Harvard University Press Announces First Open Access Journal
In partnership with the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, Harvard University Press will launch the Journal of Legal Analysis (http://jla.hup.harvard.edu), its first foray into online, Open Access publishing, at noon on Tuesday, February 3, 2009. “Harvard University Press’s mission has always been the dissemination of first-rate scholarship to the widest possible audience; we are thrilled that technology has enabled us to further that mission in ways never imagined when the Press was founded in 1913,” says Press director Bill Sisler. Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library, elaborates: “Possibilities opened up by the internet are transforming the whole landscape of publishing, especially in the realm of academic journals. By taking this step, Harvard University Press has signaled its determination to participate in the transformation and to do so in a way that will promote the diffusion of first-rate scholarship.”
The Journal of Legal Analysis (JLA) aspires to publish the best legal scholarship from all disciplinary perspectives and in all styles, whether verbal, formal, or empirical. The JLA is faculty edited. All articles are subject to peer review. JLA articles are free on the web and will be posted on the JLA website as soon as they are ready for publication. Published articles will be gathered into bound volumes once a year and made available for purchase.
Harvard University Press published academic journals in the past but ceased doing so about three decades ago because journal publishing no longer fit in with the overall strategy at that time. The development of an online journal publishing program has long been a goal of HUP Editor-in-Chief, Michael Fisher, who explored a variety of possible co-publishing ventures with other departments at the University.
When, in the summer of 2007, Steven Shavell, Director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, and Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, approached Senior Acquisitions Editor in the Social Sciences at HUP, Mike Aronson, with the idea of starting a journal, Aronson and Fisher were thrilled. “With the emergence of online journal publishing and Open Access, the cost of entry into journal publishing is lower than it’s ever been,” says Fisher. “With an online OA journal a publisher does not have to spend start-up money recruiting subscribers, does not need a subscription-fulfillment operation, does not even have to print the journal. The fact that we can work with the Law School to jointly further the University’s scholarly mission while spending less in the current economic climate is very, very exciting for us.”
For Ramseyer, the JLA represents a landmark in law journal publishing, one that fills a gap left by the student-edited law reviews. “Until JLA, there has not been a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journal that covered the whole span of the legal academy. There have been faculty-edited journals for subfields, but not for the entire discipline. With the JLA, we are trying to create a faculty-edited journal that will be the flagship journal for the law school faculty as a whole.”
Stuart Shieber, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and current Faculty Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication, was happy to congratulate the Press on finally achieving its goal: “Harvard University Press’s reentry into journal publishing through the Journal of Legal Analysis represents an exciting development in the burgeoning world of Open Access journal publishing. HUP’s efforts are to be applauded for both their quality and their accessibility.”
According to Dan Lee, Director of Digital Content Development at HUP, “the JLA is the first of many Digital Publishing initiatives to come from HUP. A successful implementation of this publishing model should translate into similar ventures with other departments and institutions—whether new journals, online monographs, or hybrid projects incorporating the best of new scholarship with cutting edge web applications. It’s important that HUP bring its editorial, production, and marketing expertise to bear by working together with the University to help set new precedents in the creation and dissemination of scholarly publications in the digital world.”
Popular nineteenth century trial publications are one of the gems of the Special Collections department.
Recently, a very rare and decidedly unusual trial came to light: Trial of Sanballet … before the Categorical Court of Pawing Pleas. Printed in “Growlville” in the year “0000”, this anonymous pamphlet was purchased by the Library in 1914. It is one of only two known copies.
Sanballet was, in fact (or rather, in fiction), a cat, “a huge black and white grimalkin … vagrant, and of no ostensible occupation” accused of extracting “sundry carious substances” from an offal-barrel. The lively account of the trial, rich with puns and literary allusions, ends with Sanballet pronounced guilty of looking into the barrel and sentenced to a unique punishment as in seen in the image to the left.
The pamphlet’s publication history remains a mystery. Sanballet’s tale comprises only about half of the publication’s 16 pages. In the several humorous, unrelated pieces that follow, occasional lines of poetry and references indicate it was probably printed in Boston after about 1822.
The chief mission of the Special Collections Department is to acquire, catalog, and preserve primary research materials in legal history, and to make them available to scholars. Additionally we collect items relating to the history of Harvard Law School and its role in the development and history of legal education including images and artifacts documenting the Law School’s faculty, alumni, staff, and students.
No graduate of Harvard Law School is more visible today than our nation’s new president, Barack Hussein Obama.
Special Collections Department Accession 2008.40
In describing her 39.25 x 33” tapestry, the artist DeBorah Amoafo Yeboah wrote, “the red-white-blue (America Flag) multi-patterns of the fabric represent the freedom that we all share and the Kente design represents the diversity that America embraces”. Ms. Yeboah presented her art impression to the Harvard Law School for “its involvement in the education of the first African American President of the United States”.
Post contributed by:
Mindy Spitzer Johnston
Curator of Digital and Visual Resources
The inauguration of President Elect and HLS alumnus Barack Obama and Vice President Elect Joe Biden is just a few days away. Are you ready to wow your friends with your knowledge of inauguration tradition and trivia on January 20? You will be after you read this post.
For example, did you know that Congress is in charge of the inauguration festivities taking place at the U.S. Capitol? The bipartisan Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC), members appointed by a concurrent resolution, makes all the arrangements for the swearing-in ceremony as well as the traditional inaugural luncheon.
The ceremony will take place on a platform on the west side of the Capitol that is built from scratch for each inauguration. Design for the 2009 platform began over a year ago. It will be made completely of wood to protect the Capitol steps, will be ADA compliant, and will hold over 1600 dignitaries. A level of bleachers above the platform will hold another 1000 people. That’s some platform! The Nail Driving Ceremony to mark the beginning of platform construction took place on September 24--over a month before the election took place! You can view photos and read quotes from the Nail Driving Ceremony, as well as view a slideshow of platform construction progress. Along with members of the JCCIC, Acting Architect of the Capitol Stephen T. Ayers hammered a nail into a plank during the ceremony. (If, like me, you didn’t know there was an Architect of the Capitol, you can learn more about the office’s responsibilities at the Architects of the Capitol website.)
After the swearing in, the festivities will move to the Capitol’s Statuary Hall for the inaugural luncheon. Since 1985, a significant American painting has been showcased during the luncheon. This inauguration, it’s Thomas Hill’s View of Yosemite Valley, reflecting “the majestic landscape of the American West and the dawn of a new era.” During the luncheon, Congress will present gifts of Lenox crystal to the new president and vice president on behalf of the American people. To see details and view video of previous luncheons back to Reagan’s first inauguration, check out the luncheon chronology.
The painting, with its connection to President Lincoln’s signing of the Yosemite Grant, also relates to the theme of this inauguration, which is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. The phrase “A New Birth of Freedom” has been selected from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to be the focus of the inaugural theme. You may think that the president elect decides on the theme, but it is chosen by the JCCIC along with the Senate Historian. President Obama will be sworn in with Lincoln’s Bible (seen in one of many sets of inauguration-related photo sets at the Presidential Inauguration Committee Flickr stream).
Once the festivities at the Capitol are over, the Presidential Inauguration Committee takes charge, overseeing the parade from the Capitol to the White House and the ten official inaugural balls. Check out the PIC Blog to learn about some of the ninety plus more than ninety groups in the parade lineup, lucky winners of parade tickets, and more. The PIC also has a YouTube channel and Twitter account that you can follow. If you’re not lucky enough to have a fairy godmother who can get you to one of the balls, the blog reports that you can watch the Neighborhood Ball on the Disney channel.
To learn more historical details about each section of the inauguration day events, check out the links at the JCCIC Inauguration History page. One thing I learned there: unlike the president, who is traditionally sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the vice president, at least since World War II, has chosen a friend or associate to administer the oath. Vice president elect Biden has selected Justice Stevens to administer his oath, following in the footsteps of Quayle and Gore, who were sworn in by associate justices at all of their inaugurations.
If you will miss watching the inauguration live due to classes or work, WGBH World will re-air the entire three hours of coverage from 7-10pm on Tuesday and midnight-3am on Wednesday.
Oh, and if you really want to impress your friends, consider serving them the same meal that the new President and Vice President will eat during the inauguration luncheon. The recipes for all the dishes are available [pdf link], and since they serve 10, they’d be just right for a party!
Are you interested in learning more about the newly elected members of Congress? Would you like to check out the current law clerks for the U.S. Supreme Court justices? The law library now has access to Leadership Directories Online (also known as “yellow books") contains 14 directories providing contact information for leaders of major U.S. government, business, professional and nonprofit organizations. Members of the law school community can access this resource off-campus via HLS e-mail username and password.
What do you think about the recent redesign of the Law Library’s web site? The only way we’ll ever know what you think is if you tell us!
The Law Library’s Web Committee is eager to listen to what HLS students have to say about the library’s web site: we want to hear from you about what you think works; we need to know what makes the web site difficult to use; and we would like share ideas about what you think might make the Law Library web site even better with just a few changes. Come visit us for an hour of conversation, feedback, and of course, for pizza.
If you are interested in joining us for one of the following sessions, please email June Casey, jucasey@law.harvard.edu: Tuesday, January 23; Wednesday, February 11; Tuesday, February 24; Wednesday, March 11; or Tuesday, March 31. All focus group sessions meet at 5 p.m. for one hour in Areeda 524.
Today marks the 378th anniversary of the site selection for the city of Cambridge. At the time, it was named Newtowne, and would be the colony capital for a total of six years. In 1638, the General Court moved permanently to Boston, but, according to state history website Mass Moments, the General Court gave Newtowne a “consolation prize”: the colony’s first college. Not bad, as far as consolation prizes go! Newtowne was renamed for the alma mater of many of its English clergymen in May of 1638.
Here’s a contemporary description of Cambridge written by William Wood in a 1634 report to inform English puritans at home about New England:
This is one of the neatest and best compacted towns in New England, having many fair structures, with many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants, most of them, are very rich and well stored with cattle of all sorts, having many hundred acres of ground paled in with one general fence which is about a mile and a half long, which secures all their weaker cattle from the wild beasts.
A few things have changed since then. I haven’t seen any cattle--though being fairly new to the area, it’s possible they’re hiding somewhere--and the only creatures I’d qualify as wild beasts are the fat squirrels in Holmes Field!
For more local history, check out Mass Moments, a project of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Courtesy of Google Books, you can also read William Wood’s complete account of the area, New England’s Prospect, described as “a true, lively, and experimental description of that part of American, commonly called New England; discovering the state of that Countrie, both as it stands to our new-come English Planters; and to the old Native Inhabitants. Laying downe that which may both enrich the knowledge of the mind-travelling Reader, or benefit the future Voyager.”
Here’s something yummy. If you’re stuck in town over the holidays and bored, you could do worse than attempt to verify the claims in the Boston Globe’s round-up of the ten best places for hot chocolate in the area. Four of them are conveniently located within a half mile of the law school.
With an easy election still in our collective rear view mirror, here’s a look back to a more exciting electoral adventure. In Bush v. Gore Set to Outlast Its Beneficiary, Adam Liptak at the New York Times has an interesting discussion of the case that was supposed to be “like that tape recorder in “Mission: Impossible.” It was meant to produce a president and then self-destruct.”
Keeping up with NPR stories covering your favorite news topics, programs, and personalities just got easier. The podcast directory has a new “Mix Your Own” feature. Simply name your podcast and type in some keywords to find the subjects and program titles you’re interested in. Then click the iTunes or Zune button, or copy the RSS feed URL into your preferred news reader, and you’re done. Cool!
Since our end of the year hours vary, here they are:
Friday, December 19: 7:00 AM - Noon
Due to the weather, we will close at 12:00 PM.
Saturday, December 20: We will be open 8:30 AM - 6:00 PM, closing early due to the weather.
Sunday, December 21: 9:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Monday, December 22: 9:00 AM- 11:00 PM
Tuesday, December 23: 9:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Wednesday, December 24: 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Thursday, December 25: Closed
Friday, December 26: Closed
Saturday, December 27: Closed
Sunday, December 28: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Monday, December 29: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday, December 30: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday, December 31: Closed
Thursday, January 1: Closed
Friday, January 2: Closed
Saturday, January 3: Closed
Sunday, January 4 9:00 AM - 2:00 AM
On Sunday, January 4th Restricted Access resumes, with the 2nd floor of Langdell open as a 24 hour study area for Harvard Law students.
Restricted access ends January 15th.
Harvard College Library has an online weekly calendar covering their libraries. We also have a hand-out at the Circulation Desks showing hours for major libraries at Harvard University.
It’s time to plug in your headphones if you’re reading Et Seq. in the library!
Demonstrating they have talents above and beyond their mad legal skills, the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have produced a festive music video to celebrate EFF’s accomplishments this year in defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in a digital world. Enjoy!
What do a grunting bodybuilder, an accidental brunette, and Talula does The Hula From Hawaii have in common? They were all subjects of cases covered in the Times’ roundup of ten of the weirdest cases of 2008. I’m happy to report that only two of the cases are from the U.S. Enjoy!
In response to the projects almost immediate success, Flickr launched The Commons, an initiative to “increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge.” In addition to the Library of Congress, The Commons has attracted a growing number of participating institutions worldwide, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Bibliothèque de Toulouse and the George Eastman House.
The LC Flickr Pilot project team has recommended continued and expanded participation in The Commons.
Popular nineteenth century trial publications are one of the gems of the Special Collections department.
What do you think about the recent redesign of the Law Library’s web site? The only way we’ll ever know what you think is if you tell us!
