Law Librarian Blog

Civic Life in the Information Age

Civic Life in the Information Age
by Stefanie Sanford

List Price: $69.95
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
ISBN-10: 1403976341
ISBN-13: 978-1403976345

Book Description: Defying the general belief that American citizenship is in decline, Sanford claims that Generation X is actually taking positions of civic leadership and authority as Baby Boomers retire. By exploring the traditional instrument of social capital, civic culture and political science, she attempts to make us understand more appropriately this maligned generation.

Opening: Law Library Director/Law Professor, UNLV

The William S. Boyd School of Law of the University of Nevada Las Vegas invites applications for a faculty member to serve as Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library commencing July 1, 2008.

Responsibilities of the Law Library Director: The Director of the Law Library reports to the Dean of the School of Law and is responsible for all operations of the library including budgeting, planning, and administration.  The Director plays an important role in shaping the future of the collection, supporting and promoting the scholarship of the faculty and students, and serving the community.  Although the Director’s primary responsibility is leadership of the Law Library, the Director may also have some teaching and scholarship responsibilities.  The Director may also have some oversight responsibilities over the Law School’s information technology operations.

Qualifications: Candidates must have a J.D. from an A.B.A. accredited institution and an M.L.S.  or an M.L.L. degree from an A.L.A. accredited institution.  They should have significant administrative experience in an academic law library.  A successful candidate will be interested in working with the faculty to support their teaching and scholarship and in serving the community, as well as in continuing to shape the largest law library in the state.  Teaching experience, a publication record, and a record of contribution to the profession are also desirable.

Rank and Salary: The Director of the Law Library is a full time member of the law faculty.  Depending on experience and qualifications, the Director may be hired as a tenured Full Professor, as a tenure track Associate Professor, as a tenured member of the library faculty at Rank III (the equivalent of Associate Professor) or Rank IV (the equivalent of Professor).  Salary is competitive; contingent on labor market.

Application Details: Submit a letter of interest, a detailed resume listing qualifications and experience, and the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of at least three professional references who may be contacted.   The review of materials will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled.  Materials should be addressed to Professor Richard Brown, Chair, Law Library Director Search Committee, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 451003, Las Vegas, NV 89154-1003.

UNLV is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity educator and employer committed to excellence through diversity.

Description of the William S. Boyd School of Law and UNLV: The William S. Boyd School of Law is a fully accredited public law school located in state-of-the-art facilities at the center of the UNLV campus.  We have a diverse faculty of new and experienced legal educators drawn from top institutions.  The student body numbers approximately 470, including both full and part-time students.  The full time faculty numbers 41.  UNLV is a doctoral degree granting institution with more than 28,000 students and more than 900 faculty members.  More than 220 undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees are offered.  Founded in 1957, UNLV is located on 337 acres in dynamic Southern Nevada.    For more information, see the UNLV website at:  http://www.unlv.edu.

The Wiener-Rogers Law Library: The Wiener-Rogers Law Library occupies the center of a community of active scholars, providing vital research and support to faculty and students.  Currently housing over 311,000 volumes, including micro-format materials, the Law Library has an ample budget with opportunities for significant growth.  The most extensive law library in Nevada, it supports the research of judges, lawyers, and other members of the community.  The Law Library is staffed with a director, seven library faculty members, and six classified employees, and one professional, non-classified employee.

Round up on attorney salaries

Dennis Kennedy does a nice round up of commentary on the Wall Street Journal report on the reality of attorney salaries. 

Wow! There's been a lot of conversation over the last few days on lawyer salaries, the legal job market, recruiting and retention issues. As much as I'd like to believe that my post "The Brand is the Talent" last week set off this discussion, in fact it was Amir Efrati's The Dark Side of the Legal Job Market in the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog that kicked off the lively conversation. Bill Gratsch does a nice job of summarizing and linking to the some of the posts on this topic.

I also liked Rob Millard's America's Two Legal Professions, Gerry Riskin's Sharp Pin Approaching Associate Starting Salary Balloon, and Michelle Golden's Law Students Building a Better Profession (a great example from the LSBABP blog Michelle discusses is called High Billables & Attrition Take Their Toll on Summer Recruiting). It's worth tracking down and reading the posts on this topic.

The posts also brought me back to Ron Baker's Two Cheers for Gary Boomer post last weekend, which really got me thinking, in part because Ron touched on the role that technology and hourly billing play in professional services recruiting and retention.

My own view? I have a number of thoughts percolating and some of them will definitely appear in the quickly approaching webinar that I'm doing about the role technology can play in law firm recruiting and lawyer retention on Thursday, September 27.

As I've said, the role that the use of technology can play in recruiting seems to get all the attention, but the role technology can play in retention is the more important piece of the puzzle, not just starting salaries. There's still time to register and some spots available for the webinar. If you are interested in these topics, I hope you'll attend the webinar, but I also hope that you'll read the posts I've mentioned and think about their implications.

[JJ]

Exclusive Interview With Senator Barack Obama on ImmigrationProf Blog

UC Davis law profs and ImmigrationProf Blog editors Kevin Johnson, Bill Hing and Jennifer Chacón conducted an exclusive interview with Senator Barack Obama yesterday. Check it out. [JH]

Professional Reading: Reputation-based Governance

In Reputation-based governance, Lucio Picci proposes a "reputation–based governance" framework and applies it to the management of public works. From the conclusion:

There is an ongoing process where information technologies are becoming ubiquitous in the management of governance processes. To an increasing degree, policies are managed with the help of information systems where they are codified and accompanied by a vast amount of information. It is a fairly safe bet to affirm that the process of “digitalization of policies” sill spread and deepen, in a sense, regardless of what we think and do.

The issue, then, is on what particular shape these changes will take. Will they empower citizens, or will they not? Will they support an horizontal, network–shaped, organizational landscape or, to the contrary, will they tighten the bolts of traditional vertical organizations? Will they model the reputation of the actors of governance, or will they only describe the aspects of governance that are useful for societal control, with reputational information still exchanged within traditional social networks?

Reputation–based governance, then, can be seen as a proposal for the direction that many concurrent changes that are already happening should take. Implementing reputation–based governance is about steering an ongoing process, providing a coherent shape to it, and making sure that, among the many organizational forms that the Internet may support, the ones that will emerge will allow be characterized by an unprecedented degree of transparency and by an allocation of resources and of power that is strictly linked to past performances and to the reputation that derives from them. Then, reputation–based governance would also provide an ideal platform on which to implant innovative procedures, reputation–based themselves, that permit the participation of citizens in the design of policies.

The Expertise Age

In What Comes After the Information Age, Andy Oram presents an interesting perspective by comparing the differences between professional computer documentation published in hardcopy and free online documentation. The bottom line: when information becomes a commodity, expertise increases in value. [JH]

Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Implications for Big Firm KM and Law Librarianship

Amar Gupta, University of Arizona, Eller College of Business and Public Administration, and Satwik Seshasai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, have deposited a three-part series on the "24-Hour Knowledge Factory." Implications for large law firm KM specialists and law librarians are readily apparent. See Law Firms Going Global, Strategic Legal Technology (Sept. 18 2007), citing How Teams Can Work Well Together From Far Apart ,WSJ Online (Sept. 17, 2007); Success Factors for Working Virtually Strategic Legal Technology (June 20, 2007), citing Working Together...When Apart, WSJ Online (June 16, 2007)

The Critical Role of Information Resource Management in Enabling the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory.

The 24-hour Knowledge Factory is introduced as a global work environment where work is passed between individuals in other time zones on a daily basis. The evolution of this model is described, from foundations in manufacturing to current implementations in software development. The effective management of information resources is critical to the success of this environment. A pilot study, conducted at IBM, utilized a set of advanced tools for gathering social and technical data from repositories as diverse as source control systems and team meeting minutes. This pilot study provides good insights into how the 24-hour Knowledge Factory concept will operate in a commercial setting. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for leveraging information resources to achieve the ideal 24-hour Knowledge Factory.

Towards the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Offshore-Onsite Team Dynamics.

Globalization and the spread of advanced information and communication technologies have encouraged a transition to distributed, virtual work practices. By reducing the costs of communication, these technologies now make it possible for more people than ever before to collaborate and compete in real time on different kinds of work from anywhere in the world - using computers, email, networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software applications. Thus, according to Thomas Friedman in his book, The World is Flat, "The global competitive playing field has being leveled" (Friedman, 2005, p.8). Connected to the flattening of the world is the increase in the diffusion of offshoring of knowledge intensive work towards emerging countries, such as India, China, and Romania. Although offshoring is becoming a part of our everyday social lexicon, we find little empirical evidence in the academic literature on the implications of offshoring for organizations and knowledge workers, or on the disruptive forces that offshoring brings to local, day-to-day work practices. Certainly, the literature on geographically dispersed or globally distributed teams (GDTs) shows the many organizational challenges of distributed collaboration, exploring issues like compatibility with existing hierarchical structures, awareness of other team member's activities, increased coordination costs, trust between distant members, status differentials, and leadership (e.g., Mohrman, 1998, Paul and McDaniel, 2004, Metiu, 2006, Weisband, in press). Moreover, previous studies explain how distance limits some of the important benefits that come from collocation, such as spontaneous conversation, collaborative social environments, mutual learning and influence (e.g. Hinds and Kiesler, 2002; Cummings, 2004). Some of this research was conducted in situations involving offshoring, but much of it reflects distributed work that remained onshore and does not distinguish between different types of globally distributed work arrangements (Saunders and Ahuja, 2006). Many of the conclusions and insights from these studies, therefore, may apply to the case of offshoring, but more work is needed to better define the specific upsetting effects of offshoring on knowledge workers and organizations.

Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory - A Prognosis for Research.

The term "24-Hour Knowledge Factory" connotes a geographically dispersed team of workers in which members of the team are able to work on specific endeavors on a round- the-clock basis. A professional could work in the US on a standard 9 am to 5 pm basis. At the end of his or her workday, the activity is transferred to a colleague in China who works during daytime in that country. At the end of the latter's workday, the work is transferred to a third colleague in Poland or Romania, who in turn will pass the baton 8 hours later to the first worker in the US. Each member of the team works during the normal workday hours that pertain to his or her time zone. The use of sequential workers that underpins the concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory has some similarity to the shift-style workforce that evolved in the manufacturing sector as an adjunct to the industrial revolution. Just as the latter concept had a profound impact on the entire manufacturing sector, we argue that the concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory will have a major impact on the entire field of information systems, and that more research is needed in this area. The concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory is relevant for semi-structured work in both the IS arena as well as in other professional arenas such as finance, product development, marketing, and medicine. The proposed areas of research can help to create the IS infrastructure for supporting applications in these diverse arenas.

Justice Stephen Breyer Still Believes in Rule of Law

From CBS News:

"The Supreme Court's most recent term was a difficult one, Justice Stephen Breyer said Saturday, because he found himself on the losing end of several key cases.

"I was in dissent quite a lot and I wasn't happy," Breyer said at the American Bar Association's annual meeting.

Breyer was one of four liberal justices who dissented in cases involving abortion rights, school integration and pay discrimination. In the school case, in which the court struck down student assignment plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, his frustration bubbled over in a lengthy dissent that was twice as long as any he had written in his 13 years on the court.

Yet with the passage of some time, Breyer said the court's term underscored his faith in the rule of law." 

See also [video, audio]: Breyer Urges Lawyers, Public to Support Independent Judiciary, ABA opening assembly.

Who Does Blended Search Better?

Lisa Barone tests Ask, Yahoo and Google. Check it out. [JH]

The Paycheck Report for Am Law 200 Firms

From the American Lawyer:

"Mid-level associates from around the country gave us their salary and bonus information. Here's how Am Law 200 firms stack up in several key areas." 

• The Pain Index
• Firm-By-Firm Breakdown

[RJ]

Opening: Senior Cataloging Librarian, UCLA Law Library

The UCLA Library has initiated recruitment for the position of Law Library Senior Cataloging Librarian and is actively seeking nominations and applications.  We are looking for an experienced cataloger who will report to the Head of Cataloging. The first consideration date for this position is October 15, 2007.

The complete posting, which includes the position description, complete qualifications and application procedures, is available on the Employment and Human Resources website of the UCLA Library, at: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2188.cfm

Past v. Present Cell Phone Tracking

An interesting, if sometimes cheeky, commentary on how courts are dealing with the wealth of data and information cell phones provide. 

While most courts considering the issue have held that police need "probable cause" to track your movements, a new decision (.pdf) last week out of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts holds that law enforcement need show only "relevance to an ongoing investigation" to get a historical record of your past movement (something like the Jeffy trail in The Family Circus cartoon).

Why are courts treating past and prospective tracking so differently, and should they?

[JJ]

Professional Reading: Thinking Like a Lawyer: The Heuristics of Case Synthesis

Boston College Law School Associate Professor of Legal Reasoning, Research & Writing, Jane K Gionfriddo has deposited Thinking Like a Lawyer: The Heuristics of Case Synthesis, 40 Texas Tech Law Review (forthcoming 2007) in the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository. Here's the abstract:

In a common law system where cases play such an important role in legal problem-solving, lawyers must be able to synthesize ideas from groups of cases to figure out a jurisdiction’s law at a particular point in time; in reality, however, many lawyers aren’t able to do so well enough for sophisticated law practice. Some lawyers understand and use this skill intuitively, but do not consciously think about the steps they actually take. Those in this group often do not sufficiently value case synthesis because it seems so obvious, with the result that they don’t necessarily use this skill to its full potential. Others don’t intuitively understand how to synthesize cases and have never learned a methodology to do so. Lawyers in this situation simply are not able to manipulate case law adequately and consequently fail to produce the necessary depth of analysis to represent clients effectively.

This article’s goal is to ensure that lawyers in practice—and teachers in law schools who train future lawyers—have a sufficient understanding of synthesizing cases. To achieve this, the article begins by describing the theory behind this skill as well as a methodology that will generate the subtle nuances of analysis necessary for sophisticated law practice. The article then proceeds to apply this methodology to a group of hypothetical cases that have been designed to demonstrate the complex permutations of actually working with a group of cases to solve a client’s problem.

UN Launches Climate Change Website

A new United Nations Internet site, Gateway to the UN System’s Work on Climate Change, that highlights the wide-ranging work of the various parts of the United Nations system on climate change has been launched. The new website makes it easier for Internet users to find information on climate change from across the United Nations system. [JH]

Secrecy Report Card 2007

From the press release:

"Government secrecy saw further expansion last year despite growing public concern, according to a report released today by a coalition of open government advocates. The Secrecy Report Card, produced annually by OpenTheGovernment.org in order to identify trends in public access to information, found a troubling lack of transparency in military procurement, assertions of executive privilege, and expansion of "sensitive" categories of information, among other areas.

In 2006, the public's use of the Freedom of Information Act continued to rise. Agency backlogs are significant; the oldest FOIA request in the federal government has now been pending for more than 20 years."  [RJ]

The report cites many indicators of growing secrecy, including:

• Since 2001, the "state secrets" privilege (the executive branch power to impose secrecy with little opportunity for appeal or judicial review) has been used a reported 39 times - an average of six times per year in 6.5 years that is more than double the average (2.46) in the previous 24 years.
• In 2006, 26 percent ($107.5 billion) of federal contracts dollars were completely uncompeted; only one-third of contracts dollars are subject to full and open competition.
• In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1,149 provisions of laws. Of these challenges, 85 percent have been on "constitutional" grounds. Such challenges make it difficult for the public to know that the laws are "faithfully executed" as required by the U.S. Constitution.
• A 2007 Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report on secret wiretap warrants indicated that the government made 143,074 National Security Letter requests in the period 2003-2005. The number for 2006 remains classified. These requests can be used to obtain information about individuals without the government applying for a court-reviewed warrant.

New Focus on Life Tenure for the Supremes

Another excellent SCOTUS article by Linda Greenhouse from the N.Y. Times dicussing term limits for Supreme Court Justices.  See also, Life Tenure, Term Limits, and Supreme Court Justices, SCOTUSblog. {RJ]

Why Not Schedule AALL Annual Meetings So More Firm Librarians Can Attend?

July in New Orleans. OK, it was hot; it was humid. But the city was a great host. It also was a good (albeit poorly attended) conference. Many of us who enjoyed the annual meeting and the city's many attractions could attend because our workload allowed us to leave our institutions in the summer, particularly academic law librarians whose flocks of student had flown the coop. But why do we schedule our annual meetings during the summer when a not inconsequential portion of our membership cannot attend because it is the busiest time of year for them? I'm referring to law firm librarians whose libraries become the summer migration point for our law students and new nesting place for our recent grads?

I think we want our law firm colleagues with us, don't we? As a former law firm librarian, I certainly do. But many law firm libraries send no librarians to our annual meeting because their institutions are simply too busy while some firms send just one librarian. Don't we want to make it possible for firms to send as many law librarians as possible? (Just imagine the improvement in the conference agenda.)

Eons ago there was some talk of changing the schedule of our annual AALL meeting so that more law librarians could attend. That went nowhere. I suggest it is time for a change and offer a proposal. Why doesn't AALL schedule our annual meetings to follow on the heals of the American Association of Law Schools annual meeting in early January. It's not a busy time for firm or academic law librarians (probably also so for state, county and bar law librarians) so many more librarians would be able attend our meetings; a fair number of academic law librarians, by the way, already attend AALS. Many of our vendors would love it. They're already working AALS. If we have to let AALS select the city, so be it. What's the worst that could happen? (A much better group rate at conference hotels than AALL has been able to negotiate for us.)

Yes, yes, I know AALL has made venue commitments for several future annual meetings but before any more are made, shouldn't this issue be considered?

Stepping down from my soapbox now... [JH]

New HeinOnline Blog!

From the site:

Welcome!

With so many exciting things happening every day in HeinOnline, we are launching this blog to provide on-demand information to users around the world! This blog will offer insight to our newest products, notify customers of our latest interface enhancements, and share tips to help improve customers research experience. Anyone from students and librarians to professionals world-wide will be able to use our blog to communicate with our development team, share tips with other subscribers, or simply to read what other HeinOnline users are saying.

Additionally, we will be offering Blog giveaways to our faithful readers. Don't miss your chance to win prizes including: ipods, iphones, and much more!

This blog was created for you, our loyal users, therefore we encourage your feedback to tell us what particular topics you would like to hear more about in this blog. We are always looking for ways to better serve our loyal customers.

Sincerely,

The Marketing Department
William S. Hein & Co., Inc.

marketing@wshein.com
http://heinonline.org

New Titles from The Brookings Institution

Check out:

• Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations, Robert I. Rotberg, ed.
• Power and Superpower: Global Leadership and Exceptionalism in the 21st Century, Morton H. Halperin, Jeffrey Laurenti, Peter Rundlet, and Spencer P. Boyer, eds.
• Requiem or Revival? The Promise of North American Integration, Isabel Studer and Carol Wise, eds.
• Guardian of the Presidency: The Legacy of Richard E. Neustadt, Matthew J. Dickinson and Elizabeth A. Neustadt, eds.
• Intergovernmental Management for the 21st Century, Timothy J. Conlan and Paul L. Posner, eds

Worst of the Worst
Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations
Robert I. Rotberg, ed.

Brookings Institution Press and the World Peace Foundation 2007
c. 300pp.
Cloth Text, 978-0-8157-7566-9, $59.95 
Paper Text, 978-0-8157-7567-6, $24.95

Book Description: Repressive regimes tyrannize their own citizens and threaten global stability and order. These repositories of evil systematically oppress their own people, deny human rights and civil liberties, severely truncate political freedom, and prevent meaningful individual economic opportunity. Worst of the Worst identifies and characterizes the world's most odious states and singles out which repressors are aggressive and, hence, can truly be called rogues.

How dangerous and how terrible are such disparate countries as North Korea, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe? Previously, determinations have been based on inexact, impressionistic criteria. In this volume, Robert Rotberg and his colleagues define the actions that constitute repression and propose a method of measuring human rights violations. They offer an index of nation-state repressiveness, classifying "gross repressors," "high repressors," and "aggressive repressors" or "rogues" on a ten-point scale. Based on arms and drug trafficking, support of terror, possession of weapons of mass destruction, and crossborder attacks, this valuable diagnostic tool will guide the international community in crafting effective policies to deal with injustice in the developing world. The repressors and rogues profiled include Belarus, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, NorthKorea, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe.

Worst of the Worst offers a transparent way to decide which repressive and rogue states are most deserving of strong policy attention. Explicitly measuring and labeling these highly repressive states is the first step toward improving the well-being of millions of the poorest and most abused peoples of the globe.

Power and Superpower
Global Leadership and Exceptionalism in the 21st Century
Morton H. Halperin, Jeffrey Laurenti, Peter Rundlet, and Spencer P. Boyer, eds.

The Century Foundation Press and the Center for American Progress 2007
c. 440pp. Paper Text, 978-0-87078-509-2, $19.95

Book Description: The United States entered the twenty-first century as a global leader, emulated for its ideals as much as it is respected for its power to shape events. American leadership served as the bedrock for the international order, promoting prosperity and peace both at home and abroad. But in the first years of the new century, U.S. foreign policy—exemplified by war in Iraq, the rejection of international treaties, and disregard for traditional allies—gave the impression to many that the United States had abandoned that leadership role in favor of one premised on military power.

In Power and Superpower, some of the United States' most distinguished and experienced policymakers and experts outline a foreign policy that would allow America to reclaim its status as a reliable and visionary global leader. The essays identify the pressing foreign policy issues currently facing the United States and provide analysis to underpin a progressive foreign policy that would call upon all of America's strengths and respect the commitments we share with the rest of the world.

Requiem or Revival?
The Promise of North American Integration
Isabel Studer and Carol Wise, eds.

Brookings Institution Press 2007
306pp. Paper Text, 978-0-8157-8201-8, $26.95

Book Description: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was launched amid great hopes and controversy in 1994. More than a dozen years later, progress toward economic integration has stalled. Mexico's economy remains far behind those of Canada and the United States, and such pressing issues as energy security remain unaddressed. In Requiem or Revival? scholars and policymakers from all three nations dissect NAFTA's failure to fulfill its early promise and evaluate the prospects for further integration.

Guardian of the Presidency
The Legacy of Richard E. Neustadt
Matthew J. Dickinson and Elizabeth A. Neustadt, eds. Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Brookings Institution Press 2007
217pp. Cloth Text, 978-0-8157-1842-0, $29.95

Book Description: For more than five decades, Richard E. Neustadt was America's leading expert on the Presidency. He was an adviser to several Presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton. His book Presidential Power, first published in 1960, remains required reading for anyone seeking to understand decisionmaking at the highest levels of American government. He also produced classic studies of foreign and domestic policy such as Alliance Politics, a penetrating analysis of crises in U.S.-U.K. relations, and Thinking in Time: The Uses of History (coauthored with Ernest R. May). In Guardian of the Presidency, Neustadt's colleagues and students celebrate the rich and diverse contributions he made to political and academic life.

Dick Neustadt began his career as presidential adviser in 1946. He joined the Bureau of Budget, working for President Truman, before becoming a special assistant in the Truman White House in 1950. After the Republicans captured the White House in 1952, he entered academic life, teaching first at Cornell University and then at Columbia. The publication of Presidential Power brought him to the attention of President-elect John F. Kennedy, who commissioned Neustadt to prepare recommendations for his transition to office. Neustadt declined a formal position with the administration but continued to advise Kennedy and, later, Lyndon Johnson. He also consulted to the transition teams for Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.

An institution builder as well as a scholar and an adviser, Neustadt was the founding director of Harvard University's Institute of Politics and a guiding force in developing the John F. Kennedy School of Government. In this role, he helped shape generations of leaders, both in the United States and abroad.

Intergovernmental Management for the 21st Century
Timothy J. Conlan and Paul L. Posner, eds. Foreword by Alice Rivlin.

Brookings Institution Press and the National Academy of Public Administration 2007
450pp.
Cloth Text, 978-0-8157-1542-9, $64.95 
Paper Text, 978-0-8157-1541-2, $28.95

Book Description: America’s complex system of multi-layered government faces new challenges as a result of rapidly changing economic, technological, and demographic trends. An aging population, economic globalization, and homeland security concerns are among the powerful factors testing the system’s capacity and flexibility. Major policy challenges and responses are now overwhelmingly intergovernmental in nature, and as a result, the fortunes of all levels of government are more intertwined and interdependent than ever before.

This volume, cosponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), defines an agenda for improving the performance of America’s intergovernmental system. The early chapters present the current state of practice in intergovernmental relations, including discussion of trends toward centralization, devolution, and other power-sharing arrangements. The fiscal underpinnings of the system are analyzed, along with the long-term implications of current trends in financing at all levels. The authors identify the principal tools used to define intergovernmental management—grants, mandates, preemptions—in discussing emerging models and best practices in the design and management of those tools.

Intergovernmental Management for the 21st Century applies these crosscutting themes to critical policy areas where intergovernmental management and cooperation are essential, such as homeland security, education, welfare, health care, and the environment. It concludes with an authoritative assessment of the system’s capacity to govern, oversee, and improve.

Opening: Reference Librarian, University of La Verne

The University of La Verne College of Law Library in Ontario, California (approximately 40 miles east of Los Angeles) is accepting applications for Reference Librarian. The position requires both the MLS and JD degrees (or equivalent experience). This is a full-time position with benefits and requires some evening and weekend rotation. Duties include reference desk coverage, legal research instruction, participation in the faculty liaison program, and some collection development duties. Solid knowledge of both print and online legal resources is essential, and familiarity with web authoring and other web-based applications is strongly desired.

For application instructions, see http://www.ulv.edu/hr/empa.htm. Reference position #2834. Please include a cover letter and resume along with the university's application form.