Happy New Year and welcome to the January 2008 issue of Tarlton Student News. In this issue, find out more about Westlaw and Lexis training, recent acquisitions, and upcoming events. The Library continues to respond to student input in our efforts to meet your education, research and entertainment needs. I welcome your suggestions and look forward to working with all of you during the coming year.
Roy M. Mersky
Harry M. Reasoner Regents Chair in Law &
Director of Research
Ready for this semester’s research? In order to hone your research skills, the Library has arranged numerous classes on how to effectively conduct research for memos and briefs using Lexis and Westlaw. Check out the schedule and get a jump on your research training!
From January 28 to February 15, Westlaw and Lexis will offer memo research training classes focused on the research skills you need to effectively research the open memo problem in your Legal Research and Writing class.
From February 7 to February 21, Lexis and Westlaw will offer research training classes focused on effective research skills for brief writing.
Students are asked to sign up for the classes before attending.
Sign up for Lexis training here.
Sign up for Westlaw training here.
If you need assistance please contact one of the student representatives in the Library's 5th floor computer lab or contact your account representatives: Jaclyn Thompson (jaclyn.thompson@lexisnexis.com) for Lexis or Erin Boase (Erin.Boase@thomson.com) for Westlaw
The Tarlton Law Library presents its fourth Annual Rare Book Lecture, on Thursday February 21, at 3:30 p.m. in the Sheffield Room. This year's lecture, “Blackstone and His Contemporaries,” will be delivered by Anthony Taussig, the world’s leading private collector of rare English law books and manuscripts. Taussig’s collection is surpassed only by a small number of institutions in the US and Great Britain.
Based upon his years of collecting and research, Taussig questions some of the traditional views of Blackstone. His lecture will focus on Blackstone’s work as a barrister who specialized in advising members of the English aristocracy and other owners of wealth about financial matters. Taussig, who recently retired as a barrister, was called to the Bar in 1966. He is a member of both Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn, and he specializes in trust, tax, and real property law.
The lecture is open to the public. For more information, please contact Jennifer Cummings, Archives Assistant, (512/471-7263; jcummings@law.utexas.edu).
David McClure is the Library's newest Tarlton Fellow. The Tarlton Fellowship supports law school graduates who are pursuing graduate degrees in information science. David graduated from the University of Nebraska College of Law, where he was a member of Order of the Coif and executive editor of the Nebraska Law Review. David practiced law at King & Spalding in New York and at Woods & Aitken in Nebraska before deciding to pursue a degree in information science. He began his studies at the University of Texas School of Information this fall, and will be interning in the Library's public services department.
Carrel storage space is still available to 3L students. The carrel assignments extend a week beyond the July 2008 bar exam, so if you’re planning on study for the bar exam at Tarlton, it’s not too late to get a carrel space. An assigned carrel allows the student access only to the carrel’s locked bookcase. It is NOT an assignment of the carrel study space. To find out more about this program, check out http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/students/carrel.html.
On February 24th, 2004 Dr. Michael H. Hoeflich delivered the first Tarlton Law Library Rare Books Lecture, titled “Subscription Publishing and the Sale of Law Books in Antebellum America.” Professor Hoeflich’s lecture is the most recent publication of the Tarlton Law Library Legal History Series.
In his lecture, Hoeflich examines how the subscription method fulfilled both the unique professional needs of early American lawyers and economic restraints of publishers. Additionally, he emphasizes the importance of subscription law publications for legal historians. Hoeflich builds his case around several prominent subscription legal publications, including Bell’s Blackstone, Kirby’s Reports of Cases, Zephaniah Swift’s System of the Laws of Connecticut, Von Marten’s Summary, and Joshua Montefiore’s Commercial Dictionary.
Hoeflich, the John H. & John M. Kane Professor of Law and former dean of the University of Kansas School of Law, is an internationally recognized authority on legal history, Roman law, and the history of the legal profession. He has served as the editor of Roman Legal Tradition since 2002.
Trying to renew your books and realize you’ve forgotten your PIN? No problem. Your PIN is no longer required. You can now log in with your UT EID and EID password to renew books or access databases.
In response to student requests, the Library now has AC adapters for Sony Vaios and Toshibas laptops available for 24-hour loan at the Circulation Desk. These additions compliment our existing collection of adapters for Dell Latitudes and MacBooks.
Over the semester break, the desktop computers in the carrels outside the 5th Floor Computer Lab were replaced. The upgraded Dell Optiplex 745 computer should meet all of your computing needs.
The Samuel Peterson Diaries are the focus of Tarlton’s latest exhibit. Dr. Peterson, an adjunct professor of political science, taught at the University of Texas from fall 1904 through spring 1907. He left the University in 1907 to enter private practice with Otto Taub in Houston. His diaries, along with early volumes of The Cactus, the University of Texas yearbook, provide glimpses of university life at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Law School was the “Law Department,” law classes convened in the Old Main building, and offers of employment came in over the telegraph wire.
The Law in Popular Culture collection just keeps getting better with the addition of these DVDs for your viewing pleasure:
Bobby
Cautiva
Fracture
A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar
Shark: Season One
Enjoy some leisure reading with new titles from the Popular Reading Room, including:
Shalom Auslander, Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir
Megan Barnard, ed., Collecting the Imagination: The First Fifty Years of the Ransom Center
Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Don DeLillo, Falling Man
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Marc Falkoff, ed., Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak
Kinky Friedman, You Can Lead a Politician to Water, but You Can't Make Him Think: Ten Commandments for Texas Politics
Russell Lee, Russell Lee Photographs: Images from the Russell Lee Photograph Collection at the Center for American History
Irčne Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood
Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher
Philip Roth, Exit Ghost
The first five students to email the correct answer to Jane O'Connell (joconnell@law.utexas.edu) win a Tarlton Law Library mug.