Libraries are bridges to information and knowledge.

by: David Badertscher

For those who have not visited us, the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library of New York County (sometimes referred to as the New York Criminal Law Library) is located in lower Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge, City Hall, and State and Federal courthouses. Like other Supreme Court libraries located throughout the State of New York, it operates under the auspices of the New York Unified Court System and participates in the various state-wide initiatives sponsored by the OCA Office of Legal Information.

Although the primary focus of this library is to provide reference and research support to personnel of the Criminal Term, its actual responsibilities and obligations are quite broad. Using its various collections in all formats, including digital, in conjunction with various web and online services, including a website and a weblog, this library functions as both an information repository and an information service. These resources and services enable it to reach out to patrons both local and worldwide, as time and resources permit. Part of the library’s responsibility is to provide support as needed and operational oversight to the New York County Public Access Law Library, which is charged with serving those members of the public who need law-related information.

Primary Research Group has published Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition, (isbn 1-57440-101-7) and would like to share some of the results. *

Data in the report is based on a survey of 75 academic, public and special libraries.. Librarians detail their plans on how they plan to develop their e-book collections, what they think of e-book readers and software, and which e-book aggregators and publishers appeal to them most and why. Other issues covered include: library production of e-books and collection digitization, e-book collection information literacy efforts, use of e-books in course reserves and inter-library loan, e-book pricing and inflation issues, acquisition sources and strategies for e-books and other issues of concern to libraries and book publishers.

Some of the findings of the 110 page report are:

The following was first posted on the InChambers weblog compiled by boppanny@aol.com, May 2008.

[From Mark Levin’s book, “Men in Black”]

“Robert C. Grier (U.S. Supreme Court Justice). Appointed by James Polk in 1846, Grier suffered paralysis in 1867 and thereafter began a slow mental decline. Grier’s case is most troubling because he was the swing vote in one of the more important cases of his era, Hepburn v. Griswold, which struck down the law allowing the federal government to print money. “Grier’s demonstration of mental incapacity during the conference discussion was such that every one of his colleagues acknowledged that action had to be taken.”

As information becomes available to us, we post information about the status of various initiatives including the Working Group for Bibliograph Control and RDA. On May 1 we received the following correspondence from Richard Amelung, the AALL representative to this group:

Dear all–

As your AALL representative on the Working Group on the Future of

As reported in an article by Mark Hamblett in the May 1 New York Law Journal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed a suit by New York City attempting to hold gun manufactures liable for the flow of illegal arms into the city. In its ruling on April 30 the Second Circuit upheld an act of congress (The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) that insulated gun manufacturers from liability “…while upholding that New York’s public nuisance law does not fint into an exception in the act”. To see the opinion and related documents from Findlaw click on the link below:

CITY OF NEW YORK V. BERETTA U.S.A. CORP., ET AL.
(U.S. 2nd Cir., April 30, 2008) –

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