Monthly Archives: November 2008

New book: A Leadership Primer for New Librarians

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Chandos Publishing  recently released a guide for new LIS graduates,  ”A Leadership Primer for New Librarians: tools for helping today’s early-career librarians become tomorrow’s library leaders.” Authors are S. Byke and D.L. Lowe-Wincentsen.  Hat tip to the Gaunt slips.

A Leadership Primer for New Librarians: tools for helping today’s early-career librarians become tomorrow’s library leaders

Chandos Publishing, 2008

http://chandospublishing.com/chandos_publishing_record_detail.php?ID=218

ISBN: 9781843344193

Summary

This book provides strategies and practical tips for leadership development in the field of librarianship. With the increase of both new graduates entering the field and upcoming retirements, there is a foreseeable gap in library leadership. Many early-career librarians will move into roles they are not ready for and others will find themselves having to lead without being in traditional leadership roles. This book offers suggestions for librarians facing these challenging new circumstances. The book shows how to create leadership opportunities when none appear to be present, how to take charge of your own professional development, and how to become an effective follower as well as an effective leader. The book helps the reader to recognize and take advantage of the leadership opportunities set before them

 

Table of Contents

Introduction

What you didn’t learn in your LIS program

Becoming a leader even if you aren’t in a leadership position

Why follower isn’t a dirty word

Setting yourself apart

Self promotion

The next steps

The Toolbox

 

 

Access to Information as a Human Right

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“Access to Information as a Human Right”

KAY MATHIESEN, University of Arizona

Information rights include rights to create and communicate information (e.g., freedom of expression, freedom of association), to control others’ access to information (e.g., privacy and intellectual property), and rights to access information (e.g., freedom of thought, the right to read). This paper focuses on those rights related to free access to information and argues that access to information is indeed a fundamental human right. It is further argued that the right to access is not merely a liberty right, but also a welfare right. That is, individuals’ information rights place duties on governments to provide access to information.

Source: LSN Information Privacy Law Vol. 1 No. 20,  11/25/2008

Article on Islamic environmental law in Arab countries

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The latest issue of the journal, Saudi Aramco World, offers a brief article on the use of Islamic law principles to conserve land in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. 

Excerpts from the article:

 

“With one eye to this Islamic past, and another to the environmental challenges of the present, some Middle Eastern conservationists and environmental planners are looking to the ancient model of the hima to address the modern problem of preserving threatened habitat throughout the region.”

 

“Instead of cutting people off from the land, as in a formal protected area, himas encourage traditional uses that are compatible with or contribute to the environmental health of a site”

 

“The overall goal is to fuse traditional practices with recent developments in conservation science as a way to achieve sustainable development “

A Tradition of Conservation

Tom Verde

Photographs by Pascal Beaudenon

Saudi Aramco World

Vol.59 #6 pp10-16. (November 2008)

 

The article is available online at:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200806/

 

USG Plum Book for 2008 is Available

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The Plum Book (United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions): 2008 Edition is now available.

It is published after each presidential election by, alternately,  the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

It contains data (as of September 1, 2008) on over 7,000 Federal Government Civil Service leadership and support positions in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointment (e.g., positions such as agency heads and their immediate subordinates, policy executives and advisors, and aides who report to these officials). The duties of many such positions may involve advocacy of Administration policies and programs and the incumbents usually have a close and confidential working relationship with the agency head or other key officials.

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek – Electronic Journals Library

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A consortium of German university libraries, led by the University Library of Regensburg, maintains the Electromic Journals Library (Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek ). This Web site provides links to online journals organized by topic, one of which is law. The law category contains hundreds of  journals in dozens of languages. The site conveniently indicates which journals provide free content and those that charge per article. Vielen dank to our German colleagues for this useful journal resource.

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (German Interface)

http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=de

Electronic Journals Library (English interface)

http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en

Law Library Journal (Fall 2008): “Schoolhouse Rock is No Longer Enough”

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The latest issue of Law Library Journal [vol. 100, no. 4, Fall 2008] has an interesting piece by I-Wei Wang, Reference Librarian, University of California Berkeley, School of Law Library titled “Schoolhouse Rock is No Longer Enough: The Presidential Signing Statements Controversy and Its Implications for Library Professionals.” The particularly aggressive use by President George W. Bush of  signing statements as a form of “don’t veto, don’t obey” action (dubbed by some, including the article’s author, as OPSS or “objecting presidential signing statements”) certainly — among other things — casts some doubt on the continued use of the simple and direct Schoolhouse Rock musical cartoon video “I’m Just a Bill” to accurately convey the federal lawmaking process as concluding when the President either vetoes or signs a bill into law.

Japanese Law Librarians Blog

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Takako Okada has created an English language blog dedicated to Japanese legal research called “Japanese Law Librarians Blog.” Ms. Okada is a law librarian at Keio University Library.  This promises to be a great resource for tracking developments in Japan. For example, her latest post mentions a site that offers Japanese legislation in English. Domo arigato gozaimas to Takako Okada for this useful new blog.

Japanese Law Librarians Blog

http://www.japaneselawlibrarian.blogspot.com/

This has GOT to stop

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The Stanford Law Library is facing a certain budget cut next year.  And, due to the “smoothing” of our budget allocation (each year’s payout is based upon a 3 year average), no matter what happens to the economy, the following year will see a budget cut too.  It won’t be easy.   So what to cut?  Some publishers are actually making the decision for us.  For example, take a look at the annual cost of the NYU Annual Conference on Labor (published by Kluwer Law International):

Vol. 51 – $ 178.00

Vol. 52 – $ 293.00

Vol. 53 – $ 365.00

Vol. 54 – $ 441.00

 

Can we live without the NYU Annual Conference on Labor?  We have no choice.  In my opinion, it would financially irresponsible of us to continue the subscription.

The Quality of Legal Dictionaries: An Assessment

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Earlier Sergio wrote about an “article on evaluating English-Spanish legal dictionaries.”  Now, from the Legal Scholarship Network, comes notice of this new article:

“The Quality of Legal Dictionaries: An Assessment“

R. DE GROOT, University of Maastricht

CONRAD VAN LAER, University of Maastricht

In this article, the quality of the different bilingual legal dictionaries between the languages of the Member States of the European Union will be assessed. In order to do so, some general remarks will be made first about problems with translating legal terminology. Based on those remarks, criteria for reliable bilingual dictionaries will be formulated in the next section. Finally, these criteria will be applied on the available bilingual dictionaries containing the legal language used by one or more EU Member States. To illustrate this, we have attached an updated bibliography encompassing about 200 recently published bilingual and multilingual legal dictionaries in the European Union.

The bibliography in the Annex will be the evidence for our final conclusion that most legal dictionaries must be classified as a word list, which implies here that they are of dubious quality. To date, few legal dictionaries have attempted to meet our criteria. Dictionaries that are based on comparative legal research, on the other hand, offer advantages that render them useful to professional translators.

 

Source: LSN Comparative Law Vol. 8 No. 127,  11/11/2008