Wednesday, November 16, 2011
MAKING C&S FUN: Those of us who went to law school likely remember the glory days of cite and substance checking, which at least as of 2002, when I was running it, still involved sending 2L's off to scour random libraries to get copies of the hard copy material. Westlaw and Lexis were not OK, much less "well, I put it into Google." I paid many a trip not just to the main NYPL on 42nd Street, but the Science, Industry, and Business Library, and other random locales. However, it seems new students of journalism have never gained that skill, so a NYU professor of journalism has come up with a treasure hunt to force students to learn how to navigate a library and find things in those dusty stacks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Not just "a NYU professor of journalism," but one who has been portrayed by Steve Zahn on-screen.
ReplyDeleteFans of googlable treasure hunts can get started on the Roll Call challenge, which started Monday and continues tomorrow.
On my journal, you had to actually bring all sources to the journal's office. So, one of the jobs you could pull on a given day would be to go track down a bunch of books at the library (or multiple libraries) and haul 'em back.
ReplyDeleteThis brings back terrible memories, actually. My third year, the law library was closed for a much-needed renovation. Many of the materials were moved to another location, but a great deal of stuff was off-site. At the very start of the year, I happened to be the editor on a long article on the dormant Commerce Clause, which cited what one might call a shitload of state statutes. Not only were they not in the faux library, but many of them were simply lost in the transfer. Fun times!
Fiche was acceptable. My third year, I ran C&S on a long article that included a 30ish page chart of the history of statutes for jury compensation, so was demanding people bring me the 1985 Missouri statute increasing compensation from $3 to $5/day. Let me tell you--my minions LOVED me.
ReplyDeleteAfter the DCC article I edited one by the philosopher Jeremy Waldron entitled something liked "Kant's Legal Positivism." Collecting and overseeing the sources for that one was much more fun.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on an article that will extensively cite to Dan Sinker's "The ****ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel." This will be awesome.
ReplyDeleteOne benefit of being on an IP journal that focused a lot on technology was a journal-wide edict that online sources were okay!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like the most fun thing ever. Yes, I am a nerd, but I do love when teachers go the extra mile and try to do something more interesting than just - as he mentions in the article - a tour of the library.
ReplyDeleteThat said, as a Film Studies major, I rarely set foot in a library my 4 years of college, and believe the times I did it was for a scandalous endeavor rather than an educational one.
As a research assistant, I gathered source material for David P. Currie's "The Vaccine Agent," which turned out -- to my surprise and to his surprise and delight, I think -- to be a fascinating story. The First Congress appointed a United States Vaccine Agent (an amateur Jenner enthusiast) to innoculate people with cowpox, which resulted in a mild illness but prevented acquisition of smallpox. The constitutional question was why the First Congress employed such a twentieth-century view of the commerce power and what it meant for originalist inquiry. But the story was itself seductive. First of all, the program was enthusiastically supported by Increase Mather, Cotton Mather's charismatic, cantankerous, anti-science father. So that was weird, though easily explained by Mather's understanding of the dangers of smallpox. Also, this was a very successful government program until it wasn't -- Congress quickly shut the program down after the vaccine agent mixed up some cowpox with some attenuated smallpox and actually transmitted smallpox to some people (who died). Note: facts may be wrong due to 10-year old memory.
ReplyDeleteThis is relevant, I swear: to research the article, I spent many hours in the library of the U of C medical library, as foreign a place to a law student as there could be. I found the sources I was looking for, but more importantly, I browsed the shelves near them and found more sources that I never would have found using the online catalog or my proto-Googles, Lycos and Infoseek. Currie thanked me in the notes to the article (published in the Green Bag), describing my research assistance as "unusually able." I took that to mean that my research abilities, as demonstrated with this project, were unusual. My friends are certain that by using the phrase "unusually able," Currie was implying that I was "usually unable."
Also, I enjoyed the project enough that I described in in detail to my then-girlfriend, Spacewoman. We discussed both the historical aspects and Currie's constitutional angle. This was to her benefit when Currie made the scenario the first question on Spacewoman's Con Law I exam.
I pity our poor law students that come in checking citations for the law review. Here's why: Take The New York Times. We pay a lot of money to Lexis Nexis for access back to the early-to-mid-1990s and to ProQuest for Historical Acccess that goes from inception of the title to a rolling wall of 5 years ago. All online, and the ProQuest is even more robust than LexNex, offering full page scans that include everything but what Tasini took away. But, these poor students? Have to schlep it onto campus, into the library, and then down to the dark scary basement to look at microfilm. I get the logic, I do, but they still have my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteAs to the "treasure hunt" in the original post? This is the sentence that warms my heart:
ReplyDelete"This led me to team up with Alexa Pearce, a research librarian at New York University’s Bobst Library who works with the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, to create a mobile, interactive treasure hunt."
We see enough poorly designed "scavenger hunt" assignments come through the library that it's now a ritual for us to spit after saying the words. But if a librarian helped make it? It's probably ten times better than what a professor can come up with on his/her own.
This is a true story. Moral: Always indulge your boyfriend's need to tell long stories involving the Constitution and your current professors.
ReplyDeleteThis is, by the way, a big part of what is wrong with student-edited law journals.
ReplyDeleteindeed. My sophomore year, the 2nd floor of my school's main library was declared to be the #1 pick-up spot IN THE NATION, so I finally ventured in. It didn't go the way I'd planned, sadly. Was it the sweatpants? Nah.
ReplyDeleteGuest? HOW DARE YOU. That was me.
ReplyDeleteI like this comment even more knowing it's from you.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what i was thinking. We have a "scavenger hunt" from an English prof at my school who cribbed his graduate level hunt from a large university and tries to hand it off to undergraduates at a small private college. One of the questions had 3 professional librarians (2 with English degrees..one a masters) looking for the correct answer for 3 hours. Needless to say we cringe as much as the students when that one comes around.
ReplyDeleteHowever as a former history major and college journalist and current librarian, I would love to attempt this scavenger hunt.