Biddleblog

Due to an increased demand for library study rooms, an online reservation system is now available. This system is designed to make the study rooms available to as many law students as possible.

To reserve a room, go to the Goat and click on "Reserving Study Rooms" under "Library."

The Biddleblog is suspending regular posting for the summer. See you in the fall!

Starting this Sunday, the Penn Cinema Studies Department is honoring one of the most celebrated and influential filmmakers of this era: Frederick Wiseman. 

Originally trained as a lawyer, Wiseman left began shooting documentaries in the early 1960s.  Wiseman's directorial style, which includes no apparent interaction with the director and no interviews, is often considered part of the "direct cinema" or "cinema verite" movement, which aims to provide a more intimate, confessional relationship between subject and audience.  Wiseman was one of the first American filmmakers to employ this style, along with fellow documentarians the Maysles Brothers.

In addition to his considerable gifts to technique, Wiseman is also acclaimed for his subject matter.  In movies like High School (showing Sunday night at the Bridge), Juvenile Court, and Welfare, Wiseman analyzes core institutions of American society and their effects on the individual.  His most heralded film, 1967's Titicut Follies is widely regarded as a searing expose of the treatment of patients in the State Prison for the Criminally Insance in Bridgewater, Massachussetts.  Controversial from the day it was released, Tititcut Follies was actually not widely seen until 1992, because Massachussetts courts had determined that the film was an invasion of the inmates' privacy.

The two day-event will include a viewing of Wiseman's High School and Titicut Follies, as well as a public interview with the filmmaker on Monday night.  I was glad to see posters for the event displayed around the law school, because Wiseman's work would resonate with anyone interested in public policy, social justice, and the law.  In many ways, the good work coming out of Professor Austin's Visual Legal Advocacy program is indebted to the documentaries Wiseman put almost 40 years before.  I have only seen a part of one of his documentaries--Juvenile Court, which assumes a fly-on-the-wall perspective on juvenile justice in 1970s  Memphis--so I am eager to learn more about the important director.  If you have the time, I encourage you to attend at least one of the movies, if not the conversation.

Details about the event can be found here.  You can find out more about Wiseman here.

Penn Law School is fortunate to be a beta site for Bloomberg Law (BLAW), a division of Bloomberg, a major provider of business and financial information.

Biddle Law Library at the University of Pennsylvania Law School will host the first MidAtlantic Academic Law Libraries Symposium on March 13, 2009. The symposium is being sponsored by  Bloomberg, Law Division.

The morning session will feature John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School and a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society will deliver the keynote speech. 

In the afternoon Jordon Steele, Archivist at Biddle,  will facilitate a panel on blogs in academic law libraries and Ed Greenlee, Associate Director for  Public Services at Biddle will moderate a panel on the role of Facebook in academic law libraries.

A few of the institutions attending include the law libraries at Duke, Fordham, Howard, Cardozo,
Hofstra, University of Maryland and University of Pittsburgh.

Ed Greenlee and Tim Von Dulm, Reference Librarian, are the co-organizers of the symposium.

For more information,  please email Ed Greenlee at egreenle@law.upenn.edu. 

 

It has now been ten months since the "Great Flood" in the Lewis Collection in Silverman Hall.  In January's blog I wrote how the flood began and the immediate steps that were taken to save the collection.

Since mid-November the books have been returning in batches of 100-130 boxes every Tuesday and Thursday. The books are usually returned in black plastic bags inside cardboard boxes.   The Access Services staff has been taking time from their usual tasks to unbox and reshelve the books as they return.  Since the books were not loaded into the boxes in perfect order, it takes a long time to reshelve the books.  If time permitted, the perfect solution would be to hire library temp agency, such as ProLibra, to pack and unpack the books. 

Upon their return we found that some books were a bit wider from the water even after freeze drying.  If the books fit tightly on the shelf before the flood, they usually would not fit back on the same shelf when returned.  We decided that this would be a valid reason to weed the collection, which involves pulling out duplicate copies and material damaged beyond use.  Ten months later, we have about 3/4ths of the collection either back on the shelves or in boxes located near the shelves where they belong.

Working space is a problem in the project.  The 130 boxes of books that return each time take up a lot of space and we prefer the vendor drop the boxes close to where we need to shelve them.  The aisles are narrow and we constantly need to work around the full boxes but also need space to leave the boxes as we empty them.  You can get an idea of the cramped working conditions by looking at a couple of pictures I recently took.

In just the first month that the books were out being treated, we had requests for 50 items by our faculty.  These requests had to be filled by borrowing books from Penn's main library,  Van Pelt, or by submitting a request through Inter Library Loan.

I'm optimistic that we will have the whole collection back in order and accessible by the end of the summer.

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

Jennifer Huck is the Systems and Emerging Technologies Librarian at Biddle.  She supports the online library system and leverages new and existing technologies in support of library services. She recently obtained her Masters of Library and Information Science (’11) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also earned a MS in Sociology (’06).  Additionally, she earned a BA from Macalester College ('04) in St. Paul.  Jenn enjoys yoga, knitting, and reading, especially popular science, food writing, and Scandinavian crime fiction.

Leslie O'Neill is the Archivist at Biddle. She received her Masters in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, and her Bachelors in Fine Art Photography from Temple University's Tyler School of Art. Leslie previously worked in the Philadelphia area in the archives of institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Mutter Museum, the City Archives of Philadelphia, and Bryn Mawr College. When she is not rummaging through record cartons, Leslie works in animal rescue and can found both fostering and photographing homeless animals. She also enjoys traveling, and counts Argentina and Greece as two of her favorite destinations.

 

By Ellen Qualey, Reference Librarian

The Biddle Law Library will offer a wide variety of legal research training opportunities throughout the spring semester. Prepare for your summer or professional work experience by attending trainings specific to your jurisdiction or professional interest!

Drop-ins are welcomed, although we encourage you to register online. Feel free to contact individual instructors with questions.

All trainings are on Wednesday afternoons from 12 - 1 pm in room T-320.

• Get Published! January 18
• Basic Internet Searching Other than Lexis and Westlaw, January 25
• Federal Legislative History, February 1
• Federal Statutory Legal Research, February 8
• Administrative Law: Federal Rules and Regulations, February 15
• Using HeinOnline, Beyond PDFs of Journal Articles, February 22
• Federal Tax Research, February 29
• New York Legal Research, March 14
• California Legal Research, March 21
• Pennsylvania Legal Research, March 28
• Westlaw and Lexis Search Strategies, April 4
• Cost-Effective Legal Research, April 11

 For workshop descriptions, training materials and to register online visit Biddle's Legal Research Training page.

 

As many law students know, CALI (The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction) is a non-profit which offers over 850 interactive tutorials in approximately thirty-two law school subject areas. Did you know, however, that CALI can now help you bridge the gap between law school and legal practice, by focusing on how technology is impacting the field?

Beginning on February 10th, CALI will offer a free nine-week webcast program on Digital Law Practice. Each week, a different speaker will discuss topics such as "Social Media for Lawyers," "The  Virtual Law Office," and "Free Legal Research Tools." The thirty minute presentation will be followed by a question and answer period, and the class will include an interactive homework assignment. If you are wondering how you can possibly fit in another course, relax, there are no midterms, finals or papers!

To sign-up for the course, which does not require a user account, visit the CALI registration page.  To stay current on future webinars, you may register for the CALI Webinar Mailing List. 

If you are new to CALI, you may create a user account, which requires an authorization code, available at the reference desk.