Shorts
Kheel Center Labor Photos
A digital collection of more than 1,000 selected
photographs documenting the 95-year history of the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union is now available on the Web. Drawn from the collection
of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at
Catherwood Library, these photographs represent only an initial offering
from the center's 350,000 photographs and will be regularly supplemented. The
database, which was produced in collaboration with Mann Library's Information
Technology Services, can be searched online.
Faculty Research Fellows Program
The new Faculty Research Fellows
Program, coordinated by Matt Morrison, a research attorney in the Law Library, began in fall 2004. To provide assistance to faculty who do not have their own research assistants, the Law Library hires and trains law students to do research for them. So far the faculty projects have covered immigration law, pattern jury instructions, and several difficult-to-find research topics.
New Titles for Research Attorneys
All
of the teaching reference librarians at the Law Library have law degrees from
American Bar Association-accredited law schools. However, most law students
and some faculty remain unaware of the extensive legal education and expertise
of our professionals. To better communicate the level of research and
analysis provided by the reference staff, the reference librarians with J.D.
degrees changed their titles to research
attorneys. With these two words, they instantly convey a commonality in
educational background and intellectual capacity in an environment where the
law degree is the primary accepted academic currency. This change will foster
increased communication between researchers and librarians qua research attorneys.
The research attorneys in the Law Library are Jean Callihan, Charlie
Finger, Julie Jones, Thomas Mills, and Matt Morrison. Two
other law librarians who teach credit courses as well have a different title: Pat
Court is the associate law librarian, and Claire Germain is
the Edward Cornell Law Librarian and Professor of Law.
Summer Student Legal Research Survey 2004
Jean
Callihan, a research attorney in the Law Library, coordinated
the third annual online survey, for which 134 second- and third-year law
students answered questions about their legal research experiences during
their summer employment. The survey found that 46% of respondents worked
for law firms, 10% for faculty, 10% for judges, and 28% in other areas, such
as working in the criminal justice system for the prosecution or defense.
Although most students used both print and online resources (mainly Westlaw
and Lexis), a recurrent theme was using print resources for statutes and
treatises and online resources for cases. Seventy-seven percent were interested
in additional legal research instruction—a suggested course called
Advanced Online Research grabbed the interest of 63% of these respondents.
New Law Library Acquisitions
Thomas Mills, a research attorney, worked with Beth Katzoff, the
head of Public Services in the Kroch Asia Library, to bring to Cornell a full-text
Japanese legal database that provides access to statutes and
cases in the vernacular. Cornell is the only university in the country that
has this database.
Chile Declassification Project
Cornell
Law Library is one of only two libraries in the world that has acquired a print
set of the Chile Declassification Project (CDP), given by Eric Pelofski. The
CDP consists of nearly 23,000 recently declassified documents from the CIA,
FBI, and Department of Justice that evidence covert American involvement in
the Pinochet coup, aid to the Chilean military, and other secret operations
in Chile. Julie Jones, a research attorney, created an online guide to help researchers access this unique collection and to research legal issues relating to Pinochet and human rights violations in Chile.
Eastern Wine and Grape Archive
Staff from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Lee
Library at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva participated
in the 56th Annual Finger Lakes Grape Growers Convention on March 4 and
5 at the Holiday Inn in Waterloo, N.Y. A small exh
ibition in the event's
trade show helped to publicize Cornell's Eastern Wine and Grape Archive (EWGA)
and, particularly, the current New York State Documentary Heritage Program-funded
project to survey historical records documenting winemaking and grape growing
in the Finger Lakes region.
Over 350 growers attended the convention that focused on current industry
challenges and opportunities, as well as more-traditional production and
pest management topics. In addition to a full-day session and trade show
on Saturday, Friday's activities featured ten breakout sessions on a wide
variety of topics.
Annex Expansion Update
Construction
of the three new Annex modules is under way, and the facility is projected
to be ready for occupancy in October 2005. The Annex Planning Committee, chaired
by Xin Li, and including Barbara Eden, John Hoffmann,
Cammie Hoffmier, John Marmora, Margaret Nichols, and Zoe Stewart-Marshall, is
actively budgeting and planning for moving collections from various libraries
into the new facility in the fall. The group is working closely with CD Exec
on setting selection policies and prioritizing moving activities. Related to
the new facility is also work in progress to identify potential business opportunities
for a regional print repository at Cornell, which is an outgrowth of the MAS
2010 analysis. There is a growing need in the region and a national trend toward
coordinated regional depositories. More than a dozen such facilities of various
types are now operating in the United States—Research Collections and
Preservation Consortium (ReCAP), jointly owned and operated by Columbia University,
the New York Public Library, and Princeton University, and the Five College
Library Depository (FCLD) in Massachusetts are two examples. CUL will be examining
the market needs and develop a feasible business model in the next few months.
Google Brown Bagger
On January
31 Sarah Thomas hosted a well-attended brown-bag lunch to
discuss the implications for libraries of two recent initiatives by Google.
Google Scholar allows searching through a simple Google search box specifically
for scholarly literature “from a wide variety of academic publishers,
professional societies, preprint repositories, and universities, as well as
scholarly articles available across the Web.” Google Print is a project
to digitize the complete holdings of Stanford and Michigan university libraries
and additional holdings from the Harvard and Oxford university libraries and
the New York Public Library. These two projects could have a major impact on
ways that scholars search for information and conduct research and, therefore,
on libraries like ours. A lively discussion brought out opinions on the threats
and opportunities the Google initiatives pose for CUL.
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