I’ve always asserted that law librarians rock it harder than most.  And I still believe this.  However, from June 14 to June 17, 2009, members of the Special Libraries Association rocked it at the Washington, DC convention center.  I was among these revelers.

On day two, I attended an informative session, Census 2010:  Not Your Grandmother’s Census, where I learned about how Government data-heroes will attempt to provide more demographic granularity with fewer census questions. 

I also attended the Business & Finance sponsored Business Information Literacy session, where I met business librarians from such places as Stanford Business School and Wachtell Lipton.  It was with these party-people that I learned about sources for researching Bear Hugs and Deal Jumpers.  I also learned that even the elite use sources such as the New York Times DealBook.

On day three, I attended an event entitled:  It’s All Academic.  A diverse group of librarians shared their experiences promoting information services to faculty.  Participants concluded that faculty, like all people, want fast, accessible information. 

Fortunately for those of us researching the US military, there are accessible sources.  During the ABCs of Military Resources, I picked up a few tricks; for example, start with guides made available at the Dudley Knox Library.

For further impressions on the conference, along with links to conference related blogs, visit Notes from the Annual Conference.

Overall, the conference was a great place to rock it!

Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the first album purchased by at least two of us at the Harvard Law School Library, so his unexpected death is generating a wave of nostalgia as well as an impulse (as yet unacted upon--stay tuned!) to borrow a boombox and dance in the balcony of the reference room. 

This item in the New York Times about Jackson and another icon of 80s childhoods, President Reagan, was particularly interesting given its connection to current Chief Justice John Roberts.

Several times following Jackson’s collaboration on an anti-drunk driving initiative during the summer of 1984, White House correspondence aide James Coyne recommended that the President send letters commending the superstar’s achievements and wishing him well with his tour.  The first letter begins cheesily and doesn’t even spell “Billie Jean” correctly:

Dear Michael:

Your visit to the White House was a real “thriller” for all of us here in the Nation’s Capital. In fact, the White House staff are still humming “Beat It” and “Billy Jean” and wondering how they’ll get tickets to one of your concerts this summer.

Roberts, then working as associate White House Counsel, would have none of it:

I hate to sound like one of Mr. Jackson’s records, constantly repeating the same refrain, but I recommend that we not approve this letter. Sometimes people need to be reminded of the obvious: whatever its status as a cultural phenomenon, the Jackson concert tour is a massive commercial undertaking. The tour will do quite well financially by coming to Washington, and there is no need for the President to applaud such enlightened self-interest. Frankly, I find the obsequious attitude of some members of the White House staff toward Mr. Jackson’s attendants, and the fawning posture they would have the President of the United States adopt, more than a little embarrassing.

Ouch! I might have to grudgingly agree with him on principle if not in spirit, though I can’t help wondering if Roberts was simply a frustrated Bruce Springsteen fan--as he noted in his third memo arguing against this potential bad precedent, there were no such letters being drafted to congratulate the Boss on his Born in the U.S.A. tour!

For more on Jackson’s lesser known legal connections, check out ZiefBrief’s post about his patented shoe design.

I am pleased to announce that the Papers of Henry J. Friendly have been processed and are now open to the public. 

Henry Friendly (HLS ’27) served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959-1974, serving as Chief Judge from 1971-1973. He clerked for Louis Brandeis in 1927-1928 and then entered private practice where he worked for the next 31 years before his appointment to the Second Circuit by President Eisenhower.

The majority of the materials found in the Henry J. Friendly Papers reflect his career as a federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Friendly’s case files constitute the bulk of the collection.  Also of interest are his bench books which contain hand-written notes on the cases he heard from 1959 to 1985. The collection also holds a small amount of Judge Friendly’s professional and personal correspondence, some of which dates back to his time as a student at Harvard University.

Judge Friendly was a respected jurist who, though never nominated, was considered for the Supreme Court by President Nixon.  In this, of course, he is not alone. In a recent op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried mentioned Henry Friendly along with Paul Freund and Learned Hand as three highly regarded jurists who were considered for the Supreme Court but never nominated. 

The Harvard Law School Library is custodian of the Papers of all three of these notable legal thinkers. The Learned Hand Papers were processed in 1968; the Paul Freund Papers in 2006; and now we can add the Henry Friendly Papers to the Library’s Modern Manuscript collection.  All three of these collections are large and comprehensive and hold great value to researchers.

Photo of letter from Felix Frankfurter to Friendly congratulating him on his appointment to the Second Circuit.

I would like to thank Margaret Peachy for her hard work in finishing this project in time for the summer research season. The finding aid for the Friendly Papers can be found on OASIS.

Last week, the 2009 conference of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction was held at the University of Colorado Law School in beautiful Boulder, CO.  #CALIcon09, is it was affectionately known and tweeted about by the law school geeks who attended, is an annual event for law school faculty, librarians, IT and A/V staff, and students to learn, share, and network about the latest in classroom and library technology.

Harvard Law School Library was well-represented among the presenters.  Our director, John Palfrey, gave the keynote address on Thursday morning on the topic of Legal Information: A Vision of the Future. There is a great liveblog recap of John’s address by Gene Koo at the Law School Innovation blog.

Reference librarians Karen Storin Linitz and June Casey along with Educational Technologist Denise Grey presented Thursday afternoon on “A Holistic Approach to Academic Computing: Librarians and Instructional Technologists Are Better Working Together.” Integrating video clips featuring faculty and Law School IT staff, Karen, June, and Denise discussed how collaboration between librarians and academic technologists can create synergy that better supports faculty in the classroom.

Meanwhile, John, Denise, and yours truly assisted with moderation of the subgroups at the Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools/Students Workshop. The workshop was the result of University of Iowa law student Laura Bergus challenging her school’s career placement office to go beyond simply telling students not to use social networking sites like Facebook to providing positive guidelines for use of social media by students to enhance their job prospects rather than detract from them. The workshop went beyond guidelines for just students--we broke out into groups to discuss social media in relation to alumni relations; recruiting; research, writing, and publishing; and teaching and learning. The workshop was just a beginning to these discussions, which we hope will continue in other formats and venues.  For more on the topic, check out Laura’s draft website, Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools.

There were many other great programs, with the only downside being the impossibility of getting to them all. I enjoyed Bonnie Shucha’s presentation about Firefox addons. I use quite a few myself, but as usual Bonnie taught me some new things, including that the CiteGenie addon, which copies and formats citations into BlueBook format from a number of websites including Lexis and Westlaw, was created by a South Carolina attorney on a bet.  Roger Skalbeck presented the results of his law school website survey, an impressive undertaking that quantifies the technologies and design elements law schools are using in their websites. Lots of future elements to the survey were suggested by Roger and others, and I think it would be great if such a survey were repeated every few years so we can see what the trends are.  Lyonette Louis-Jacques and June Liebert discussed the Kindle and its possible applications for law schools and law libraries. Although there are potential drawbacks (lack of pagination still being the big one, as well as cost), there were some good suggestions for Kindle use by faculty (creating their own, free casebooks for students) and librarians (filling Kindles with subject-specific titles that students can then check out). Finally, Jason Eiseman and Tom Boone showed us that it’s not so scary using WordPress and Drupal to create some cool web applications, like Yale’s great Judicial Nominations Database.

Outside of the library sphere, I found Professor Timothy Armstrong’s thoughts on crowdsourcing historical legal documents intriguing.  Expanding on the theme of John Palfrey’s talk, Armstrong provocatively suggested that the current single-institution repositories as they exist now are merely marketing gimmicks that must give way to inter-institutional communication and collaboration. His discussion of the merits of Distributed Proofreaders and Wikisource (with the latter having the edge) for proofreading of scanned legal documents was quite useful.  There was also an excellent presentation by a team of IT staff and faculty from the University of North Carolina about teaching with technology in smart classrooms.

The University of Colorado was a wonderful setting for the conference.  The Law School and Library are set in a beautiful new building that takes full advantage of a great view of the Flatirons--a view that I am definitely missing on this grey and rainy day in Cambridge.

The White House and the U.S. Treasury Department today released its white paper, Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation calling for the complete overhaul of the financial regulatory system and the creation of a new federal agency charged with protecting consumers and investors from financial abuse.

For more information, see Road to Stability (U.S. Treasury Department, FinancialStability.gov) and New Foundation, New Stability (White House, The Briefing Room, The Blog). For news coverage, see the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.

LexisNexis and Westlaw provide only limited access to students during the summer between late June and August 1st.

However, students wishing to use their LexisNexis and Westlaw student accounts for a qualifying academic purpose may register to extend their access through the summer. Full access for continuing, non-graduating students will be restored on August 1st. See LexisNexis and Westlaw Student Summer Access for more information.

The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court,
by Cliff Sloan and David McKean.

Virtually every first year student reads Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), the first Supreme Court case to strike down an act of Congress as unconstitutional. Professor Laurence H. Tribe calls Marbury the case “that made the rule of law a living part of the American legacy.” Stephen Colbert calls it the case in which the “Supreme Court sort of invested itself with power,” and calls Justice John Marshall “the original activist judge, legislating from the bench.” Although legal scholars criticize the book for being too little about the landmark case itself and its place in academic scholarship, no one criticizes The Great Decision for being anything less than an engaging page-turner about the colorful personalities and politics of Marbury’s times.

Turns out bailing-out those too big to not be bailed-out can be profitable, and not just for the bailees.

Read the Federal Reserve’s press release and report, Federal Reserve System Monthly Report on Credit and Liquidity Programs and the Balance Sheet to find out how profitable, at least on paper ($2.7 billion in the last quarter despite a combined $5.2 billion in losses on loans to Bear Stearns and AIG) and for whom. See also news coverage in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

As I was checking out the news about Microsoft’s new “Bing“ search engine (which is pretty slick, as you’d imagine), I came across the latest from Google - Google Squared, “a search tool that helps you quickly build a collection of facts from the Web for any topic you specify.” The concept is kind of cool: you put in some terms and get a grid that includes various information related to the topic entered.  Works pretty well for some of the suggested searches, such as “precious gems.”

Things get a little weird when you start ranging beyond the canned searches.  For instance, put in “Harvard” and get - in the ten items that make up the initial “square “- George W. Bush, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame) and Peter Benchley (author of Jaws), along with their dates and places of birth, spouses (if any) and an image.  The University itself does not appear.  Change the search to “Harvard University.” You still don’t get Harvard University, but now you get a different cast of characters including John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Conan O’Brien.  Okay, I know - it’s beta.  No doubt Google Squared will improve or die - but while it’s still weird, I can see how it could be hours (or at least half-hours) of fun!

What do Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor have in common?

Besides being women nominated for the United States Supreme Court, all three were avid readers of Nancy Drew mysteries when they were young.

Writes Mary Jo Murphy in the New York Times:

“The real allure of Nancy Drew is that, almost uniquely among classic or modern heroines, she can follow — is allowed to follow — a train of thought,” wrote Sandra Tsing Loh, reviewing Melanie Rehak’s “Girl Sleuth,” a biography of Nancy Drew’s creators, in The Atlantic. “The plot opens ever outward for her, her speeding blue convertible a metaphor for the sure-shot arrow of her intellect, the splendidly whizzing shaft of the maiden huntress Diana.”

Photo by hownowdesign on Flickr

It is not often that the Library has an opportunity to acquire a book or pamphlet about the Harvard Law School that it doesn’t already own.  Such an occasion occurred this week when we purchased a pamphlet that not only did we not own but apparently exists only in this copy. 

The Harvard Manual.  Contents: Historical Sketch; Law School Manual; Directory of Students, 1877-78 is an unofficial guide to the School with information on admission, courses offered, expenses, scholarships, and a directory of students.

One section describes the law clubs “organized by the students, and under their control, constitute a prominent feature of the work of the school…..  The object of all the Clubs is to accustom members to the drawing of pleadings, and the argument and decisions of points raised thereby” (p. 21).

Written by “The Editors,” the publication was generously supported by advertisements, the contents of which provide a glimpse of law student life in Cambridge nearly a century and a half ago.

Post contributed by:
Dave Warrington
Head, Special Collections

Some of the HLSL librarians joined the Harvard University Library’s Communications & Orientation Committee on a tour of historic Mount Auburn Cemetery earlier this week.  One of our team members brought along a special guest who traveled all the way from Springfield, VA:  Flat Stanley.  He is part of the Flat Stanley Project, which is designed for elementary school students who can send their version of Flat Stanley to friends and family.  In turn, Flat Stanley’s hosts will photograph Flat Stanley in different locations and write journal entries about their adventures with Flat Stanley.  Below is the letter that accompanied Flat Stanley through the mail. 

Pictured here, Flat Stanley visits Christopher Columbus Langdell’s grave.  Perhaps this interaction will inspire Max, this Flat Stanley’s creator, to become part of the HLS class of 2025?

The library will be closed on the following days:

Saturday, May 23
Sunday, May 24
Monday, May 25, Memorial Day
Saturday, May 30
Sunday, May 31

During the Recess Hours, May 18 - May 31, Langdell Hall is open Monday - Friday 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. International Legal Studies (ILS) is open Monday - Friday 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.

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On Summer Reading

To be sure such reading as I have done - e.g. the Banquet of Plato a few years ago, or the Oedipus last summer, or a little Homer - has given me interesting reflections, but the interest is apt to be more in the reflections than the thing.  I want to read what bears in a general way on my path and I want the feel of a certain tension. 

from
The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard A. Posner

The Harvard Law School Library is in the midst of a period of reorganization to align our staff with our present needs and strategic priorities for the future. As part of this process, we have been examining the effectiveness of our various library service points.  In the past few years, foot traffic at the circulation and reference desks in the ILS portion of the library has significantly decreased. We are considering relocating staff at these two ILS service points to the Langdell circulation and reference desks areas.  As part of this plan, we would then convert this space to something more functional for the ILS community.  Please note that this change would only affect the 2nd floor area of Lewis; the ILS collection would remain in its current location in Lewis. 

We are hosting a meeting to solicit input on this plan.  We intend to discuss ways we can mitigate any impact on service and to hear ideas for alternative uses for the space.  The meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 20th from 4-5 p.m. in Pound 100. Please come help us discuss the important topic of how the library supports the study of international and comparative law. 

For this year’s graduates whose law firm start-date has been deferred and who are working in public interest during the deferment period, LexisNexis is offering free access to its databases of case law, statutes, regulations, and law review articles.

Read details about the offer here, and sign up for access here.