Articles Posted in Library Reference and Research

Lyonette Louis-Jacques of the D’Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago has conducted a quick, informal, but very interesting survey asking law school librarians how many of their faculty members use Kindles. As often happens with such surveys, the results or responses reveal more than was originally intended, thus creating interest among readers well beyond the range of the original audience. For this reason I have contacted Lyonette and requested her permission, which she has granted, to republish her questions and responses on this blawg for the benefit of our readers. David Badertscher

LYONETTE’S QUESTIONS:

I asked on Twitter, teknoids and the CSSIS-L lists. I got 21 responses. 6 responders indicated they own Kindles.

The following is an announcement from Luis Villa, the outgoing Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review (STLR). Beginning with Volume X STLR will become a “formal open access journal and comply with the recent Durham Statement on open access” and will become the first Columbia journal to publish through the Columbia University Library’s archival quality Academic Commons publication system:

ANNOUNCEMENT AND LETTER:

Most of you know me from past ventures; for those who don’t, my apologies for reaching out to you in this manner, but it is a one-time event that I hope you’ll find it worth your attention.

The background information regarding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor at our earlier posting has been updated to include her completed questionnaire which was delivered to the Committee of the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate on Thursday June 4, 2009. For those who have not seen it, that posting which is at:

https://www.criminallawlibraryblog.com/2009/05/judge_sonia_sotomayor_backgrou.html

We are delighted to see the updated List of Law Library Blogs. It was originally compled by Bonnie Shucha, University of Wisconsin Law School, and has been updated by Michael Robak, University of Illinios College of Law. When viewing this list it is important to note that it contains only law library blogs; all others have been removed. Many thanks to Bonnie for her pioneering efforts in creating the original list and to Michael for maintaining it at a high standard.

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Legal Information Services to the Public SIS has updated its publication, “How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers.” The text of the revised version, by LISP members Lee Warthen and Angus Nesbit, can be viewed here:

http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lisp/research.htm

In the past this Guide has been published by AALL as a pamphlet and sold through AALL’s publications program for a modest fee. AALL wishes to evaluate whether publishing and selling the Guide as a print pamphlet, while also providing free digital access, remains viable, or whether a digital-only publication is more suitable. We’ve created a quick five-question survey to find out how your library might use the Guide and how you would prefer to receive it.

Amazon has now released Kindle DX, a larger, more versatile veriion of its wireless Kindle ebook device. The new DX version has a larger display and a screen which rotates from portrait to landscape to view Web pages and spreadsheets, etc.

Kindle DX and other wireless ebook reading devices certainly do not portend the end of the tradional book as we know it; they are simply useful, but additional, methods of conveying information to readers.

Here are some of the features of the Kindle DX as listed by Amazon:

Rob Richards, a law librarian and legal information consultant in Philadelphia writes: “A list of empirical studies of law-related information behavior is now available at http://home.comcast.net/~richards1000/InformationBehavior.html . If you know of additional studies not listed, I’d be grateful to learn of them. Persons interested in this topic may be interested to know of the availability of a major new dissertation on this topic:

Stephann Makri, A Study of Lawyers’ Information Behaviour Leading to the Development of Two Methods for Evaluating Electronic Resources (2008) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University College London), also available at http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/14729/ .” We are always grateful to Rob for sharing such insights with us.

A quarterly journal published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. on behalf of the American Bar Foundation.

Law & Social Inquiry is a multidisciplinary quarterly that publishes original research articles and wide-ranging review essays that contribute to the understanding of sociolegal processes.
Law & Social Inquiry’s combination of empirical and theoretical research with critique and appraisal of the sociolegal field make the journal a useful source for the latest research and commentary. Law & Social Inquiry’s ambit spans law and sociology, criminal justice,economics, political science, social psychology, history, philosophy and other social science and humanities disciplines. The journal publishes a wide range of scholarship on specific topics in law and society, including but not limited to law, legal institutions, the legal profession, and legal processes.

Below is a message, useful to law librarians and others, from the current Chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section. It includes information about new books and some discussion about publication activities within the Section :

Message from the Chair:

The Criminal Justice Section is comprised of a number of committees charged with the responsibility of addressing a broad array of criminal law topics. While each committee tends to focus on issues related to their special interest, when needed they all work in unison to make clear that we serve as the voice of criminal justice in the nation.

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