve high bar passage rates by bringing in quality students, designing a curriculum that will prepare them and hiring experienced educators.

Dennis said the school has also hired a faculty member to work one-on-one or in teams with students who aren't doing as well on exams.

Aside from working with its students on their bar passage rate, Drexel Law has been diligently working on its biggest test to date.

The accreditation process really began in October 2007 when a team of lawyers, judges and academics visited the school. The team wrote a lengthy report that was submitted to the ABA. Dennis said the suggested improvements in the report are confidential but said the suggestions for Drexel were more reminders about what the school had to do in the future to attain full accreditation.

The school went before the council in December 2007 to answer any questions the members had in terms of the school's vision, how it would be implemented and what its financial prospects looked like. Dennis said it was like a hearing on the record.

Given Dennis' experience on the committee, he knew what questions might be asked and tried to already have them answered in reports the school had to submit to the ABA.

"Ours was as, in a nice way, routine as possible," Dennis said of the overall process.

He said the school was "super prepared" and had created its own self-study to go along with the previous report written by the team that visited in October.

That was one reason, he said, the school was able to get a decision well before June, when the provisional accreditation was originally expected.

Coming out of a national research university also carried some weight, he said.

"Drexel University is not going to let its law school fail," Dennis said.

The law school has spent a lot of time bringing on strong faculty and has focused on Drexel's long-standing model of experiential learning, he said.

Dennis said the Philadelphia bar has been very supportive and the school hasn't been shy about asking. Drexel Law has more than 100 students in co-ops in this region.

"It's pretty clear we're trying to be an ambitious, cutting-edge law school," he said.

Dennis said Philadelphia is as tough of a law school market as one can find.

"If we're not good from almost the day we open the doors, we're not where we want to be," he said.

The next step for Drexel is to become a fully accredited school - which looks to mean more of the same for the next few years. Dennis said the school would have a provisional accreditation for two years. ABA representatives will visit the school next year to check in, and full accreditation would most likely come the year after that.

The information from the Drexel website is here.