Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 29-08-2011
Tip of the OOTJ hat to Billie Jo Kauffman who sent along a link to an article from USA Today reporting on a study for American Library Association (ALA). The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project was a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses. Anthropologists looked at both the students and the librarians at these campuses, focusing, as far as I can tell, on undergraduates. The studies will be published this fall by the ALA under the title, “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know,” and apparently, what we now know is pretty darned sobering. (see presentations, powerpoints, papers, and posters from many conferences including ALA 2010 link here) The research shows that although “digital natives” may have grown up online, they are not widely digitally literate.
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Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 26-08-2011
Archivists are doing wonderful things these days. For instance, they have made available to the whole world, for FREE Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 23-08-2011
The Uni Project is a “portable reading room” designed for urban spaces by a design firm in Boston for musician, philanthropist and former NY Legal Aid Society attorney Sam Davol. The first Uni Project is scheduled for New York this fall. Davol’s idea is to improve on the venerable bookmobile by adding features like furniture that encourages community members to hangout and enjoy the books and each other. The module is made of boxes that hold books enclosed by pieces that come apart to re-configure into tables, benches,and chairs. Thus, you have all the portability and protection for the books that you have with a bookmobile, plus you have added a community-building aspect, if Davol’s idea is correct. It is aimed to improve literacy, but can also be used for open air meetings, arts and crafts, classes, and more. Boston Street Lab is the 502(c)(3) organization which the Davols have created to fund and staff the Uni Project, though it also ran a storefront library in Chinatown in Boston, for less than a year, and several other initiatives.
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Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 22-08-2011
Last Thursday, the Turner Classic Movies cable channel devoted all of its programming to the films of Jean Gabin, perhaps France’s greatest film actor. Jean Gabin starred in nearly one hundred films, including The Grand Illusion, La Bete Humaine, and Pepe Le Moko, the film that made him an international star. Some have called him the American Spencer Tracy, but that doesn’t do Jean Gabin justice, for he was a much better actor than Spencer Tracy. Not to mention the fact that he had more sex appeal in his little finger than Spencer Tracy did in his whole body! Jean Gabin is also beloved in France as a war hero; he was a member of the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle, and received the Croix de Guerre. Jean Gabin played a variety of characters during his long career, but perhaps his greatest portrayals were of world-weary outsiders with a streak of fatalism. What does Jean Gabin have to do with librarianship, you ask?
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Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 17-08-2011
The National Law Journal reports that 2 law schools have been sued in separate actions alleging fraud in their reporting on post-graduate job placement statistics. The article by Jenna Green notes in both suits the plaintiffs are represented by the same firm, Kurzon Strauss in New York.
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Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 14-08-2011
According to The National Law Journal, the ABA’s new requirements that law schools report more details about graduate employment, which seemed like such a step toward honesty and transparency, has caused a turf battle with the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). (I believe this is Standard 509 (a), Basic Consumer Information, to be published in a fair and accurate manner reflective of actual practice. And an Interpretation 509(1), (8)”placement rates and bar passage data”).
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Posted by Admin | Posted in Legal Justice | Posted on 10-08-2011
In a move to save money, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has decided to destroy “millions of judicial case records that have been stored in the Federal Records Centers of the National Archives for decades, says an article in the Center for Public Integrity’s i Watch News.
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