break in the action

I bet you are asking, what action?
lessee:

Working Way too late the last 2 weeks. Work has been crazy busy and going to our Palo Alto office 3 times in 2 weeks was a bit much.

Saw the Dixie Chicks documentary (thanks to my sister) and totally enjoyed it. Went out to Borders yesterday and spent too much money on books and CDs. Bought the latest Dixie Chicks album even though I am not a country fan.

I had a gorgeous breakfast on Saturday at Citron in Berkeley on College. I was the first one in at that time, and had "corned beef hash" - french style. Excellent coffee, great service, wonderful food. I was happy most of the day after that!

Put anti-flea stuff on all the cats tonight and they are resentful and miserable. Not our friends right now, at all. Cats do miserable well. They hunch down, ears splayed, mournful expressions, and they run from you whenever you get with 5 feet. Tomorrow things should be fine, but right now, they are not happy.

I think I have little to say lately because I am immersed in the US Attorneys scandal, and when not reading about that on Talking Points Memorandum, Daily Kos or Salon.com, I'm reading law review articles about teaching legal research to summer associates. I haven't done this much "scholarly" reading since I was at CSU Monterey Bay. The thing about reading articles about a topic that you care about is that after about article five - you start feeling like it has all been said, and maybe your ideas really weren't that amazing after all. I feel kind of humbled and a little bit like um, who am I to think I can do anything meaningful since all these other people have been at this for far longer than I have been?

In addition, I swear, there is a reason we have no need to publish in private law libraries, because there is ABSOLUTELY no time for this stuff! Have the firm pay for me to spend all this time to come up with some program I'm not even sure they realize they need?

I did have more time to do this sort of thing in Academic libraries - endless pots of time. Acres of time. Right now all this research and reading is squeezed in during my beloved and precious private time. As soon as I start getting resentful, I'm not going to do this anymore.

So, if you are interested in this sort of thing, (unless you are involved in some area of law, you will find this BORING) here are the articles I have read so far:

39 Akron L Rev 151 (Excellent, glad I read this one first. Exactly!)
Forty-two: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Teaching Legal Research to the Google Generation, Gallacher, Ian, 39 Akron Law Rev 151 , 2006

95 Law Libr. J. 7 (I skimmed this one, no comment yet.)
Beyond Training: Law Librarianships Quest for the Pedagogy of Legal Research Education, Callister, Paul Douglas, 95 Law Libr. J. 7, Winter 2003

97 Law Libr. J. 257 (Daunting list!)
Do We Still Need Books? A Selected Annotated Bibliography
Paul E. Howard, Renee Y. Rastorfer

97 Law Libr. J. 661 (Yes, this is a BIG problem, but nobody realizes it is a problem.)
The Death of the Digest and the Pitfalls of Electronic Research: What Is the Modern Legal Researcher to Do?

(Nice program, doing well.)
Rebooting Our Approach to Teaching Research: One Writing Program's Leap Into the Computer Age, Brooklyn Law Legal Studies Research Papers Working Paper Series Research Paper No. 62, October 2006. This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection: http://ssrn.com/abstract=934688

(Interesting, but not exactly on point.)
Electronic copy of this paper is available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=969526
Unlocking the Secrets of Highly Successful Legal Writing Students, Anne M. Enquist © 2007.


55 Baylor L. Rev. 1 (Nice program. Nice overview, our problem is many don't have the experience of such a well-rounded program.)
Cordon, Matthew C., Beyond mere competency: advanced legal research in a practice-oriented curriculum., Baylor Law Review, 55, 1, 1-49, Baylor Law Review, WINTER, 2003.

62 Alb. L. Rev. 213 Boyle, Robin A. and Dunn, Ria, Teaching Law Students Through Individual Learning Styles., 1998.
(I just scanned this one. Interesting, but I'm pretty sure I don't have the time to develop differing learning situations. They only get 4 hours with me, and I'm lucky to have so much time with them.)

If you are still reading, you get major brownie points for the day. Cheers!