Harvard Law School’s faculty has voted unanimously to join the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in implementing an open access publication policy and institutional repository for works published by faculty members. Incoming Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources John Palfrey’s blog provides details, including the text of the policy. The Chronicle of Higher Education blogged the decision as well.
What does it mean for you? Well, in essence, Harvard law faculty members’ new publications will be available for non-profit, research use to anyone who can access the internet. (Unless the faculty member chooses to opt out of the system, which the policy gives the faculty member the right to do.)
As HLS Dean Elena Kagan says “Our decision to embrace ‘open access’ means that people everywhere can benefit from the ideas generated here at the Law School.” Harvard University Professor and Director of the Library Robert Darnton hailed the vote: “That such a renowned law school should support Open Access so resoundingly is a victory for the democratization of knowledge. Far from turning its back to the outside world, the HLS is sharing its intellectual wealth.”
"Librarians have been very involved with these issues, and with the work on this policy. There was important library representation on the Provost’s Committee on Scholarly Publishing, which developed this proposal, and involvement of librarians at many points, including an open forum with librarians on the motion.”
As librarians, we look forward to helping provide easy access to what will soon become a free source of some of the best scholarship in the world.
HLS 3L José Klein has created the Learned Handmade Plates, a series of dishes commemorating significant U.S. Supreme Court decisions and current Justices of the Court.
The Learned Handmade Plates web site shows images of each of the 31 plates and includes detailed information about each case and judge that is depicted.
Your family will be here for graduation in a few weeks. You’ll want to have an enjoyable and relaxing visit with them, and also deceive them into thinking that you took full advantage of the surrounding cultural and historical resources during your time here. But how?
One way is to take the clan on a digitally-guided walking tour of Old Cambridge. From now until June 1st, you can get a free download of “Beyond the Yard: A Guided Tour,” from the Cambridge Office for Tourism (after June 1st, they’re charging for it). Among the stops on the tour: the Longfellow National Historic Site, Cambridge Burying Ground, Christ Church, and JFK Park.
The tour features insights from local historians and other community leaders, and is narrated by a Harvard alumna and travel writer. Both a 60-minute version and a 90-minute version are available.
Yes, according to Goodwin, Proctor’s Litigation Knowledge Manager David Hobbie. PreCydent is a free (for now, anyway) law search engine that aims to offer “google-like” access to case law (more details here).
Hobbie did several case law searches, as described on his blog, Caselines, and in his view, PreCydent consistently provided the best results. Despite this, Hobbie doesn’t recommend giving up Westlaw or Lexis, at least not for now. PreCydent “only covers a limited amount of federal appellate caselaw—in most cases, that after 1950 and up to July 2007,” and has a few other disadvantages, as Hobbie explains in his article Nevertheless, you may want to get a free preview of what might turn out to be the next major law search engine.
The videos feature conversations with experts such as James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge; Phillippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court; Judge Navanethem Pillay, President of the International Criminal for Rwanda Tribunal (1999 - 2003 ) and later Judge of the International Criminal Court; Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Joseph Rotblat; Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice and several other experts.
Topics range from basic concepts, such as jus cogens and sovereignty, to international criminal law, disarmament, and many more. Often, videos include some footage of the organization in which the expert works. According to the site, the Library was launched in 2006 with funding provided by Queen’s University of Belfast.
Hat tip: Library Boy.
Sometimes, these resources could not answer our questions, as with this broadside, printed by “T. Storer, Fleur-de-lis Court, Fleet-Street, London, [1816].” I suspected that this was printed by Thomas Storer, a journeyman active in London from 1815 to 1817. However, I could not find a record of him at Fleur-de-lis court or on Fleet Street. In fact, he was listed from 1816 to 1817 at 1 Fetter Lane. From early maps of London, I knew that Fetter Lane and Fleet Street converged, but Fleur de lis court was at 9 Fetter Lane, too far from Storer’s listed address to convince me. My usual resources exhausted, I gave Google a try.
Google Books returned the the trial transcript for the 1817 trial of James Watson for his role in the Spa Fields Riots. Thomas Storer was implicated in printing a treasonous tract for Watson. During the trial, there was a lengthy questioning of witness Thomas Preston as to the exact location of Mr. Storer’s house, which perfectly answered my question:
That confirmed that this was my T. Storer of Fetter Lane, and also explained why he stopped printing in 1817 after such a short career.
Post contributed by:
Matthew Reidsma
Curatorial Assistant
In case the reading room isn’t as quiet as you had hoped, please remember that designer earplugs are available at the Langdell Circulation Desk. Stop by and ask for a pair any time!
Got room for one more RSS feed? “Convictions” is a new blog on legal topics sponsored by Slate, the online magazine.
According to Slate’s press release, the blog aims to “post immediate reactions to legal cases and headlines,” and offer “an accessible source for legal discourse from a wide-range of qualified experts.”
The all-star cast of bloggers includes HLS’s own David Barron and Boston-based federal district judge Nancy Gertner. Other bloggers reportedly include Slate writers Dahlia Lithwick, Phil Carter, and Emily Bazelon, journalists Ben Wittes and Rosa Brooks, Deb Perlstein of Human Rights First, Professors Viet Dinh and Marty Lederman of Georgetown Law, Doug Kmiec from Pepperdine Law, Jack Balkin and Kenji Yoshino form Yale, Eric Posner of Univ. of Chicago Law, Richard Ford of Stanford, former acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger of Duke, Diane Amann of Boalt Hall, Dawn Johnsen of Indiana, Orin Kerr of GW, Tim Wu of Columbia, former public defender David Feige of Seton Hall and law firm associate Adam J. White. Right now, posts seem to be focused on Heller, but the range of topics seems to be wide open - and based on the bloggers involved, discussion should remain lively. Warning: At least some of the posts seem to be culled from other blogs, so you may experience a moment or two of deja vu.
The Garrison Family is fairly well known in the Boston area, boasting a 19th century abolitionist in William Lloyd Garrison; a literary editor in Wendell Philips Garrison; an esteemed writer in Lloyd McKim Garrison; and a well-respected lawyer in Lloyd Kirkham Garrison.
I am sure the list goes on of the accomplished, and Harvard educated Garrisons who have made great waves, but these four generations are of primary focus in the recently-processed Garrison Family Papers. The collection provides a glimpse into the family life enjoyed by these men, their wives and children.
Being a personal collection, as one might expect, it primarily consists of correspondence between family members. Such as this October 18, 1919 letter from Lloyd Kirkham Garrison to his wife Ellen, in which he describes “the one lovely spot anywhere around Cambridge.”
However, being a personal collection, there are also a few pieces of miscellany that don’t quite fit with the rest of the collection. One such piece in the Garrison family’s case is this shipping receipt:
As you can see, it is dated 1766 and bears the signature of John Hancock. While this item certainly caught our attention, we are left wondering how it fell into the hands of the Garrisons. Certainly Hancock was another well-known Bostonian, but his life preceded William Lloyd Garrison, whose parents were not prominent Bostonians, and therefore would not have rubbed shoulders with Hancock. So, the shipping receipt remains both a mystery, and a rare gem in an already fascinating collection.
Post contributed by:
Margaret Peachy
Curatorial Assistant for Manuscripts
JD Supra was launched last week and is generating a lot of interest.
According to this ABA Journal write up, the free site is “intended to help lawyers share filed pleadings, research memoranda and other materials that allow them to build on each other’s prior work, rather than start every project on a clean slate.”
The site was developed by San Francisco litigator Aviva Cuyler and a “team of Internet and legal marketing professionals.” A search page allows users to find relevant material by jurisdiction, subject matter and document type. As the number of documents grows, the site could become an important tool for legal researchers. Top contributors currently include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Morrison & Foerster, the Cato Institute, and Mintz, Levin. Reportedly, Justia will be uploading a large number of “higher quality briefs and filings” pulled from the federal government’s PACER electronic court filing system.
Will there prove to be a free rider problem with the site, as lawyers freely download the work product of other lawyers? Maybe not, when you consider that much of this work product is in fact already shared, just more inefficiently, via contacts between individual lawyers, firm websites, and searches for briefs and other filings on Westlaw, Lexis and PACER. Will clients complain if lawyers don’t save client money by downloading relevant documents from the site? We’ll have to wait and see.
The site also provides an opportunity for networking and marketing of lawyers’ services by allowing individuals, firms and organizations to create profiles.
When processing print, photograph, and manuscript collections, archivists encounter many challenges, not the least of which are unidentified photographs and illegible handwriting.
When processors in the Art Collection come across an unidentified photograph, we have to use our knowledge of the creator of the collection to guide us to a best-possible guess on identify. Some additional research might be done quickly, but, more often than not, the volume of materials to be processed requires us to list the photograph as “unidentified” and move on, hoping that a clue will present itself as we continue our work.
Sometimes, however, a photograph comes across the table that we just can’t seem to put aside. The following carte-de-visite photograph is being cataloged and digitized as part of a project to make electronically available all the prints and photographs contained in the visual materials collection of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Taken by Boston photographer A. Sonrel, the notation on the back of this card is partially legible. His first name—Charles—and the date—July ’63—are clear. But what in the world is his last name? This is not Justice Holmes’s now-familiar scrawl, and for the life of me, I cannot confirm the sitter’s last name. The dress, posture, and sheer existence of this photograph lead me to believe that this man was a free Black living in Boston. Who was this man to Holmes or the Holmes family? I want to know more. In July 1863, Lieutenant Holmes was convalescing at his Boston home after being shot in the heel during a May 3rd battle in Chancelorsville, Virginia.
Can anyone help identify this man? Titling this photograph “Portrait of an unidentified African American man” is so unsatisfying.
Post contributed by:
Mindy Spitzer Johnston
Curator of Digital and Visual Resources
Well, we know you’re probably already a Law Library fan. (If not, why!) But now, you can proclaim your fan-dom in facebook when you check out our new (as of January 29) HLSL facebook page.
Although the page is still in development, you can already search Worldcat, read EtSeq, or look for a JSTOR article (when you reach the “Accessing JSTOR” page, use the LibEx right-click menu to reload for full text access) all in the comfort of your cozy facebook environment. Watch for more apps like Chat and HOLLIS searching soon.
Two of our microfilm and microfiche reader/printers are now set up to make digital copies on a USB flash drive. You can also send images to your email. Printing remains free, but why not go digital!
Yes, according to Goodwin, Proctor’s Litigation Knowledge Manager David Hobbie. 
The videos feature conversations with experts such as James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge; Phillippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court; Judge Navanethem Pillay, President of the International Criminal for Rwanda Tribunal (1999 - 2003 ) and later Judge of the International Criminal Court; Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Joseph Rotblat; Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice and several other experts.
Well, we know you’re probably already a Law Library fan. (If not, why!) But now, you can proclaim your fan-dom in facebook when you check out our new (as of January 29) HLSL 
