Biddleblog

Dear Online Search Expert,

I am an experienced searcher. I use Google all the time, but I am new to Westlaw. When I searched the Westlaw databases ALLSTATES, ALLCASES with the terms "power of attorney" and "conservator," it turned up the maximum of ten thousand documents. I modified it as follows: "power of attorney," "conservator," "new york," and I still got the same maximum of ten thousand documents. Something went wrong. What happened?

Frustrated 2L
 

Dear Frustrated 2L,

There are a couple of factors at work here.  Let's explore them.

First, we need to look at which databases you selected. If you had chosen a more relevant database, you would have received fewer, but more appropriate results. In short, selecting the right jurisdictional databases limits your results to relevant authority.

Similarly in legal practice, selecting a multi-jurisdictional database, whether in Lexis or Westlaw, will cost more than selecting a limited jurisdictional database. Larger more all encompassing databases are more expensive than smaller more relevant jurisdictional databases, resulting in less cost and better results. This will allow you to spend more time with analysis and writing.

Second, your search query can be improved. Adding terms narrows a Google search, but adding additional terms does the opposite with Westlaw. This has to do with Boolean connectors, such as AND or OR. Where there is no express connector, Google implies an AND between terms. On the other hand, Westlaw implies an OR, increasing the number of results.

Westlaw limits search results at 10,000 to reduce unnecessary strain on its servers, caused by poorly constructed search queries. In your case, adding "new york" would have increased the actual number of results from the hundreds of thousands into the millions.

What would I have done? I would have chosen a New York cases database like NY-CS. I would also have wanted "power of attorney" and "conservator" to be near each other in the discussion.   To do this, I would have run a search with a proximity connector (such as "/p" to search terms within the same paragraph) instead of an implied OR. Therefore, one search would be: "power of attorney" /p conservator. Using this search, results in 24 manageable cases.

Thanks for asking,
Online Search Expert

Looking for the electronic version of a journal?  Looking for the print version?  Biddle Law Library can help.  Just click on the link to the Library’s A-Z journal list below, and you are on your way.

http://kv9zt7xr9l.search.serialssolutions.com/

Once on the A-Z list page, choose a search from the dropdown menu, or feel free to browse.  To browse, click on the letter corresponding with the first letter of the journal title.

Biddle’s A-Z list displays search results in an easy-to-read manner.  Immediately under the title, a link to library print holdings displays first.  This will help you determine what physical journal issues the library has and where they are located.   If Biddle offers access to the full-text electronic version of the same title, that information, along with a link to the e-version, will appear below the print holdings.  If you don't locate a journal in Biddle's A-Z list, be sure to check the Penn Library's E-Journals link.  This will take you to the University's larger journal holdings.

Don’t forget to bookmark the A-Z list link!  It will definitely come in handy and will save you time.

NEW BOOK AT BIDDLE: Justifying war? : from humanitarian intervention to counterterrorism / edited by Gilles Andréani and Pierre Hassner ; translated by John Hulsey ... [et al.]. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.  JZ6392 .J88 2008

Although animal law is often spoken of humorously, more and more folks are talking about this area of law. Penn Law offers an upper level seminar on Animal Law, and Penn Law students publish the Journal of Animal Law and Ethics.  Penn Law also has an Animal Law Project.  Many political philosophers like Peter Singer from Princeton University and Martha Nussbaum from the University of Chicago Law School have written extensively on Animal Rights, an important area of investigation for those interested in animals and the law.  So if you are looking for a thought-provoking topic for a comment or seminar paper, or wish to explore the new practice of animal law, there is a wealth of resources available to you.

There are also a number of blogs on animal law.  The ABA hosts one.  There is an interesting animal law blog focusing on Pennsylvania law.   A favorite of mine is the Pet Trust Law Blog. All of these resources can give you inspiration for unique research topics, as well as suggest new areas of legal practice for you to explore.

When law school journal cite checkers request an electronic document, they often ask, “Is it in PDF (Adobe portable document format)?”   The goal of course is to find an original and authoritative document, and not an altered and less reliable document.    When it comes to federal government documents such as statutes and regulations, journal students likewise ask, “Is it in PDF?”  This is a fair question since electronic government documents may be modified after release by the government.

While playing housekeeper in the archives vault recently, I came across an unprocessed collection of essays written by former Penn Law students.  What I found particularly interesting about this collection is that most of the essays date back to the late 1800s, in the time before typewriters -- let alone spell check, computers, and EndNote -- were widely used.  Word processors were human.

Browsing through these essays, which number about 125, I was struck by the manner in which they were forged.  I can't remember the last time I drafted an essay in longhand, can you?  And the penmanship would make this chicken-scratch expert blush.  If I can barely draft a shopping list that doesn't resemble a tablet of mystical runes, will the next generation even know how to put pen to paper?

At times students really went all out on the design of the title pages, often using calligraphy, colored inks, and ribbon.  Here's a representative example:

And you think plugging in Bluebook citations is a struggle?  Try writing out footnotes by hand.

The handwriting looks the same, only smaller!  Cute.

Truth be told, processing this collection was pretty complicated.  These essays were kept together by a range of fasteners: staples, paperclips, string, and scotch tape.  Most of these had to be removed because, over time, these fasteners can get rusty or toxic and damage what's really important, the essays.  Archivists of the future, I apologize for ever using brads.

Beyond the anachronistic nature of the technology, I was also intrigued by the variety of topics covered in these essays.  As far as I can tell, none of the authors went on to fame and fortune.  (Although, there does appear to be material from locally famous attorneys, such as George Biddle, namesake of the Biddle Law Library.)  This collection provides a fascinating window into what Penn Law students were thinking and writing about long ago.

If you're interested in taking a look at these essays, a sampling of them is currently on display in the Biddle Law Library's reference area.  For additional information about the collection, check out the finding aid, e-mail me or stop by the Archives.

A couple of Saturdays ago, while most of you were sleeping, relaxing, or mowing the lawn, I was at work.  Well, sort of: I attended a symposium at Georgetown Law Center called "The Future of Today's Legal Scholarship."  Despite the seemingly broad title, the bulk of the day centered on one particular resource that is emerging as an important way for people to exchange, discuss, and comment on aspects of the law: the legal blog.  The symposium was organized in honor of Bob Oakley, former Director of Georgetown's law library, who passed away in 2007. 

The keynote address was delivered by Bob Berring, a well known figure in the both the legal and library fields.  While Berring admitted that he had to teach himself to be blog literate, he expressed a broad understanding of the nature of legal scholarship and research and the extent to which the blogosphere is shaping these fields.  Berring argued that, while it is unlikely that the law review will be supplanted by a new form of legal resource anytime soon, legal blogs have their role in advancing legal thought.

Berring's comments set the tone for the day.  There were refreshingly few--if any--broad-brush criticisms of the blogosophere as a debased form of communication.  If anything, most of the speakers pointed out the distinct advantages of blogs when compared to other publishing platforms: namely, the immediate topicality of the posts, the casual tone, and the ability to receive feedback from readers.  These qualities were echoed by Chris Borgen, Associate Professor of Law at St. Johns and founder of the popular law blog Opinio Juris.  Borgen outlined what he believed blogs did well and what they did not do well.  In the latter category, Borgen argued that, by and large, you don't see a legal subject treated with the same depth in a blog post as you do in a journal article.  On the other hand, Borgen argued that a major exception to this characterization was the way many law blogs have handled current controversies over civil liberties, torture, and Guantanamo Bay.  In this scenario, these blogs were better than mainstream news articles, Borgen argued, because you had legal experts (lawyers, professors, etc.) writing the posts.  "They already knew what the Geneva Conventions were," Borgen said of these legal bloggers.

Underscoring the increasing importance of blogs in judicial contexts, Lee Peoples, Law Library Director at Oklahoma City University School of Law, presented recent research he had conducted on instances where blogs had been cited in judicial opinions.  Peoples' research suggests that blogs are increasingly taken more seriously as reliable locations for legal theory, but that they still have not been standardized enough to facilitate wholesale adoption.  Furthermore, Peoples raised a point that other panelists returned to during the day: if a blog or blog post is cited, how can we be sure that this resource will be preserved in perpetuity?

Tom Goldstein, founding of the very popular SCOTUSblog, claimed that bloggers have totally different priorities than librarians and preservationists: bloggers think about the information itself, not the long-term preservation of that information.  However, later in the day Ph.D. student Caroyln Hank presented findings in a study that gauged bloggers' perspectives on digital preservation that would suggest otherwise.  Hank found that most bloggers actually do think about the long-term access to their blogs, but that, by and large, responsibiltiy for preservation should lie with the individual blogger and not a library or archives.

Continuing on the preservation theme, the symposium organizers were wise to include representatives describing two different approaches to digital preservation.  Linda Freuh, a Project Manager from the Internet Archive, discussed that organization's approach: a centralized model, whereby the Internet Archive harvests blogs and stores them on their own servers.  Stanford's LOCKSS model, however, takes a different strategy, advocating a distributed approach to preservation, whereby multiple institutions preserve the same digital resource.  LOCKSS stands for "Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe."

The entire list of speakers can be found here.

Once the panel discussions ended, attendees broke up into working groups roughly divided along themes raised throughout the day--selection, preservation, research, and so forth--and brainstormed about ways of tackling these issues.  Lots of great ideas were bandied about, but there was a common thread among all of them: when selecting which blogs to preserve and decided how to preserve them, libraries are encouraged to form partnerships with peer institutions rather than "going it alone."

In the end, the "Future of Today's Legal Scholarship" symposium provided a lively forum for reflection about the rise of the law blogosphere, its impact on legal research, and the major challenges facing law libraries as they attempt to provide access to these and other digital resources in perpetuity.  I consider the day an unqualified success.  Bob Oakley would have been proud.

The Biddleblog is going on hiatus for the summer.  See you in September!

The Archives recently received a series of photographs of Penn Law School and related activities in the 1960s.  One particular photograph that caught my eye shows the Law School as it looked from Chestnut Street over 40 years ago.

What you're looking at is Silverman (then Lewis) Hall, the oldest building in the Penn Law complex.  You can click on the image for more detail.

What first struck me about the image was the lack of any structures opposite the Law School on the Chestnut Street side.  The convergence of Starbuck's, abstract Liberty Bell forms, and sophisticated apartments that we now take for granted was nowhere to be found.  In its place was a parking lot and a Texaco station.  I also love the old cars, many of which were driven by faculty and staff of the Law School, no doubt.  I think we're overdue for renaissance in wood paneled station wagons and two-tone convertibles, don't you?

If you look to the right of Silverman, in the space that is now occupied by Tanenbaum lies a set of tennis courts.  On the other side of the courts is a row of dormitories that Ron Day, Head of Reference here at Biddle and our de facto historian, told me were modest, "YMCA-style" rooms that One-Ls lived in.

As any member of the Penn Law community can attest, the Law School is no stranger to capital projects.  It seems like every summer we're here, the school undergoes some kind of transformative capital project.  Change is good.

However, as anyone familiar with the Law School can tell from this image, Silverman Hall has remained relatively unaltered on the outside since the 1960s.  And upon the dedication of this building in way back in 1900, the Law School's Record (yearbook) called the structure “the most completely beautiful and beautifully complete building ever designed for the sole purpose of housing a school of law.”  Hey, we're admittedly biased, but that sounds about right. 

(Lewis Hall, c. 1901. Click for more detail. I think those are trolley tracks!)

Hope you've enjoyed this Kodachrome trip down memory lane.

Many of you in the Penn Law community might have taken a class from Professor Geoffrey C. Hazard on civil procedure.  Still others might know Professor Hazard as one of the foremost experts on legal ethics in the United States. 

However, Professor Hazard was also Director of the American Law Institute from the mid-1980s through the 1990s.  During his tenure, the Institute participated in a number of notable projects, including restatements of the law of property, foreign relations law, and the law governing lawyers; revisions and enhancements to the Uniform Commercial Code; and the Transnational Civil Procedure project, a joint initative with UNIDROIT.

I have spent the better part of this year organizing Professor Hazard's files in the American Law Institute Archives and am now opening them to the wider research community.  Professor Hazard's papers constitute one of the largest collections in the Archives.  He created and collected prodigiously: the collection comprises 47 linear feet of correspondence, drafts, reports, and other papers on a variety of projects.  Notably, the Geoffrey C. Hazard Director's Files include Professor Hazard's work on behalf of the American Law Institute to write rules and procedures which governed lawyers in the ethical practice of the law. 

If you are interested in learning more about Geoffrey Hazard's ALI-related work, I encourage you to browse our online finding aid or contact the Archives.  You can also learn more about the American Law Institute Archives by visiting the department's home page.