Law Commons^™

Locating Free And Low-Cost Secondary Sources In Michigan, Cody James

Law Librarian Scholarship

Secondary sources are all the legal resources that describe what the law is without actually having the force of law. For example, treatises, law review articles, and practice series are secondary sources while statutes, regulations, and cases are primary sources. Although secondary sources are not binding authority, they provide valuable, up-to-date insight and commentary about existing laws. These insights are especially useful when handling matters outside of an attorney’s usual areas of practice.

Unfortunately, secondary sources are not cheap — consider that a full set of Michigan Civil Jurisprudence has a retail cost of $25,119. That said, a lot of …

Buckets, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Inspired by “‘A Day in My Law Library Life,’ Circa 1997,” this compilation collects descriptions of a day in the lives of law librarians in 2018. The descriptions provide a current snapshot and historical record of the law library profession, with similarities to, and differences from, the profession of 1997.

Ask A Director: Tackling Technology Competencies, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Question: What technology competencies do librarians and legal information professionals need to assist their organizations as they grapple with issues such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, etc.?

How Many Copies Are Enough Revisited: Open Access Legal Scholarship In The Time Of Collection Budget Constraints, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

This article discusses the results of a study into the open access availability of law reviews, followed by a discussion of why open access has such a high rate of adoption among law reviews, especially in comparison to the journal literature in other disciplines.

Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Copyright protection attaches automatically to original works you create, whether a poem, photograph, painting, song, video, or essay. Copyright limits what others can do with your creative work and protects your original work from, for example, being compiled or reused and sold for profit. If you hold the copyright—and didn’t, say, create the original work in an employment context where it may be subject to being a work for hire—you may want to allow others to use your work for particular purposes. You could individually negotiate a license granting rights to each person, which would undoubtedly take more and more …

Creative Commons: An Explainer, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Copyright protection attaches automatically to original works you create, whether a poem, photograph, painting, song, video, or essay. Copyright limits what others can do with your creative work and protects your original work from, for example, being compiled or reused and sold for profit. If you hold the copyright—and didn’t, say, create the original work in an employment context where it may be subject to being a work for hire—you may want to allow others to use your work for particular purposes. You could individually negotiate a license granting rights to each person, which would undoubtedly take more and more …

Discovering The Knowledge Monopoly Of Law Librarianship Under The Dikw Pyramid, Xiaomeng Zhang

Law Librarian Scholarship

Historical debates demonstrated that knowledge monopoly is a key to a profession. This article explores the exclusive knowledge base of the law librarianship profession through the lens of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) paradigm.

Rejected For Exposure, Jessica Hanes, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

A story published recently in the Detroit News about a Michigan man “asserting a constitutional right to take ‘ballot selfies’ by challenging the state’s long-standing ban on voting station and polling place photography” sparked our interest in whether generational social media preferences might be the driving force for citizens who seek to overturn such laws. After all, the plaintiff is among the earliest born into the Millennial generation, over half of which (55%) have shared a selfie on social media as of 2014, a practice that has become ubiquitous even in politics.

Law School Institutional Repositories: A Survey, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of law libraries managing institutional repositories for their law schools. In 2011, there were some 30 law schools with such repositories; now, 80 of the top 100 law schools have their own or participate in a university-wide repository wherein the law school has an identifiable, school-specific collection or community. This article discusses a survey of the of the top 101 law schools, in hopes of facilitating an understanding of the breadth of material to be found in law school institutional repositories.

Public Access To Primary Legal Information In China: Challenges And Opportunities, Xiaomeng Zhang

Law Librarian Scholarship

Despite a lack of a national legislation that mandates open government information in the People's Republic of China, each major government branch has taken proactive efforts to make primary legal information issued within their power available to the public. A close examination of Chinese official legal information portals on the national level reveal issues such as a lack of uniformity and a lack of access to authenticated primary legal information. This article proposes a solution that would not only offer more consistent guidelines for the government but would empower the public to assert their right to primary legal information more …

The Effect Of Time Of Day On Reference Interactions In Academic Law Libraries, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

Libraries and librarians generally aspire to provide the best services they can to their user communities. But what does that mean? Assumptions about what is needed may not necessarily align with the actual preferences of a given user group. In this column, Seth Quidachay-Swan presents a case study that explores the interaction between time of day and medium of information delivery. Examining data gathered in a law library environment, the author concludes that modern presumptions about the diminishing need for traditional information services may not allow for effectively managing user expectations.

Getting Law Students Into The Law Library: The University Of Michigan Succeeds With A Plan, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

The goal of the University of Michigan Law Library's Awareness Campaign was to raise the consciousness of law students about the many ways in which librarians here can help them succeed as students now and as lawyers later. We sought to increase the number of students using the library. We wanted to get them physically into the library, and, once here, we wanted to increase students' use of the library's services: reference and circulation services, research consultations; our multitude of web-based resources, including our online research guides, book sts, and tutorials; group study rooms, etc. Not onl did we strive …

Tactics And Terms In The Negotiation Of Electronic Resource Licenses, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

This chapter introduces the reader to the realm of electronic resource license agreements. It provides the reader with an overview of basic contract law as it relates to electronic resource licensing. The chapter then discusses the electronic resource license negotiation process as well as license agreement term clauses. The aim of this chapter is to provide librarians with an understanding of basic licensing concepts and language in order to aid librarians in the review and negotiation of their own license agreements. The author hopes to impart lessons and tips he has learned in reviewing and negotiating license agreements with a …

Microfiche Checking And Refilming At The University Of Michigan Law Library, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

In an effort to combat this loss of important legal information, UMLL instituted a fiche-checking process where, to the best of our ability, we check the fiche not just for bibliographic accuracy, but also for readability, cut-off text, and omissions. When we discover problems, we ask the publisher to refilm the problematic volumes, offering UMLL paper volumes for the job. The following is the process UMLL has instituted wherein we try to discover and remedy problems with purchased microfiche.

How Many Copies Are Enough? Using Citation Studies To Limit Journal Holdings, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Mr. Brown introduces the University of Michigan Law Library’s use of citation study literature to develop a new policy regarding the number of duplicate copies of law review titles to be held in the library’s collection. The specifics of the new policy are described