RSVP: https://calendly.com/kathleen-darvil/library-tour?month=2021-08

In honor of National Library Week and all the exciting adventures that books take us on, the library is highlighting a few resources that explore the adventures to be had in New York City. So, now that the weather is warming up, you can have some socially distant fun.

Compilations of New York City Events and Places to Explore:

• The Official New York City Guide to Annual Events
• Timeout New York: Things to Do in NYC This Weekend
• Timeout New York: Cheap Things to Do in NYC
• Atlas Obscura Things to Do in Brooklyn

Arts in New York City:

• Summer Outdoor Performances in NYC
• New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Park
• Broadway in Bryant Park
• Moma at PS1
• Restart Stages at Lincoln Center

Outdoor Events and Adventures in New York City:

• New York City Parks: Places to Go
• Brooklyn Bridge Park
• The Highline
• Baylander Steel Beach
• Governors Island
• Open Streets: Open Restaurants
• Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Flushing Meadows Park
• Coney Island Fun Guide
• New York City Ferry’s: Explore New York City’s Waterfront and Beaches

If you are struggling with selecting a topic, researching that topic, or developing a thesis on that topic, take a deep breath because help is out there. Professor Betsy Fajans and Librarian Kathy Darvil have created online video tutorials on four topics: developing your thesis, plagiarism, selecting a topic, and researching that topic. You can access the videos at guides.brooklaw.edu/seminarpaper.

From the guide’s main page, you can access the video tutorials, Professor Fajans’ slideshow on how to write your seminar paper, and Kathy Darvil’s online presentation on how to research your seminar paper. Also, included on the online guide are descriptions and links to a variety of the library’s resources that can help you either select your paper topic or research it. If you should need further help selecting or researching your topic, please email the reference desk at askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu.

During the reading and exam period you must make a reservation to use a library study room.  Mandatory study room reservations begin on Thursday, December 5 at 8:00 am; at that time, all study rooms will be locked, and you must go to the first-floor circulation desk to charge out the key to the room at the time of your reservation.  The link to the study room reservations is on the library webpage.

The reading and exam period is from Thursday, December 5 through Friday, December 20, 2019.

Study Room Policies:

• Study rooms are for the use of groups of two or more students.
• Study rooms may be reserved for the current day and three days ahead.
• Study rooms may be reserved in 30-minute time slots; your time slots must be contiguous.
• You may book up to 8 contiguous time slots (use the grid to select your start time and use the drop-down box to select your end time).
• Study room use is limited to 4 hours per user per day to ensure availability for all users.
• You must use your brooklaw.edu email address to reserve a study room.
• Study rooms are subject to availability and reservations may be modified by library staff at any time.

Hours for the Reading & Exam Period:

• Thursday, December 5 – Thursday, December 20:  8:00 am – 2:00 am.
• Friday, December 21:  9:00 am – 5:00 pm.
• The circulation desk will close at 12:00 am from December 5 – 20.
• The library will close for Winter Break at 5 pm on Friday, December 21 and reopen on Wednesday, January 2, 2019.

Reminders About Noise & Food in the Library:

• Please keep your voices down in reading rooms and study rooms.  Your colleagues are also studying.
• If you need a space for discussion, the collaboration areas are: the Bernsen reference & reading room (1st floor), the library lounge (1st mezzanine), the Nash reading room (3rd floor) and the study rooms.
• Our food policy allows for light snacks in the library.  Light snacks are foods such as those generally dispensed in vending machines: candy, cookies, chips, pretzels, donuts, bagels, etc. — food which can be easily eaten dry and with the hands. No plates or bowls of food which require utensils. No fast foods such as pizza, burgers, etc., which can be messy and odorous. The library reserves the right to determine which food items are acceptable and which are not appropriate for library consumption.
• Brooklyn Law School is a smoke and tobacco free campus.  Smoking or vaping is not permitted anywhere in the school, which includes the library.  If you have any questions, please read Brooklyn Law School’s Smoke and Tobacco Free Policy on BLSConnect.
  

Good Luck on Your Exams & Happy Holidays!

Starting this week, the Library will be hosting a series of 10 minute talks during Wednesday’s lunch time hour (12:45-1:45pm).  These quick talks will be held in the alcove of the newly renovated Library first floor.  We are calling these sessions, Alcove Academy, and they will be focused on quick tips, tools and best practices for conducting research and using technology.   Occurring every other week, the Fall Alcove Academy will inform you on how to conduct docket research, how to format your Bluebook citations, and quick tips on digital security. 

Fall Semester Dates:

Oct. 23: Researching with Dockets

Nov. 6: Bluebooking Academy

Nov. 20: Digital Security Quick Tips

On Wednesday, September 18, Prof. Fajans and Librarian Kathy Darvil will be running their semi-annual workshop on how to research and write a seminar paper in Room 908A.  The workshop is from 4-5:30 PM. Topics covered include sources for selecting your topic, sources for researching your topic, and strategies for effectively organizing and writing your paper.  If you are unable to attend the workshop, you can access an online research guide which contains a recording of the workshop, links to and descriptions of all the research sources discussed, and the writing and research presentations.  The online guide is available at guides.brooklaw.edu/seminarpaper.  From the guide’s main page, you can access the recording of the presentation, Professor Fajans’ slideshow on how to write your seminar paper, and Kathy Darvil’s online presentation on how to research your seminar paper.  If you should need further help selecting or researching your topic, please stop by the reference desk for assistance.

The Brooklyn Law School Library is happy to announce that it recently obtained a site license that provides access to the New York Times for all faculty, staff, and students.  Our license will give you access via the website, https://www.nytimes.com/, as well as the NY Times apps for phones and tablets.

To register, go to https://nytimesineducation.com/access-nyt/, choose Brooklyn Law School from the drop-down, and then follow the instructions to register.  For your initial registration, you must either be on campus or go through our proxy server AND you must use your Brooklyn Law School email account to register.  Once you have registered, you can use your login name and password to access the site from anywhere.  Each year you will need to login from on-campus or using the proxy server in order to keep your access active.

Note that our access does not include e-reader editions, crossword puzzles, or the cooking app – those still need to be purchased separately.

If you have questions, send an email to askthelibrary@brookaw.edu.

Kudos to you all! After commencement, you may be ready to leave BLS, but BLS will not leave you.  Brooklyn Law School offers many services to its alumni.  2019 graduates can access the BLS network and are able to print until August of the year following graduation.  For May 2019 graduates, you have access until August 2020.   

In addition, graduates can register for Westlaw’s Grad Elite program.  The Grad Elite “Practice-Ready” program provides access to Westlaw Edge and other practice tools for 18 months post-graduation, for up to 60 hours each month. These hours can be used for work-related research.  Through this program, you can research using Westlaw Edge, Practical Law, Drafting Assistant Essential, and Westlaw Doc & Form Builder.

To register for this program, log in to your existing Westlaw account and click on the Practice Ready Solution link in the screen’s upper right-hand corner.  On the Practice Ready page, you will see a link for graduates to extend their access.

Besides access to Westlaw for 18 months post-graduation, Brooklyn Law School Alumni Association members have unlimited access to the library’s print resources and limited access to certain digital resources for research purposes while in the library.  Books, however, cannot be checked out.

While in the library, members have access to LexisNexis Academic, a stripped down version of Lexis.  LexisNexis Academic contains federal and state case law, statutes, and regulations.  It also has a limited run of law reviews, and features Shepards.  To use the database, go to the library home page, select Complete Database List, and then select LexisNexis Academic.

Finally, if you ever run into a research quandary, remember you can call, (718) 780-7567, or email, askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu, the reference desk.  Reference librarians are here to help!

As you have undoubtedly read, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign coordinated or colluded with the Russian government in its election interference activities.   What the investigation did establish was that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 Presidential election.  The report described Russia’s two prong approach to election interference: spreading disinformation through social media; and hacking into computers to gather and to disseminate information to influence the election.   If you are interested in learning more about disinformation campaigns and their influence on society, the library has several resources for you. Listed below are a few of those titles.

Robert N. Spicer, Free Speech & False Speech: Political Deception & It’s Legal Limits (or Lack Thereof) (2018).

This book examines the history of the legal discourse around political falsehood and its future in the wake of the 2012 US Supreme Court decision in United States v. Alvarez through communication law, political philosophy, and communication theory perspectives. As United States v. Alvarez confirmed First Amendment protection for lies, Robert N. Spicer addresses how the ramifications of that decision function by looking at statutory and judicial handling of First Amendment protection for political deception. Illustrating how commercial speech is regulated but political speech is not, Spicer evaluates the role of deception in politics and its consequences for democracy in a contemporary political environment where political personalities, partisan media, and dark money donors bend the truth and abuse the virtue of free expression

Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy (Larry Diamond et al. eds., 2016).

Over the past decade, illiberal powers have become emboldened and gained influence within the global arena. Leading authoritarian countries—including China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—have developed new tools and strategies to contain the spread of democracy and challenge the liberal international political order. Meanwhile, the advanced democracies have retreated, failing to respond to the threat posed by the authoritarians.

As undemocratic regimes become more assertive, they are working together to repress civil society while tightening their grip on cyberspace and expanding their reach in international media. These political changes have fostered the emergence of new counter-norms—such as the authoritarian subversion of credible election monitoring—that threaten to further erode the global standing of liberal democracy.

In Authoritarianism Goes Global, a distinguished group of contributors present fresh insights on the complicated issues surrounding the authoritarian resurgence and the implications of these systemic shifts for the international order. This collection of essays is critical for advancing our understanding of the emerging challenges to democratic development.

Jukka Rislakki, The Case for Latvia. Disinformation Campaigns Against a Small Nation: Fourteen Hard Questions and Straight Answers about a Baltic Country (2014).

Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges spread by Russian media and provides an outline of Latvia’s recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland’s largest daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

Paul Todd, Jonathan Bloch & Patrick Fitzgerald, Spies, Lies, and the War on Terror (2009).

This book traces the transformation of intelligence from a tool for law enforcement to a means of avoiding the law–both national and international. The “War on Terror” has seen intelligence agencies emerge as major political players. “Rendition,” untrammeled surveillance, torture and detention without trial are becoming normal. The new culture of victimhood in the US and among partners in the “coalition of the willing” has crushed domestic liberties and formed a global network of extra-legal license. State and corporate interests are increasingly fused in the new business of privatizing fear. The authors argue that the bureaucracy and narrow political goals surrounding intelligence actually have the potential to increase the terrorist threat.

Robert B. Laughlin, The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind (2008).

According to Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin, acquiring information is becoming a danger or even a crime. Increasingly, the really valuable information is private property or a state secret, with the result that it is now easy for a flash of insight, entirely innocently, to infringe a patent or threaten national security. The public pays little attention because this vital information is “technical”—but, Laughlin argues, information is often labeled technical so it can be sequestered, not sequestered because it’s technical. The increasing restrictions on information in such fields as cryptography, biotechnology, and computer software design are creating a new Dark Age: a time characterized not by light and truth but by disinformation and ignorance. Thus, we find ourselves dealing more and more with the Crime of Reason, the antisocial and sometimes outright illegal nature of certain intellectual activities.