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.

A Celebration in the Rare Book Room!

On April 27, 2009, colleagues, friends, and family assembled to celebrate our current exhibit, "A Law Student Collects: Simon Greenleaf and Michael Morales." The exhibit features Morales' collection of rare books and manuscripts by and about 19-century lawyer, law teacher, and scholar Simon Greenleaf. Michael, who will graduate this spring with a JD from BC Law and an MA from BC's Lynch School of Education, curated the exhibit with Karen Beck, BC Law's Curator of Rare Books / Collection Development Librarian.

The event was extra festive because it coincided with the last day of law school classes. Congratulations to Michael on his collection (of rare books as well as advanced degrees!), and many thanks for sharing them with us. And special thanks to Joe Breda for taking terrific pictures of the event!

New Gift Books from Professor Coquillette

Professor Daniel R. Coquillette, J. Donald Monan S.J. University Professor at the Boston College Law School, has given the Law Library several sets of historical, literary and reference works, and three rare historical studies of Doctors’ Commons. The collection complements a gift of classical, historic, and literary works belonging to the late Frank Williams Oliver and given to the Library in 2008 by his widow Andrée Oliver.

Included in the gift is a beautiful leather-bound thirteen-volume Encyclopedia Americana: A Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics, and Biography, dated 1846. Besides providing a window into all areas of life in the mid-nineteenth century, this set is particularly valuable to legal historians because it includes many law-related articles written by Joseph Story, an early Supreme Court Justice and Professor at Harvard Law School.

Literary works include a Victorian edition of the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1899) and a magnificent limited-edition eighteen-volume set of The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1899), featuring charts, illustrations, engravings, and two-color red and green title pages. Both of these works are replete with references to lawyers and the effects of law on the lives of everyday people.

Completing the gift are three historical studies of Doctors’ Commons, the British society of civil law practitioners in the Admiralty and ecclesiastical courts, which existed from 1495 to 1858. Two works deal with the demise of Doctors’ Commons, and one anonymous work, The Proctor and Parator, or Lamentation of the Doctors Commons for their Downfall, is an extremely rare comic play “relating the fearful abuses and exorbitancies of those spirituall courts.” These special books complement works purchased from the Library of Doctors’ Commons and given to the Law Library by Professor Coquillette in previous years.

Our warmest thanks to Professor Coquillette for his generosity to the library and his enthusiasm for special collections!

Now Open Expanded Hours

Effective immediately, we are now open an hour later in the afternoon: Monday - Friday 9 to 5. Come visit us!

This Just In: William Donnison's Legal Account Book

We recently acquired the legal account book of William Donnison of Boston, Massachusetts. Between 1810 and 1822, Donnison kept records of the legal work he performed for people, as well as a list of his Boston dwellings and office locations. The notebook is 124 pages long, bound in thick paper wrappers, and is in very good condition. Among the Boston luminaries mentioned in his entries is John Quincy Adams.