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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Law libraries

2017

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles Nov 2017

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …


Legal Education In Crisis, And Why Law Libraries Are Doomed, James G. Milles Nov 2017

Legal Education In Crisis, And Why Law Libraries Are Doomed, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

The dual crises facing legal education - the economic crisis affecting both the job market and the pool of law school applicants, and the crisis of confidence in the ability of law schools and the ABA accreditation process to meet the needs of lawyers or society at large - have undermined the case for not only the autonomy, but the very existence, of law school libraries as we have known them. Legal education in the United States is about to undergo a long-term contraction, and law libraries will be among the first to go. A few law schools may abandon …


To Leave Or Not To Leave—Law Libraries And The Fdlp: A Decade Later, Is That Still The Question?, Lauren M. Collins Jul 2017

To Leave Or Not To Leave—Law Libraries And The Fdlp: A Decade Later, Is That Still The Question?, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article recounts the literature of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when some librarians, considering the changing form of government information, questioned whether the FDLP would survive in its existing form and recommended FDLP changes that would keep depository libraries engaged as the means of accessing digital government information evolved. In the later 2000s, articles and reports included comprehensive suggestions to the GPO, by and on behalf of library associations, of ways to make depository libraries stronger partners in the FDLP. Possibly in response to these calls for reform, the GPO polled depository libraries in its 2012 FDLP Forecast …