ZiefBrief

The Librarians Are Reading -- The Final Chapter

When you are a librarian you have to be ready for the occasional person who opines how nice it must be to have a job that lets you read books all day. While in any given day I may scan or skim the written word (in both print and on screen) most of my reading takes place at home. To give you an idea of what I have been reading I have wrestled the current pile of books off my bedside table and will offer this lightly annotated list:

The Case of Madeleine Smith, part of Rick Geary's Treasury of Victorian Murder. This is a graphic novel about an affair between a young and proper upper-class Scottish woman and her decidedly lower class lover that goes horribly wrong. It can be read and digested in an evening and the story is fully complemented by the author's meticulous pen and ink illustration. I have been enjoying the art of Rick Geary since the early days of the National Lampoon (before that publication made its slow slide into soft-core porn and frat-boy humor) and he has found a real niche for himself in the Victrorian Murder series. Past volumes include the story of Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden and Abraham Lincoln.

Chances Are... by Michael and Ellen Kaplan. This work of non-fiction is subtitled as Adventures in Probability and I was hooked when I read the opening quote from Gibbon: "The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more; and our prospect of futurity is dark and doubful. This day may possibly be my last: but the laws of probablity, so true in general, so fallacious in particular, still allow about fifteen years." This book is light on equations but rich in the stories of the individuals who have explored and explained the world of probability -- look elsewhere if you are looking to simply improve your poker game. Of special interest to lawyers and judges is the chapter titled Judging which explores the use of probability in the courtroom. Included is as good an explanation of Bayes' Theorem as I have ever read.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. This has been lingering at my bedside for a while now. Darkly dystopian, the protagonist has been cursed with the task of trying to survive following a catastrophic plague while overseeing a tribe of genetically engineered human beings. Both the disease and the neo-humans were the handiwork of the protagonist's best buddy -- a sort of über-geek who goes by the screen name of Crake. While I finished the book a few months ago I want to go back and re-read the last chapter -- the story just seemed to collapse on itself and I can't help but think that I missed something.

The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels, Volume Two by Patrick O'Brian. Speaking of re-reading, here is a series of 20 novels that I have re-read in their entirety many times. While you might think of  some genres of literature as "brain candy"  I have seen the works of Patrick O'Brian compared to crack cocaine for readers. While on the surface they are historical fiction devoted to nautical adventures set in the Napoleonic wars they are much, much more that that. The major characters are developed to perfection in the 6500 pages that the collected novels comprise. There is adventure, battle, and intrigue interspersed with domesticity and details of the hearth and home. These are the books I turn to again and again when I want some relaxing escape before turning out the lights.

Make: Technology On Your Time vol. 09: Fringe.  More than a magazine, not quite a book; this is a publication from the publishing house of Tim O'Riely (the folks that produce those great computer books with the old-fashioned engravings of animals on the cover) that is devoted to DIY technology projects. Sort of a mashup of Heathkits, Burning Man, Mythbusters, and Popular Mechanics. I may never build my own flame-belching, potato flinging cannon, but I can enjoy the vicarious thrill through the pages of this publication.

Change Your Underwear Twice A Week by Danny Gregory. This book has nothing to do with hygiene or high fashion. Instead, this is a remembrance of the lowly filmstrip. While many Ziefbrief readers grew up in a world of VCRs and DVD there are still some of us who were subjected to the filmstrips -- a series of static images sometimes accompanied by a soundtrack played on a separate reel-to-reel audio tape player. In elementary school I was one of the AV kids that would take the filmstrip and 16mm film projectors in to the classrooms from the library. I still remember some of the 'strips collected in this volume.

Blogging For Law Professors and Other Zief Local News

"Blogging Made Easy," the feature article of the third issue of Z-Flyer (PDF; 4 pages; 17.9 MB) explores why law faculty blog, lists some prominent law professor blogs, and surveys some blogging software options that might be particularly useful to law faculty.

There's also the usual synopsis of Zief Library news, and a "Test Your Web Savvy" quiz.

The Librarians Are Reading... Part II

On any given day I'm usually working on an eclectic mix of non-fiction and crime or mystery novels. In the latter category (my "brain candy") my latest was: The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri [Wikipedia profile].

On its face The Shape of Water is a standard police procedural. What distinguishes it from its cousins in this genre are the protagonist, the seafood-loving Inspector Salvo Montalbano, and the setting, Vigàta (said to be a thinly-veiled Porto Empedocle), the small town in Sicily whose society and politics Inspector Montalbo must navigate delicately in solving the crime.

In the non-fiction category, I'm just starting Beautiful Evidence by Professor Edward Tufte.

Beautiful Evidence is the fourth in a series of books on analytical design addressing  problems of conveying complex, multivariate information about numbers, statistics, processes, causality, etc. in the two-dimensional world of paper or the computer screen — or "flatland," as Tufte would put it. Beautiful Evidence "identifies excellent and effective methods for presenting information, suggests new designs, and provides tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations."

Tufte designs and publishes his books, each of which beautifully embodies the principles he is trying to convey. Since I spend a lot of my day looking at ways to better explain intricate techniques of legal research, I find Tufte's ideas and examples helpful and inspiring.

Chapter 7 of Beautiful Evidence is Tufte's devastating essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within. After I read the first edition of this essay (which is available at this Zief Library call number: T 385 .T84 2003) I felt compelled to revamp all of my research presentations!

The incendiary debate over the war in Iraq has moved me to seek out soldiers' own accounts of their experiences, both in this war and the controversial war of my childhood, the war in Vietnam. So in addition to checking in regularly on The Sandbox, a convenient sampling of current milblogs, I've worked my way through a few works on each war: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction (interlinked stories set in Vietnam that at times blur the line between fact and fiction); John Crawford's The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq (by a National Guardsman who participated in the invasion in 2003 and ended up staying for the following year); Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, (about his time in Vietnam); and Brian Turner's Here, Bullet  (poetry inspired by his experiences in Iraq. Two poems from Here, Bullet are available on the web; another two poems, "Jameel" and "9-Line Medevac," — for which you'll need the actual book — nicely demonstrate the varying tones and themes of the entire collection.) All of this has been slow and harrowing going, made possible for me only be frequent applications of the mystery/crime novel "brain candy" mentioned above.

The Librarians Are Listening To....

Believe it or not, librarians own iPods, and those iPods are not filled solely with recordings of soothing string quartets!  So what's on my iPod?  I have fairly wide-ranging musical tastes, so it's a real hodgepodge, but here are some highlights from each genre:

Rock: Amy Winehouse's Back to Black is about to be added this weekend, several albums from Sleater-Kinney, Bettie Serveert, and the Spinanes, and . . . showing just how old I am, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park.

Blues:  Little Freddie King's Sing Sang Sung, Skip James' Hardtime Killing Floor Blues, and Snooky Pryor and his Mississippi Wrecking Crew

Country:  Wille Nelson's Greatest Hits and Johnny Cash's The Fabulous Johnny Cash

Folk:  Be Good Tanyas' Blue Horse, Jolie Holland's Escondida, Mary Lou Lord's Live City Sounds, and Po' Girl.

Jazz:  Helen Humes' Swingin' with Humes, Helen Merrill, Blossom Dearie's Once Upon A Summertime, A Jazz Date With Chris Connor, and Duke Ellington & John Coltrane

Guiltiest Pleasures:  You're The One That I Want (from the 1978 Grease soundtrack), Hot Child in the City by Nick Gilder

The Librarians Are Reading....

It's National Library Week!  In addition to our upcoming ice cream social on Thursday, April 19, at 2 p.m. and our fun games, including the labor & employment law movie trivia quiz (Download movietriviaquiz.doc here to play and win fabulous prizes from Lexis and Westlaw!), the Zief librarians will be contributing posts this week about their favorite books and music. 

I've volunteered to go first, and I'm going to highlight some of my favorite books from the past six months or so.  But before I get to specific recommendations, I'll dispense a tip for those who will soon be studying for the bar.  If you're a voracious reader, you may feel that you'll have no time for recreational reading during June and July.  But I found that bar prep is much easier if you reward yourself with an hour or two of leisure reading for every three hours or so that you spend studying.  I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan (and would highly recommend all of Dickens works in addition to the books I list below), and I managed to finish a few of his novels in between bar-cramming sessions.  I found that making time for some "fun" reading made me a more efficient and effective studier.   

Now, on to the books:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  Although it was marketed as a "Young Adult" book, The Book Thief is really a book for all ages. I loved it so much that I stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish it in one day.  Set in Germany during World War II, the novel tells the story of a young girl, Liesel Meminger, who is sent to live with a working-class foster family during the war.   Narrated in a wry and humorous style by Death himself and filled with eccentric and moving characters, The Book Thief is a gripping tale about courage, fate, friendship, and love.

• The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.  What if Wonderland was a real country and Alice was a fugitive princess who was transported to 19th-century England in order to escape from the clutches of her murderous Aunt Redd?  That's the premise of this fast-paced and fun novel, which follows Alyss's adventures as she struggles to reclaim the Wonderland throne after a bloody coup by Redd.  She's helped by an array of  morphed Wonderland characters, including Hatter Madigan, her loyal bodyguard, and her tutor, Bibwit Harte.

• Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy.  Set in World War II, this six-novel series follows the fortunes and misfortunes of Guy and Harriet Pringle, a British couple who are trapped in Romania when Britain declares war on Germany.  As Romania slowly moves towards fascism and an alliance with Hitler, Guy, Harriet, and their fellow expats struggle to maintain a semblance of normal life.  The books are filled with unforgettable eccentric characters like Prince Yakimov, a Russian who becomes a shameless mooch following the death of his rich companion.  These semiautobiographical novels offer a clear and unsentimental picture of life and marriage during wartime.

• The Children of Men by P.D. James.  If you saw the trailer for the movie version of this novel, then you're familiar with the basic premise.  It's the year 2021, and no children have been born on Earth since 1995.  Nobody can figure out how to fix this universal infertility problem, and as the population ages, civilization is slowly grinding to a halt.  The frail and elderly are forced into group suicide,  those who commit crimes are shipped off to brutal penal colonies, and those who are left are facing an increasingly bleak, dreary, and dull existence.  That is, until a pregnant woman appears on the scene, and all hell breaks loose.  A fast-paced but thoughtful thriller.

• J.G. Farrell's Empire Trilogy (The Siege of Krishnapur, The Singapore Grip, and Troubles).  Although critics refer to these three masterpieces as a trilogy because each book concentrates on a different corner of the former British empire, each novel is set in a different historical era.  The Siege of Krishnapur describes what happens when a British outpost is attacked and besieged during the Sepoy rebellion in India during 1857.  Set in Singapore in the late '30s and early '40s, The Singapore Grip details the growing Japanese menace in Southeast Asia, and the British colonial community's absolute refusal to face the reality of the threat until it's too late.  Troubles is the most surreal of the three novels, telling the story of WWI veteran Major Brendan Archer's protracted and inexplicable stay in a decaying Irish hotel owned by an eccentric Anglo-Irish family.  All three novels are masterfully written, with moments of black, bleak humor punctuated by episodes of startling violence.

• Dracula by Bram Stoker.  It may have been published in 1897, but this is still one of the most gripping and exciting examples of horror fiction out there! 

 

Public Law Blawg

Here's a welcome addition to the blawgosphere -- the Meyers Nave law firm is penning The Public Blawg, which covers developments in California public law.  In addition to discussing legislative and judicial developments in public law, the blawg also includes announcements about upcoming continuing legal ed and trade association conferences.  Thanks to Inter Alia for the tip!

NY Attorney Advertising Rules Challenged

We've posted previously about New York's new rules on attorney advertising and the implications of these rules for attorneys and law firms with websites and blogs.  Not surprisingly, two groups have already challenged the constitutionality of the advertising rules in federal district court, alleging that the rules infringe on their First Amendment rights.  The lawsuit was filed by a personal injury firm, Alexander & Catalano, and Public Citizen Inc., a Ralph Nader-founded advocacy group.  As Law.com reports today, Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr., recently declined to dismiss the lawsuit and has set a trial date of June 18. 

Call for Papers on Cyberbullying

The Yale Law Journal Pocket Part just sent a message to online subscribers, requesting "essays and commentaries on the role of law, policy, and extralegal tactics in regulating instances of cyber bullying, including defamatory 'Google bombing.' How, if at all, should regulatory schemes address providers of information who make no endorsement of the information's content?"

If you're interested, the deadline for submissions is Friday, May 4, 2007. For more information, read the YLJ Pocket Part Call for Papers.

Better Boolean Searching on Lexis and Westlaw - Sample Training Documents

Lately ZiefBrief has been participating in a group of academic and law firm librarians who are looking for ways to make sure that summer associates and new law school graduates have the real-world legal research skills they'll need.

One of the group's observations is how little training most law students get in the techniques of Boolean searching — the picking of search terms; the effective use of the AND & OR operators; the role of proximity connectors such as w/15 or w/p.

Here at USF all of our first-years have a mandatory Lexis/Westlaw training session that stresses how to build an effective Boolean (Terms and Connectors) search. Our slides, outlines, worksheets, and student handout might be useful to other librarians who want to beef up their Boolean training (or to students who want to sharpen their skills). So, herewith …

• Instructor's Slides (shorter version) (PowerPoint document; 1.4 MB)
• Instructor's Slides (longer version) (PowerPoint document; 2.2 MB)
• Instructor's Outline (PDF; 15 pages) (This is geared to the shorter set of slides)
• Handout for Students (PDF; 4 pages) (we print this on one folded 11 x 17 sheet)
• Blank Search Worksheet - Front (PDF; 1 page)
• Blank Search Worksheet - Back (PDF; 1 page) (We encourage the students to use this worksheet when drafting searches for research until they are confident in their skills)
• Search Worksheet with Training Hypothetical (PDF; 1 page)

Law Students Unite!

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog is reporting today on an interesting phenomenon -- a group of law students at Stanford and other top law schools have formed an organization, Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession (LSBBLP -- not sure how they're going to get a snappy acronym out of this name!), which advocates for a more humane working environment in large law firms.  Not content to simply start a blog on this topic, the group recently sent out a letter to the AmLaw 100 law firms, asking them to commit to the following core principles:

• Making concrete steps towards a transactional billing system;
• Reducing maximum billable hour expectations for partnership;
• Implementing balanced hours policies that work;
• Making work expectations clear.

The letter makes it clear that LSBBLP will publicize which law firms have committed to the above principles just before on-campus interviewing starts this fall.  Good luck to the brave students working on this venture!