Random Thoughts

Bad Bluebook!

Many law students get frustrated with the Bluebook, especially if they're on a journal and need to use the Bluebook frequently. Here's a problem (two problems) that came up last semester (yes, this post is quite delayed) when I was helping a student with a citation during the most recent spurt of cite-checking by the 2Ls here. 

Problem #1: Popular title vs. AACR2

This happens with a lot of sources. Basically, neither the popular title of a work nor the title given in a citation will be the title listed in the library's catalog. This is because the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2) require the official title of a book in a library record to be the title on the title page of the book.

So the Bluebook says the title of the work is Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Decisions and Judgments, while the library catalog says the title is Serie C -- Resoluciones y Sentencias.

 

Problem #2: Harvard Law Review

The Bluebook is largely the creation of the Harvard Law Review, and I think that the Harvard editors have made erroneous assumptions about citation formats based on how things are done at the Harvard Law Library.

 

Here's how the Bluebook (rule 21.5.4) says to cite the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Decisions and Judgments: "The citation should include the case name; the volume number; the series; the case number; the page number, if needed; and the date." The following example is provided:

 

Durand & Ugarte Case, 2001 Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 68, at 118 (Aug. 16, 2000)

 

But when I checked the catalogs of other libraries, I saw that Harvard and Stanford had bound their copies in different ways, while Yale hadn't bound its at all. So I don't think that this is an actual case reporter (like the National Reporters) with actual volumes. Instead, it looks to me as if the court sends out pamphlets (slip opinions) of the judgments that some libraries have bound together.

 

NYU's Journal of International Law and Politics' Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citations has the following example for this title:

 

I/A Court H.R., Velasquez-Rodriguez case, Judgment of July 29, 1986, Series C, No. 4, para. 167.

Note that this format has neither volume numbers nor page numbers.

So my guess is that the Harvard Law Review editors created a citation form for this title that reflects the physical appearance of this work at the Harvard Law Library. But that citation form does not accurately reflect how the court actually publishes its opinions.

B.C. (Before Consolidation)

I was going through some back issues of Legal Reference Services Quarterly and found that they had published a "Symposium of Law Publishers" in 1991 (vol. 11, no. 3/4). Here are the companies represented in that symposium (and note that these companies were all independent at that time):

• Lawyers Cooperative Publishing
• West Publishing Company
• Anderson Publishing Co.
• Banks-Baldwin Law Publishing Company
• Butterworth Legal Publishers
• Commerce Clearing House
• Fred B. Rothman & Co.
• Law Library Microform Consortium
• Matthew Bender & Company
• Maxwell MacMillan
• Mead Data Central, Inc.
• The Michie Company
• Oceana Publications
• Shepard's/McGraw-Hill

They don't have this?

One of the fun things about doing interlibrary loan work is that you get to see what other schools are requesting from us. (Actually, that's the most fun part of working on lending requests--the copying, the faxing, the scanning, and the boxing up and shipping of materials, all involve different levels of tediousness.) For the past few months, we've gotten several requests from one library for copies of country entries from Modern Legal Systems Cyclopedia. Aside from these requests really being too much to copy without raising rather troubling copyright concerns (if you've never seen this work, many of the "chapters" would really qualify as books in their own right), one has to wonder why an academic law library doesn't have this set. More specifically, one wonders why an academic law library at a Tier 1 law school doesn't have this. I mean, it's not like we're talking about a CBA law school here, but one at a major university (it's certainly not in the bottom part of Tier 1). You'd think it would be a basic reference work for a large research collection. Bizarre.

Damn students

The law students all came back last week. And now I've come down with a cold. Coincidence? Hell no! I should have been taking Airborne last week as a preventive measure. I should do that at the end of September just before the undergraduates come back.

When carpeters re-wire

I've told a bunch of people about this, but forgot to post the actual photo. Until now.

Suppose you need to move a bank of study carrels in order to replace the carpet underneath them. Further suppose these carrels all have network ports. You could:

a) tell library staff that you can't move the carrels because the network cables haven't been disconnected by campus I.T. (this is a bright-line at my university--anything related to or connected with the campus network is handled by campus I.T., even if the school or department has its own tech support), or

b) pull out a pair of wire-cutters. And not tell anyone.

Here's what option b looks like:

On the plus side, we do like the new library carpet.

I am not prepared

Here's a bit of the practical aspect of working in an academic law library. The 1Ls showed up today for their first bit of orientation. We start giving little talks about the library to them tomorrow. There's plenty of things I have to do, but here's a couple photos of my project this afternoon: assembling orientation packets:

The handouts we'll be giving them (a library crossword plus a schedule of Lexis/Westlaw training sessions) plus a schedule of the orientation sessions and our talking points.

The CALI CDs they'll receive plus library swag (flash drives with copies of the library's research guides)--one drive per student, plus one for each instructor, and one for myself.

Want happy librarians?

The secret to a happy library staff is quite simple: sugar. Yes, librarians need food. And when they're jonesing at the end of the day, there's only one thing that will keep people moving: the contents of a well-stocked candy drawer. People may be bored at 4 p.m., but at least they'll be bored while buzzed.

Here's our candy drawer last week:

And here's our candy drawer this week.

If the sugar fairy doesn't show up soon, the staff may riot. Of course, the sugar fairy may bring something like pretzels or Hershey's Mini-White Chocolates with Pralines. Don't get on the sugar fairy's bad side.

On returning to work

I normally don't check my work e-mail whenever I'm on vacation. Sometimes I wonder if I should. Especially on those occasions when I get to work only to find a "CLOSED" sign on the front door. Or after I go in through a staff entrance and see sights like this:

WTF??? Apparently the library's carpet-replacement project morphed into an asbestos-abatement project while I was away.

Yes, when the workers ripped up the old carpet, they managed to uncover asbestos. Now, one might wonder why they didn't simply resort to a cheap contractor's trick like painting over it or, hey, laying carpet on top of it, but that's apparently what happened the last time, so this time they had to be all official about it.

Later in the afternoon, a trapped patron managed to escape:

Portlandia, part 2

Ooops! A danger of taking vacation time is that you forget all about the draft post you've got sitting around. More random (but late) thoughts about the AALL convention:

1) Students at Penn probably think that Merle Slyhoff is a fascist dictator of interlibrary loans, but I want to be her. Seriously, I am in awe. She wields true power.

2) Hi, it's good to meet you. Yes, I probably do look familiar to you. I interviewed at your school last year. Please don't tell me that being rejected is a sign of recognition. I really don't feel honored. I'll assume that you wouldn't be saying this if you were sober.

3) I didn't get a photo of this, but Leslie did: the awesome Dyson Airblade. The convention center seemed to have one in each of the restrooms that were not on the main floor. They really do get your hands almost-dry in 15 seconds.

4) Having the convention center and the main conference hotels on the opposite sides of the river from each other worked a whole lot better than I thought it would. In the abstract it sounded like a fiasco waiting to happen.

Portlandia!

Ahem . . . it looks like it's been a while since my last post here. I'm now back from the AALL conference in Portland. I'd never been to Portland before, but didn't really get the chance to play tourist since I was there only for the conference. Herewith, some miscellaneous observations on Portland:

1) I've never seen this in a hotel room before:

No, not a TV! Take a look at the top of the TV:

Yes, a tip tray! (Or whatever restaurants call it.) I'll guess that the official conference hotels didn't have these in their rooms.

2) Downtown Portland, contrary to what I'd been told, did not remind me of downtown San Francisco. It did remind me of downtown Seattle. The part of San Francisco that downtown Portland did remind me of was the Tenderloin (both for building size/architecture and sketchiness of the part where the MAX train runs along the west side of the river).

3) The homeless in downtown Portland seemed more visible than in downtown San Francisco (this may have been due to the hot weather during my time in Portland). Portland probably has fewer year-round homeless than San Francisco due to its weather.

4) No, I don't agree that Portland's street grid looks as if it could have been designed by a librarian (who told me that?). The ultimate street grid is that of the Mormon cities in Utah (like Salt Lake City)--that grid system is truly inspired.