Inside this issue:
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Dear Colleagues, Here we are back in the excitement and activity of the fall semester. We want to share with you the exciting news of the university’s new cloud-based discovery tool known as Holmes. Holmes replaced the previous electronic catalog system known as Quest. Are you interested in knowing how a fellow faculty member is using immigration law resources in her research? These topics and more are covered here in the fall edition of the Law Library newsletter. We hope that you will find many useful resources and suggestions to apply in your teaching and research. Please mark your calendars for the annual Law Review reception held in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room in the Law Library on October 4 from 4:00-5:30 pm. Remember that we always welcome your suggestions and comments. Peace,
Filippa Marullo Anzalone |
Professor and Associate Dean for Information and Technology
Services, |
Get to Know Nick Szydlowski
What type of work did you do at the MIT Libraries? Can you tell us a little bit about your fellowship at the New York Public Library? We also had individual projects, and mine was to create a new statistics program for the preservation division, which included making a database where staff could track their time usage. Statistics may not sound exciting, but they can be very important in advocating for the resources needed to preserve collections. What Boston College Law Library projects are you most excited about? Nick: My role at the law library centers on our institutional repository, Digital Commons @ BC Law School, and I am really excited to be working on such a great collection. There were more than 650,000 papers downloaded from the repository in the past year, and since the majority of our traffic comes from Google, I think we are getting BC scholarship in the hands of people who might not find it otherwise. I’m going to be looking at the way we work with the content in the repository to make sure we are following best practices in order to ensure both preservation and access, and to help us get new faculty work into the repository quickly and efficiently. I have also really enjoyed working with the law reviews on a variety of projects, including their new website. The idea of academic departments and libraries acting as publishers is sort of a hot topic right now in some circles, but law schools have been publishing their own journals for decades. It’s been interesting for me to learn about the world of legal scholarly publishing, after working with primarily science and engineering materials at MIT. It is a little bit like stepping into an alternate universe – there are a lot of similar issues, but many of the details are quite different. |
New Exhibit in The Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room: The Law Among Nations
The exhibit traces the development of the legal literature in this area of the law. We start with the Roman law concept of jus gentium and then move through important phases in the law’s development—to the Spanish scholars of the 16th century; Hugo Grotius and John Selden; the naturalist school led by Samuel Pufendorf; the positivists helmed by Richard Zouche and Cornelius Bynkershoek; the contributions by William Blackstone and Jeremy Bentham; and finally, a look at what early American lawyers were reading as our new nation struggled with issues of international law. You are invited to view the exhibit anytime the room is open—generally weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibit will remain on view through the Fall 2012 semester. |
Lex Machina, IP Litigation Data Powerhouse Lex Machina is an IP litigation data and analytics database. Every day, Lex Machina’s crawler extracts data and documents from PACER, U.S. District Court sites, ITC’s EDIS site and the PTO site. The searchable cases, dockets and documents related to copyright, trademark, patent, and antitrust cases are used to compile data on patents, patent owners, attorneys, law firms, courts, and judges. Analytics include [settlement] and case outcomes by court or judge, patent litigation by PTO classification, and median time to trial by judge. The Lex Machina database grew out of Stanford’s Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse and provides free access to academics in hopes of bringing openness and transparency to IP law. Faculty interested in getting access to this data for themselves of their research assistants should contact Legal Information Librarian Joan Shear. |
Holmes – Meet the New Library Catalog Use the BC Libraries’ improved discovery tool, Holmes to search for books, articles, course reserves and other materials in the BC collection and beyond. When you are on the law library homepage, you will see the search bar featured prominently near the top of the screen or you can go directly to the main Holmes search page to run a more advanced search. When you run a search in Holmes you will see three tabs above the search box, BC Collections, Articles, and Course Reserves. Use the BC Collections tab to find material physically located in one of the BC libraries and some electronic material. Articles include journal articles from a variety of sources although it does not include everything in the BC libraries’ databases. To find Course Reserves for your classes, search by course number. Holmes allows you to refine your search by many options (including date range, library, and subject) on left-hand side of the screen. Please link to Holmes Help for more information. |
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Spotlight on Faculty Use of Library Resources: Laura Murray-Tjan and Immigration Current Awareness
What is your favorite immigration research resource?
Do you use Interpreter Releases in print or electronically on Westlaw?
What other immigration law resources do you use? Do you use the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and its research database, AILALink? To learn more about the Law Library’ s immigration resources, including Interpreter Releases and AILALink, contact Karen Breda, bredaka@bc.edu, 617-552-4407. |
Bloomberg Law…Better With BNA It’s been almost a year since Bloomberg purchased BNA, the publisher of U.S. Law Week and other leading legal newsletters and topical research services. BNA content is now available through Bloomberg’s BLAW as well as through the Bloomberg BNA platform. There have been some recent changes to the BNA platform, including the increased ability to customization your research experience – this is also the reason you are sometimes asked to sign in when you link to a BNA product. Feel free to skip the sign in step and go directly to content. The BNA acquisition is a major step in BLAW’s plan to be more competitive with Lexis and Westlaw. The BNA content and BLAW’s superior access to docket and pleadings from federal and state courts make BLAW a serious player in the legal research market. BC Law faculty wishing access to Bloomberg’s BLAW should visit the BLAW law school site, click on “Get Started Now,” and fill out the form. Your personal BLAW password will be e-mailed to you shortly. Talk to your Law Library Contact for more information on Bloomberg BNA databases, custom updates, and BLAW content and assistance. |
Research Support Offered for Writing Requirement Courses In addition to supporting faculty research projects, the BC law librarians assist students with selecting their writing paper topics and conducting their research. Law librarians are available to meet with students enrolled in writing requirement courses. You can alert students to this service by placing a link on your Blackboard or TWEN course website to the appropriate law librarian. In addition, the law librarians can schedule group sessions during the common lunch hour to aid your students in beginning their writing requirement submission. If you are interested in these services, please contact your law librarian liaison. |
Nick Szydlowski joined the law library this summer as the new Digital Services & Institutional Repository Librarian. Nick received his Masters of Library Science from Simmons College in 2011, with a concentration in Preservation. From 2006 to 2011, he worked as a preservation assistant in the department of Curation and Preservation Services in the MIT Libraries. More recently Nick completed a nine-month IMLS Preservation Administration Fellowship at the New York Public Library. One of the law librarians recently interviewed Nick about his career in library preservation and the projects he is working on here at Boston College. 
This new exhibit features some of Boston College Law School’s beautiful works relating to the law among nations, more commonly referred to in modern times as international law. 
This is the second in a series of articles focusing on a faculty member’s creative and expert use of research resources. Clinical Professor Laura Murray-Tjan teaches the Immigration Practicum Seminar, the Advanced Immigration Law Seminar, and the Immigration and Asylum Clinic. She has extensive experience representing immigration detainees and refugees and is an expert in researching emerging issues in the ever-changing landscape of immigration law. One of the librarians recently sat down with Professor Murray-Tjan and discussed her favorite immigration research resources.