Did you ever wonder what happened to your travel coffee mug? Did you leave your phone charger behind somewhere? Are you missing a hat? Stop by the Circulation Desk and look through our Lost and Found items to see if there is anything that may belong to you. These items will be on display until May 16th and what is not claimed will be donated to a charitable organization.
Group Study Rooms are available for groups of 2 or more law students for one 2-hour study session per group per day. To reserve a room in advance, stop by the Circ Desk and get signed up in our book. Don't have time to stop by? You can also reserve a room by calling the Circ Desk at 422-6679, or shoot us an email at ziefcirc at usfca.edu. Include a 2nd or 3rd choice in case your preferred day and starting time is unavailable. If you want a phone call confirming the reservation, send us your number and we'll get back to you.
Animals In Translation : Using The Mysteries Of
Autism To Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin and Catherine
Johnson. Temple Grandin is autistic and is probably best known
for her research and expertise in redesigning slaughterhouses in a more humane manner. The book
discusses how animals think visually and not in words like many people do. They also describe how animals are similar to people with autism because both are more in
tune with the tiny details of the world.
A Man Without Words is by Susan Schaller who is an ASL (American Sign Language)
interpreter. While living in Los Angeles, she met a man who was born
deaf and raised without ever learning a language. He didn't know that
language existed; that, for instance, a cat didn't have to be present
in the room but you could still "talk" about a cat or cats in general.
He also didn't know math, geography or about anything that he had never
personally experienced. The author was not a teacher but she worked
with him almost daily and finally was able to reach through to him. This is the story of their work together.
Beginning with last year's National Library Week, we've started a tradition of posting some of the librarians' favorite reads. Here are a few of mine from the first part of this year:
Those of you who venture to the far side of the reference desk to our "leisure reading" area will notice a new addition next to the newspaper rack. A magazine wall rack has been installed, containing current issues of magazines/newsletters published by the various special interest sections of the American Bar Association. (Click below for a list of titles.) Some of these publications are of general interest, but many are targeted toward attorneys who practice in specific areas, such as IP, antitrust, environmental law, labor law, etc. They are a good way to keep current with developments in the law and also can be a great source if you are looking for paper or law review topics. Download aba_leisure_reading_list.doc
We hope you will find these periodicals useful and entertaining. Please feel free to read the materials in the library, but we ask that you return all issues to the rack or to the Reference or Circulation Desks. Thank you.
The American Library Association has announced the celebration of Banned Books Week on September 29–October 6, 2007.
We at ZiefBrief urge all our loyal readers to go out and read a banned book. As the ALA says: "Free People Read Freely®"
If you aren't sure what to read you might consider one of the the most frequently challenged books of 2006. Thankfully, many of the titles that are challenged stay on the shelves, but in many cases a simple challenge is sufficient to get a book yanked off the shelves forever. The most challenged book of the year is And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. It tells the story of two male penguins who raise an egg from a mixed-sex penguin couple. Reviled as being "anti-family" the story was also recognized as an American Library Association Notable Children's Book as well as receiving numerous other awards (some editorial reviews are collected at Amazon.com at this link).
The newest edition of the Z-Flyer, the newsletter of the Dorraine Zief Law Library is available now. Featured articles include reports from librarians Lee Ryan and Shannon Burchard on their activities at the American Association of Law Libraries summer conference in New Orleans as well as a autobiographical essay from Jill Fukunaga, the newest member of the law library staff.
Click on this link to open a copy of the newsletter (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or similar software that can open a .pdf file)
Habitat? New Orleans? As you might guess, the link to law libraries is that ZiefBrief is in the Big Easy for the annual meeting of the American Associations Law Libraries. Yesterday we slathered on the sunscreen and, with about 75 other librarians, trekked out to the upper Ninth Ward to work on the Musicians' Village, a New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity project supported by Ellis and Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. Once it's completed, the Village will house 70 families and feature the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, complete with a recording studio and space for performances and classes. Habitat also plans to build another 150 homes in the Ninth Ward (and would gladly accept donations to make it all possible).
ZiefBrief and our colleagues muscled framed walls about, painted almost completed houses, and put in flooring systems on one that was just starting out. And on the way to and from the site we got a good look at the blocks after blocks of devastation still remaining. No video or photos could have prepared us for what we saw — and this in a part of the city that was not as badly hit as the lower Ninth Ward. Even now we are still struggling to wrap our brain around it. Along with the devastation, there were some (sadly sparse, it seemed to us) signs of hope: the restored home; the house with the trailer out front and work being done. Habitat's 220 homes will be a big boost to the Ninth Ward, but so much is still needed….
[Update, 7.15.07] For another report on AALL's day in the upper Ninth, see Mary Whisner's post My Day as a Laborer on AALL's Second Line Blog.
[Update, 7.16.07] Thanks to ZiefBrief's Nola colleague Brian Huddleston, photos of the day are now available. See: Law Librarians at New Orleans Habitat for Humanity.
[Update, 7.27.07] The first articles in the New York Times series Patchwork City ("on the fragmentary recovery of New Orleans and its people, nearly two years after the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina') coincided nicely with ZiefBrief's visit to the Big Easy.
The series so far:
We here at ZiefBrief never pass up a chance to toot our own horn and when the Recorder called about including us in a feature article about blogs in the legal workplace we jumped at the chance. Well, the article, A Blog of Their Own, is out and available at the CAL LAW web site. The article discusses ZB's humble origin as an alternative to a widely ignored print newsletter that the library produced. It also brings up the ZiefBrief's moment in the sun when a 10 minute call to the Archivist at the Yale University Library helped settle the burning question of whether Anna Nicole Smith's first husband taught wills and trust while a professor at Yale Law School. Thanks to article author Pam Smith for getting the word out about our efforts.
Jill Fukunaga will be joining the staff at the Zief Law Library in June as our new Collection Development Librarian. As Collection Development Librarian she will oversee the process by which new materials are evaluated and selected for the library collection as well as working at the reference desk and teaching legal research techniques. Currently she finishing up a stint as a Reference Librarian & Lecturer in Law at the UCLA School of Law. What makes Jill noteworthy (or should that be "blogworthy"?) is that she has been profiled in the Law Librarian Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network.
To find out more about Jill and the road that brought her to the Zief Law Library check out the Spotlight on Law Librarians.
Regular readers of ZiefBrief will remember that librarian Amy Wright was singled out for a similar Spotlight back in November of '06.
