BLS Library Blog

If you want to say hello while fixing a pumpkin spice coffee, register for prizes, learn about free newspaper subscriptions and/or need help with research: visit BLS librarians and vendor representatives at today's LIBRARYFEST!    

Seeking your next great read?  Convo with thought-provoking authors?  Fun projects and performances for kids?  Grab a “Smashing Pumpkin” from Gregory’s Coffee on Court St. and visit the 2024 Brooklyn Book Festival!  A digital guide to this weeklong Festival (Sept. 22 – 30, 2024) will be available through the free Bloomberg Connects arts and culture app.

Everyone can be a part of Virtual Festival Day on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024 (noon – 5 pm).  Whether you seek a new food book (panel: Memory & Flavor: An Expansive Vision of Food & Recipe Writing) or a recent book from an international author (program: Who? New! International), there will be a virtual program to engage you.

Brooklyn Law School will host one of the Festival’s Bookend Events on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024: Protect Your People: Challenging Mass Incarceration Together (RSVP required for this free event.) 

• This event will highlight the recent book Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration (The New Press, 2024).  

• The event will feature: Raj Jayadev, the book's author and a MacArthur Fellow, Heather Lewis, Executive Director of the Reuniting Family Bail Fund, and Justine “Taz” Moore, Director of Training at the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.  These speakers will converse with Brooklyn Law School Professor & Associate Dean Jocelyn Simonson, author of Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People are Dismantling Mass Incarceration (The New Press, 2023). As noted here, this program will highlight “the innovative storytelling techniques of groups of people who have changed the outcomes of criminal cases by intervening collectively through ‘participatory defense.’”  Brooklyn Law School's Center for Criminal Justice is a sponsor of this event.

  • Date & Time: Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm  
  • Place:  Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon St., Brooklyn, NY

This Festival’s Children’s Day will be on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024 from 10 am – 4 pm in Brooklyn Commons (= MetroTech in downtown Brooklyn). 

• Activities will include: 

  • Goosebumps & Beyond: A Spooky Conversation with R.L. Stine

  •  Mad Libs: Graphic Novel Edition!

  • Puppet Making Workshop with writer Vojtěch Mašek

  • A gameshow, Are You Smarter than an Author?, in which participants can test their skills against middle grade novelists.

Festival Day & Literary Marketplace will be on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024 from 10 am - 6 pm.  It features local, national and international authors, publishers and vendors. Many of these programs will occur in Brooklyn Law School and in our “front yard”: Brooklyn Borough Hall.   Click here to view the many authors participating in Festival Day.  

These are two of many Sept. 29, 2024 Festival Day events that will occur at Brooklyn Law School (w/ links to entries for the authors' books in BLS Library's catalog):  

Dreaming of Freedom: How We Move Beyond an Expanding Police State 

• Brooklyn Book Festival's program description: "With 'robot dogs' at the border, automated surveillance, and arbitrary decisions controlling probation and parole, a system of policing and punishment seems less concerned with fairness or safety than with social control. What does it all have to do with justice?"  Program participants will be: sociologist Ruha Benjamin (author of Imagination: A Manifesto), journalist Ben Austen (Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change), and lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar (The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence). The moderator will be Vincent Schiraldi, former Probation Commissioner of New York City and author of Mass Supervision: Probation, Parole, and the Illusion of Safety and Freedom. 

  • Date & Time: Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, 4 pm 
  • Place:  Brooklyn Law School, Moot Court Room, 250 Joralemon St., Brooklyn, NY 

Debt, Solidarity, and Economic Justice presented by Brooklyn Law School 

• Brooklyn Book Festival's program description: "A conversation about the legal, political, and economic forces shaping debt markets and horizons for change and the abolition of debt featuring: Luke Messac (Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine), Chrystin Ondersma (Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice), Melissa Jacoby (Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal) and Astra Taylor (co-author of Solidarity: The Past, Present, And Future Of A World-Changing Idea and founder of the Debt Collective).  Moderated by Vijay Raghavan, Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School."
  • Date & Time: Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, 5 pm 
  • Place:  Brooklyn Law School, Moot Court Room, 250 Joralemon St., Brooklyn, NY

See you at the Festival!

The BLS Library staff welcomes new and returning students to school for the 2024-2025 academic year.  We are here to help in whatever way we can with your print and electronic use of the Library.

You may borrow reserve and circulating books from the first floor Circulation Desk.  Also, there are now more ways than ever to ask for reference and research assistance from Reference Librarians.

• Visit the Reference Librarian on Duty in the third floor Nash reading room
• Email: askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu  
• Text: (718) 734-2432
• Chat: Visit the library homepage and click on our chat icon (see below) – or get started by clicking here – you’ll be chatting with a friendly librarian in no time!

Good Luck in the fall semester!  We look forward to seeing you in the Library!

As we approach the start of a new academic year, I’m excited to welcome our new students and welcome back our returning students on behalf of the library team, who have been busy preparing to support your success in the months ahead. Below you will find important information about casebooks and study aids to help you get ready for your first week of classes, ensuring you start the semester on the right foot.

CASEBOOK INFORMATION

Current editions of required print casebooks adopted by BLS faculty & many print study aids are in BLS Library’s first-floor “Reserve” collection.  Students can borrow these sources for 2-hours at BLS Library’s first-floor circulation desk.  The circulation desk is staffed starting at 8am M-F, and availability of adopted course texts is often good on early weekday mornings.  Also, the BLS student chapter of the National Lawyers Guild organizes a textbook exchange, and BLS students can contact this chapter at nlg@brooklaw.edu

• More information on the casebooks and study aids available through the BLS Library can be found here: https://guides.brooklaw.edu/course_bar_prep/introduction
• Information on casebooks and study aids specifically for  incoming 1L students can be found here: https://guides.brooklaw.edu/1l/casebooks_study_aids

If your textbook publisher is West Academic or Foundation Press:

• Brooklyn Law School opted in to West Academic’s Early eBook Access Program. This program provides BLS students free, temporary access to adopted West Academic and Foundation Press ebooksone week before classes start and for the first two weeks of class.  It is designed to help with any inventory, shipping, financial aid, or drop/add period issues. Access is available starting today.
  • You can create an account or sign in with your school email address at eproducts.westacademic.com. Full instructions for access are available here.  Students who experience any issues or have specific questions can contact the account manager for Brooklyn Law School: Dan Madonna, Dan.Madonna@WestAcademic.com.
  • “If students would like to continue their access after the trial ends, they have the option to purchase a discounted eBook on their bookshelf.A 15% discount will be applied at checkout and all notes and highlights will appear when they sign in.”

If your casebook publisher is Aspen Publishing:

• Aspen Publishing created a BLS-specific purchase portal, so that all BLS students (not just those new to Aspen) can obtain a 15% discount on their orders of educator-selected Aspen course texts, regardless of format.
  • If your purchase your Aspen text using this portal, you will receive temporary access to the digital copy while you await delivery of your physical copy.
  • You can purchase your course materials by searching a course number or a professor’s name, clicking on the “View Course Titles” button, and adding the corresponding products to your cart.  
  • In order for this discount to be applied at checkout, create an account on Aspen Publishing.com using your BLS email address, then verify the BLS email address.  (No coupon code needed.)  Verification is most often done at the time of creating an account but can also be done on the My Account page when logged in.  Any unverified account will see an “Email Address Not Verified” warning on the My Account page.
  • If you experience any issues, Aspen Publishing.com provides both “Visit Our Help Center” and “Contact Us” links (near bottom of web page).
  • Note: This portal facilitates purchase of current editions of Aspen course texts.  If your professor has selected a previous edition of a course text, the discount is not available using this portal.

STUDY AID INFORMATION

BLS students can also access a digital collection of many study aids in Aspen Learning Library (In BLS Library’s SARA catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION – (ASPEN)).

• Aspen Learning Library includes titles in the series listed below.  Descriptions of these series and a study guide series comparison chart is available here.
  • Emanuel Law Outlines/Emanuel CrunchTime; 
  • Examples & Explanations; 
  • Friedman’s Practice; 
  • Glannon Guides; 
  • Inside Series; & 
  • In Other Words Audio & Video Series. 
• Tip: Remote access to Aspen Learning Library requires implementation of the BLS proxy server instructions for one web browser.  Librarians recommend implementing the proxy instructions for Firefox.
• Need initial help implementing the BLS proxy instructions?  Email: library.lab@brooklaw.edu . 

More information on the casebooks and study aids available through the BLS Library can be found here

• Guide with information about casebooks and study aids available for upper level courses: https://guides.brooklaw.edu/course_bar_prep/introduction
• Guide with information about casebooks and study aids available 1L students courses: https://guides.brooklaw.edu/1l/casebooks_study_aids

This Thursday (April 11) at 1 pm on the first floor of BLS Library, BLS Reference Librarians/Adjunct Professors of Law Loreen Peritz and Sue Silverman will offer a program on free sources for legal research. To accompany their program, Loreen Peritz also created this publicly-accessible research guide: Sources of Free Legal Research. Knowledge of reputable free sources can help you to conduct cost-effective research. Refreshments will be served at this program!

Also, our staff noticed that the two bulletin boards for student announcements of BLS events (located outside of BLS Library’s Nash reading room, by the third floor main elevators) were often overflowing with notices. So, there are now additional bulletin boards for your announcements. There are signs on the two center bulletin boards stating: This Week: Events. BLS students can place announcements about the current week’s BLS events on these two central boards.  Students can place signs about BLS events occurring farther in the future (or events that might not have a specific date) on the additional bulletin boards.

Happy National Library Week!

Below is a description of a free, half-hour Zoom program tracing the history of languages in New York City. This program requires free online registration. Note: BLS Library is purchasing multi-user electronic access to Ross Perlin's new book, Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York. (We expect the vendor to provide us with access to this ebook within a few days.)

Free Talk at noon today: Live From New Amsterdam: Language City (via Zoom):

Featuring: Ross Perlin & Russell Shorto    

The description of this program at New York Historical Society’s website states: “Four centuries ago, what had been a Lenape-speaking archipelago suddenly became New Amsterdam—a crossroads of Native American, European, and African cultures. Here, 18 languages were reported as being spoken within the first few decades, and the number is likely far greater. Join Ross Perlin, author of the new book Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, and Russell Shorto [director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New-York Historical Society] as they trace this history of language and how it set the template for the city’s extraordinary transformation into one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world.”

Also, New York Historical Society has a new installation: New York Before New York: The Castello Plan of New Amsterdam.  New York Historical Society states it offers “pay as you wish” admission on Friday evenings from 6-8 pm.  (NYHS generally charges students $13 for admission.)  Also, beginning on April 1 at midnight, those with Brooklyn, New York or Queens Public Library cards will be able to try to reserve one of the limited number of free “Culture Passes” offering free admission to New York Historical Society.  (Each month, a new group of Culture Passes becomes available.)  

Today we are highlighting new and updated library research guides to support our patrons’ work during the spring 2024 semester:

Animal Law – updated to support students’ research in Prof. Rodriguez’s Animal Law course.

Housing Justice – developed to support the BLS Housing Justice clinic and seminar, supervised by Prof. Barry.

Law and Capitalism – created to support students’ research in Prof. Winsberg’s Law and Capitalism in U.S. History course.

Native American Law – created to support students’ research in Prof. Benally’s Native American Law course.

Pension Benefits and Executive Compensation – updated to support students’ research in Prof. Neumark’s Pension and Executive Compensation course.

Researching Mass Incarceration and Prison Abolition – updated to support students’ research in Prof. Hoag-Fordjour’s course: Abolition: Imagining a Decarceral Future.

Note: BLS librarians have created 50+ research guides to support your work, and we encourage you to submit your research questions through email: askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu and text: 718-734-2432.