BLS Library Blog - Guides at Brooklyn Law School

Enjoy Spooky Coffee, Convo, Giveaways & Snacks w/ BLS Librarians & Vendors @ today's LIBRARYFEST!

09/26/2024

Jean Davis

Legal research - United States, Brooklyn Law School Library

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!

A poster of a library

Description automatically generated

Freed Between the Lines: Banned Book Week at BLS

09/25/2024

Kathleen Darvil

No Subjects

This week is National Banned Book Week (September 22-28, 2024). Started in 1982, Banned Book Week began as a response to a sudden surge in the number of challenged books in libraries, school, and bookstores. This annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information. In 2023, American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom tracked 1247 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries, which is an increase of 65% from the year before. The American Library Association’s theme this year is Freed Between the Lines. The theme highlights what is at risk—the freedom to explore new ideas and different perspectives. To highlight the unique and important ideas represented in banned books, the BLS Library asked faculty, staff and students to recommend their favorite ones. These books are on display on the first floor of the library. The best part: you can check them out.

“Censorship is the enemy of freedom.” Ava DuVernay, Honorary Chair of the ALA 2024 Banned Book Week.

Come to the 2024 Brooklyn Book Festival!

09/09/2024

Jean Davis

Prison abolition movements, Brooklyn Book Festival, Brooklyn Law School Faculty, Brooklyn Law School Center for Criminal Justice

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 Bluebook on Goodreads

09/03/2024

Eric Yap

First year law school curriculum, Brooklyn Law School Library

“Books are kind of expensive. Do I really need to get this one?” It was the week of orientation and a 1L student, who had stopped by my office with a few questions, pointed to a book on my desk.

The Bluebook.

1Ls ask the darndest questions. The first thing that came to mind was to recite a long, prepared speech I had made many times before in class about the importance of standardized legal citation, and helping others find sources efficiently and accurately. My next thought was to tell the student a few choice quotes about The Bluebook from Goodreads.

Wait a minute. Goodreads? You turn to Goodreads when BookTok recommends Ali Hazelwood’s vampyre-werewolf novel, and you wonder if it measures up to her STEMinist titles. But for law school textbooks?

Well, it turns out there are plenty of reviews of popular legal textbooks on Goodreads.

Some students loved Civil Procedure (Glannon et al.): “So clear and well written. Would honestly read again.”

Others were baffled by Criminal Law and Its Processes (Kadish et al.) and perhaps by some aspects of legal education: “this textbook felt like playing where’s waldo for every criminal law concept….like just tell us?”

Yet others took the practical and likely still ethical approach to Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law (Lerman et al.): “If I had to read a whole textbook about legal ethics, I’m FOR SURE going to count it in my Goodreads goal. ”

When it comes to The Bluebook, there’s plenty of love from some quarters:

“It is well-organized, gives good examples and some of the examples are actually funny (e.g. Pink Cadillac).”
“Okay, so I do like the Bluebook and I actually LOVE citations. I can’t help myself! I am a meticulous person who likes to have certain things follow a certain order.”
“Yes, I am a nerd, but I LOVE the Bluebook.”

Along with a bit of confusion when it comes to the recurring characters: “Like literally what is the deal with Id.? He’s everywhere and way too easy – totally seems like a player.”

And it wouldn’t be law school without detractors, but even those reviewers often recognize the important role the Bluebook plays in legal education and beyond: “A necessary evil, it is the only book to which I have feelings of resentment. However, it is helpful and organized fairly well, I couldn’t have got through law school without it!”

In the end, I responded to the student with a pared-down version of the speech about becoming proficient in legal citation, and the importance of helping readers accurately identify sources and find them quickly. I emphasized that the Bluebook is used heavily in the 1L Gateway classes, and throughout one’s legal education at BLS. I didn’t cite any of the Goodreads quotes, though I may have paraphrased that last one about needing the Bluebook to get through law school.

I also told the student that while they should procure their own copy, BLS Library does have several copies of the Bluebook on Reserve. These copies can be borrowed for two hours at a time from the Circulation Desk, and while they will not substitute for a personal copy, they can be used in a pinch.

After we had chatted on the topic for several minutes, the student was convinced to get their own print copy. Who knows, maybe one day they will leave a review for The Bluebook on Goodreads?