Winter 2013 Issue of Law Library Journal Now Available

The Winter 2013 issue of Law Library Journal is available on the website of the American Association of Law Libraries.

Among the many articles, the following attracted my attention:

• How Federal Statutes Are Named: "Given the number of public laws enacted since the First Congress began work on March 4, 1789, 1 it is no surprise that some effort has been made to assign names to statutes, since mere sequential numbers, much less volume and page citations to the Statutes at Large, are hard to remember (...) Referring to legislation by public law number or title number injects further ambiguity because the reader may not know whether the intended reference is to the original statute or the statute as subsequently amended. On the other hand, that can be said even of narrative or descriptive titles (...) The obvious answer: giving the statute a name that is easy to remember. But what name shall it be?"
• "Information is Cheap, but Meaning is Expensive": Building Analytical Skill into Legal Research Instruction: "Law students and new attorneys must have well-developed analytical skills in order to find information that is pertinent to their legal problems and to become competent legal researchers in today’s information-rich environment. Law librarians and legal research instructors can help develop students’ analytical skills by asking them to participate in activities that encourage metacognition about processes that are critical to information seeking."
• Practicing Reference . . . Bitten by the Reading Bug: "Is reading books about law helpful to law librarians? Ms. [Mary] Whisner [Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle] discusses why and what she likes to read, and makes recommendations about books others might find interesting."