Book Signing at AALL

If you will be attending the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in Washington, DC next week, please join us for a book signing, hosted by the Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

I'll be at booth #1119 on Sunday July 26 from 9 to 10 a.m. to sign copies of my book, A Working Lawyer's Life: The Letter Book of John Henry Senter (1879-1884). Published by The Lawbook Exchange, the book draws upon unique manuscript material in the collection of the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room.

It would be great to see a lot of folks there, so please join us!

The Making of a Collector

On page 4 of the spring/summer issue of BC Law Magazine is an article featuring Michael Morales, BC Law class of 2009 and collector of works by and about Simon Greenleaf. We recently featured an exhibit of Michael's Greenleaf collection in the Rare Book Room. Congratulations, Michael!

(Note: scroll to page 6 of the PDF to find the article, or do a "find" search for "Morales.")

Rare Book Room Closed June 8-12

The Room will be closed the week of June 8-12 for exhibit and collection maintenance work. While the room will be unavailable for tours and visits, we can make arrangements if you need to view an item in our collection - so please get in touch.

Last Chance to See Our Current Exhibit!

Our current exhibit, "A Law Student Collects: Simon Greenleaf and Michael Morales," will close at 1 pm on Friday June 5. If you have not already seen it, please stop by this week to say a fond farewell.

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!