AALL Spectrum Blog

The most recent issue of the FCIL newsletter features an essay about a librarian's adventures in Argentina.  When the author, Julienne Grant, visited Buenos Aires, she visited several places other librarians will find interesting:  the national library, the "Tower of Babel" (a sculpture made of books), and the El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookshop.  Alison Shea gives advice about attending an international conference.   The newsletter also includes new reviews of several well-known FCIL resources: LLRX, The International Encyclopedia of Laws, World Constitutions Illustrated, and the Foreign Law Guide. 

The current LHRB newsletter has several interesting articles.   Mark Podvia has written about Frederick Douglas' three visits to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  There is also a profile of 2012 AALL Hall of Fame Inductee Erwin C. Surrency.  LHRB members offer reviews of Natural Law and the Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy (Ashgate 2008), Civil Rights Stories (Foundation Press 2008), and The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I (Liberty Fund 2009).

The June/July issue of the HALL Newsletter the publication of the Houston Area Law Librarians, has recently been published. In addition to notices relating to new officers, the newsletter has a small feature on the resources and services at the Montgomery County Law Library.

The Spring 2012 issue of the Southeastern Law Librarian, the publication of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Libraries, has also recently been published. One notable article examines the Legal Issue Trail feature of Lexis Advance, a tool for finding cases that cite a specific passage from a precedential opinion. The author tested the tool by looking closely at the legal issue trail of a quote by Judge Posner. For this particular example, the tool did not appear to give relevant results that could have been found through other techniques, and some of the results were irrelevant. Librarians should test out new databases and tools and report their results to vendors and librarians so that vendors can improve their products and librarians can deepen their understanding of the research tools we use.

Another interesting article discussed the importance of government documents education for law librarians. Indeed, much of the materials law librarians work with are created by governmental entities. These documents can be found in both official and unofficial sources and with a wide variety of research features. Law librarians can draw on their government information knowledge to assist students and public patrons with making sense of these sometimes unfamiliar sources.