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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Recently, Prof. Fajans and Librarian Kathy Darvil ran their semi-annual workshop on how to research and write a seminar paper. Topics covered included sources for selecting your topic, sources for researching your topic, and how to effectively organize and write your paper. If you were 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 landing page, you will be able to access a recording of this year’s 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.
On the eve of the midterms, you might want to bone up on your knowledge of United States election law. The Brooklyn Law School Library maintains a deep collection of election law titles that discuss and analyze a variety of issues from gerrymandering to campaign finance laws to the Voting Rights Act. To see a full list of titles on the subject of election law, search the SARA catalog for the subject “election law”. Some of our more recent titles are listed below.
Last month, the Library of Congress launched an online searchable database of Congressional Research Service reports (CRS reports). CRS reports are written by experts in a particular field. They present a legislative perspective on topics such as agriculture policy, banking regulation, the environment, veteran’s affairs, etc. Founded over a century ago, the Congressional Research Service’s purpose is to provide Congress with authoritative and confidential research and analysis on the issues before both chambers. The reports used to be available for a fee, but the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 changed that. The Act directs the Library of Congress to make CRS reports publicly available online. You can access the CRS Reports at crsreports.congress.gov
I ran a couple of test searches on the platform. A search of the term “environment” retrieved 93 results. A search for the term “trade” retrieved 102 results. Like other online tools, there are filters on the left you can use to narrow your result list. These filters include: topics, authors, and date. You can also search within your results to retrieve a more refined list.
On Thursday September 20th, Prof. Fajans and Librarian Kathy Darvil are holding their semi-annual workshop on how to research and write a seminar paper in Room 402. 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.
This Summer many of you will be challenged to research and write on unfamiliar legal issues. You want to impress your supervisors, but you do not know where to begin or how to best approach the problem. The Brooklyn Law School Library’s research guides are a good place to start. The resources in the guides are curated by librarians to specifically support the subject surveyed. Listed below are a few guides that can help you tackle your assignments. For the complete list of the 49 research guides, go to the url: guides.brooklaw.edu.
Also, do not forget to reach out to BLS librarians for additional help. You can email us at askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu, call us at 718-780-7567, text us at 718-734-2432, or chat with us using a widget on the Library’s home page. We are here all summer.
New York Civil Litigation Research Guide: This guide’s purpose is to aid practitioners and law students in researching New York civil practice. The guide identifies key civil practice resources, and provides search tips and strategies.
New York Criminal Procedure Research Guide: This research guide is intended to provide users with links to a variety of resources on New York State and Federal Criminal Procedure. These sources cover a wide range of topics.
Form Books: In print and online: This is a guide to form books in print and online in the BLS Library collection. Legal forms are templates that attorneys use in drafting documents specific to the needs of their clients or are forms required to be used by a court or governmental agency. Forms are found online in various databases, and in print in collections of form books.
Intellectual Property Law Primer: This guide will help you research Intellectual Property law which includes Patents, Trademarks and Copyright. It will focus on materials available in the Brooklyn Law School library, including books, journals, and databases, in print and electronic format. Access to some of these materials may require your BLS user name and password, as well as Lexis or Westlaw ID and passwords.
