Law Librarian Blog

Friday Fun: All I do is skim

Friday Fun: Book Case Construction DIY in the "It's all on the Internet" Age for Library Space Planning

Downsize, downsize, downsize the library foot print because "it's all on the Internet. Well, I agree that  legal resources have been and will continue to be more and more electronic based. And have no problem with that when e-resources are better than their print based cousins. Sure, not all of our user populations will be confortable using, for example, enhanced law ebooks instead of print but 30 years ago similar users were not comfortable with what we now take for granted, database legal search services. Part of this unacceptance of the inevitable is generational. But back in the Roaring 80's and 90s, the generational shift moved on toward acceptance of legal e-Search because the youngsters were being hired out of law school. Today, well, with less and less recent law school grads being hired in the BigLaw and BigGov market sectors, one might say that the move forward, which in my opinon will be the substitution of p-books for enchanced law eBooks, is a bit stymied right now because New School kids not being added to and/or replacing Old School user populations.

A case in point. At our little county law library we are in the midst of relocating or staying at our current location. In either case, the footprint will be substantially smaller. My objective is to end up with the "largest smallest" footprint. Not for today but looking out 10-plus years from now. The old rule of thumb was design a layout that accomodated the growth of the print collection looking 20-years from now. That essentially meant that the library's current print collection should fill 50% of available shelving units for planning purposes. Those days are over. Today we must plan for what the print collection will likely need 10-years from now. Instead of estimating growth, we must estimate reduction in shelving space requirements.

Not only will law library planners be hard pressed to budget for additional shelving units in this context, they may be hard pressed to acquire any shelving units if they cannot use or modify for use shelving from their current inventory when downsizing the library footprint is at issue. Hence, today's Friday Fun features a DIY for bookself construction. It does not detail how to modify current selving systems (because I couldn't find a YouTube video for that), but some do-it-yourself guidence on how to build new shelving may be helpful.

From the YouTube description:

The[re] is a materials list and full construction layout guide for a large bookcase. Designed to be built on the job site. (no fancy shop tools required, although a table saw would be very benificial for ripping the oak trim). It can easily be built in a shop and moved (in 2 pieces) with the final crown mold applied on site. This bookcase must be attached to the wall with strong anchors. The result is a very elegant custom built piece of furniture. The height and width can be altered very easily for a custom fit for your location.

The detailed shop plan for the book case is available from the Google Group Woodworking Project. Granted, we are talking about wood construction but wood is probably easier to DIY by librarians than metal is. Here's the YouTube video (yes, I love the background music).[JH]

Friday Fun: Google FUD Videos from Microsoft

"Microsoft is stepping up its anti-Google campaign" writes BetaNews' Ed Oswald. "Googlighting" (video below) is the latest installment.

"Last summer's 'GMail Man' poked fun at Google's use of the content of your email messages in order to serve advertisements. Funny thing, Microsoft's Hotmail slaps ads alongside your messages, too." For details, see Ed Oswald recent post, Microsoft goes for Google's throat. [JH]

Friday Fun: Good Manners & the Golden Rule in the Office & Workplace

With all the news about Encyclopaedia Britannica going digital only, perhaps we have forgotten that EB was a "multi-media" publisher decades ago. Here's a clip from Encyclopaedia Britannica Films' "Office Etiquette" (1950).

Good manners seems to have been a bit of an obsession with the producers of Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. The intended audience of Are Manners Important? (1954) is children. [JH]

Friday Fun: Is the National Constitution Center's Tower of Law the Granddaddy of All Shed West Book Art Exhibits?

"[A]t the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the "Tower of Law" has reportedly become one of the most popular exhibits. The Tower of Law is a series of tall, spiraling stacks of old West reporters that has captured the attention of many visitors," writes Bruce Carton at Old Law Books Are Not Garbage, They're Columns and Towers. Carton adds, "Here is what happened when Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert came upon the Tower of Law (at the 4:30 mark in the video)" back in 2008 according to Constitution Daily, the National Constitution Center’s blog. [JH]

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Friday Fun: Are You a Slut? There's a flowchart for that!

By now must people have heard about Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law school student, a “slut” and a “prostitute” for her testimony before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee in support of mandated private health coverage for contraceptives. This one time self-admitted prescription drug abuser has since apologized for his slut-prostitute assault on Fluke's character but not for saying that women who want contraceptives from their health insurance are trying to get “American taxpayers” to fund their “personal sexual recreational activities."

ATL's Staci Zaretsky explains Why You Shouldn’t Call a Woman a ‘Slut’ on the Eve of Women’s History Month Because She Uses Contraceptives. For more, see Adam Serwer's Limbaugh Not The Only Conservative Who Fails To Understand How Birth Control Works on Mother Jones.

But this is a LLB Friday Fun feature. In that light and presumably as a PSA because women and men who "have sex, for like, non-procreative reasons" probably want to know if they are sluts, Mother Jones has published the below flowchart to help them answer that question.

Hat tip to Bridget Crawford's How to Tell if Someone is a "Slut" - For the Visual Learner on The Faculty Lounge. [JH]

Friday Fun: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

OK, I don't watch the Oscars so this is a huge hat tip to Beverly Goldberg's Feb. 29, 2012 American Libraries's story for this gem. Goldberg writes

A film allegory that celebrates the curative power of story in general—and reading in particular—won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short February 26. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, a wordless film whose most inspiring scenes take place in a fanciful library full of living books, was produced by start-up Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana, and depicts how the title character heals emotionally, over time, from the cataclysmic devastation of his personal world by Hurricane Katrina through the transformative properties of the written word.

For more, see Goldberg's Oscar Nod to Fantastic Flying Books Shows Love for Libraries.

Here's a the poignant YouTube video clip from of the entire film. (Hat tip to Sarah  Patrick's comment to this post for the correction.) [JH]

Friday Fun: The Nocturnal Life of Books

A big hat tip to LLB co-editor Mark Giangrande who spotted this gem in one of The Daily Beast's Mental Health Break posts. [JH]

Friday Fun: AmJur 2d v. Google

Some of Brittany Persson's (Reference/Acquisitions Librarian, Seton Hall Law School) ALR students created the below Xtranormal video. While few will ever see AmJur 2d in print once they leave law school, that's not really the point of the portrayed exchange of a 1L student and a law librarian. [JH}

Friday Fun: The Anonymous Librarian has a bad day.

And takes it via "Xtranormal [which] allows me to express my frustration and make some of my coworkers laugh since they are experiencing the same type of student issues." Quoting from Xtranormal keeps me happy on RIPS Law Librarian Blog. [JH]

Playgoz Movie
by: muthcj

Friday Fun: The BigLaw Job Interview

BitterLawyer.com's original series: Nick interviews for his dream job at a prestigious law firm. But that turns into a nightmare. [JH]

Friday Fun: TV Station Uses Hand Puppets to Recreate Courtroom Scenes in Corruption Trial

Why? Because the TV station was not allowed to take cameras into the federal courtroom to cover a former Ohio county commissioner. Lowering the Bar's Kevin Underhill, comments "I think that all court proceedings should be reported in this way, but would settle for either puppet coverage of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court or a full reenactment of the Rod Blagojevich trial." [JH]

Friday Fun: Time for Contract Law Karaoke

Starting with Chicken in a Contract (Frigaliment Importing Co v BNS International Sales). For more songs from classic cases of first-year contract law, visit R.B. Craswell's Contract Songs. [JH]

Friday Fun: Verbal Brain Jammers

HBR blogger Dan Pallotta reviews five strains of the jargonism epidemic at I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore. You can also listen to Dan explain why we still use jargon even though we hate it, and vote for the all-time worst business buzzword. [JH]

Friday Fun: The Unemployment Crisis

... for people with facial tattoos! I'm not sure Title VII is intended to protect this class but I'm thinking some lawyer might try to make the case. [JH]

Friday Fun: Chirp n' Chirp

Listen to the sound of Twitter! [JH]

Friday Fun: Santa Visits the Library During Finals Week

Santa visits LSU Middleton Library during finals week.

Student: I've been a good boy, Santa

Santa: What would you like for Christmas?

Student: A's on my finals.

Santa: I don't know if I can quite pull that off but I'll see what I can do.

Happy holidays to all. [JH]

Friday Fun: The Bottom Rung Job

Bitter Lawyer's Matt Ritter writes "Bottom Rung out of my own experience doing document review in Los Angeles. Until I moved out to LA in 2010, I worked as a big firm corporate associate in New York and had never heard of document review." [JH]

Friday Fun: Repurposing Law Reporter Volume Bindings as Carpeting

Talk about law libraries going green! How about law reporter bindings as floor covering? The below picture demonstrates how to recycle West reporters from an Artspace (New Haven, CT) exhibit called Library Science. OK, I doubt the intent of the exhibit is recycling per se except as an artistic expression utilizing no longer needed print in the Shed West Era.

Using law reporter bindings as floor covering might be a bit impractical but using them as wallpaper (literally as wall covering) might work as an expression of library science in 21st century law libraries.

PS -- In a comment to last week's Friday Fun post, Going Green by Repurposing Legal Reporter Volumes into Book Flasks, a representative of Bender Bound wrote:

We would LOVE access to free legal reporters if anyone knows of any libraries or law firms looking to get rid of them and are close to New York City.

[JH]

Friday Fun: Going Green by Repurposing Legal Reporter Volumes into Book Flasks

The Bender Books folks have "come up with a new twist on the book flask.  Rather than mass-produce fake books, or concentrate on the classics, we want to take professional and reference books like legal reporters, medical books, cook books, dictionaries, even parenting books, and repurpose them to conceal Italian glass flasks." To kick start this Brooklyn-based project Bender Books is seeking $3,000 in seed capital for their Booze Books product line. Check out their video promo. Imagine the vendor swag opportunities!

The folks write "Books are expensive, even used books.  One Federal Reporter costs $25.   Cook books and medical books aren't much cheaper. We are hoping to eventually buy books in bulk to keep the costs down, but for now we make do with the quantities we can afford." I guess they don't realize that they can get all the law reporters they want from libraries free of charge in the Shed West Era. [JH]