Summer Hours

Our summer hours are now in effect, which means we are open Monday - Thursday 9 to 5 and Friday 9 to 1. During the summer, we close the room from time to time for exhibit work and collection maintenance. Those closures will be posted here, but if you are planning a visit, do feel free to give us a call first to make sure that we'll be open for your visit.

Brooker Digitization Project Off to a Good Start

Working with colleagues from Boston College's O'Neill Library, we have begun to digitize the Robert E. Brooker III Collection of American Legal and Land Use Documents. When the project is finished, the entire collection of about 3,000 documents will be searchable in Boston College's Digital Collections, and via Google and other search engines as well. At the time of this posting, 173 documents are available, with more being added all the time. Watch this space for progress reports!

Seminar: Law, Crime & Society in Ancient Rome

On Friday April 17, 2009, ten librarians, including yours truly, attended a seminar at the UC Berkeley Law School entitled “Law, Crime & Society in Ancient Rome.” We convened in the conference room of The Robbins Collection, a world-renowned collection of religious and civil law materials housed within the law library. Hosted by Lucia Diamond, The Robbins Collection’s Senior Reference and Collection Development Librarian, and other Robbins Collection colleagues, we first heard a fascinating lecture on the history and evolution of Roman law by Professor Laurent Mayali, Director of the Robbins Collection.

We then spent most of the day discussing selections from pre-assigned readings on Roman criminal law. We also discussed the formation of a new Roman Law Interest Group that we hope will meet on a regular basis. The goal of this group is to share ideas that will help the law librarian who gets very few Roman law questions each year, and who wants to learn more about the topic in a pressure-free setting. The next meeting will take place at the American Association of Law Libraries’ Annual Meeting in July 2009. We will discuss Jill Harries’ book, LAW AND CRIME IN THE ROMAN WORLD (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and will select the following year’s book as well. Everyone who plans to attend AALL’s Annual Meeting is encouraged to join us!

Many thanks to Lucia and her colleagues for sponsoring, organizing, and hosting such a fun and edifying event. Everyone who participated had a wonderful time!

New Arrival: Presentation Copy of Simon Greenleaf's Evidence Treatise

We just purchased a very special first edition of Simon Greenleaf's famous TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE in honor of Michael Morales, BC Law class of 2009 and collector of materials by and about Greenleaf. The volume will be on view in the Rare Book Room until early June 2009.

Simon Greenleaf presented this copy to his colleague and friend, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, with whom Greenleaf taught law at Harvard. The book is opened to Greenleaf’s presentation, which reads: "To / The Hon. Joseph Story / with the affectionate / regards of / S. Greenleaf". Greenleaf also dedicated the treatise to Story.

This copy is bound just as Justice Story must have received it. There appear to be two substantive annotations in the hand of Justice Story, one at the foot of page 32 and the other on the rear blank page. This book remained in Story's library until his death in 1845. It was sold at auction the following year.