The Friends of the Georgetown Law Library invite you to the second screening in the Library's Law at the Movies series.

Film: Breaker Morant
Date: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009
Time: 6:00 P.M.
Location: Hart Auditorium

Breaker Morant is an Australian film based upon a true story of a British court-martial of two Australian soldiers accused of a war-crime killing, authorized by their commanders. Join us for this examination of military and criminal law as well as the independence of the military legal system.

After the screening we will lead a discussion about the ethical and cultural issues in the film. The panel will include:

• Michael Frisch, Georgetown Law's Ethics Counsel and Adjunct Faculty;
• Naomi Mezey, Georgetown Law Faculty;
• Kumar Jayasuriya, Associate Law Librarian for Patron Services;
• Marylin Raisch, Associate Law Librarian for International and Foreign Law.

The next film in our series will be My Cousin Vinny on December 2 at 6:00.

To learn more about the Friends of the Georgetown Law Library and to consider becoming a member, please look at the Friends Website.

Law at the Movies
Hart Auditorium
Thursday, October 1 @ 6:00 pm

The Friends of the Georgetown University Law Library invites you to join Georgetown Law Professors Naomi Mezey and Randy Barnett as they introduce and discuss The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In this film classic Jimmy Stewart is the big-city lawyer determined to bring the rule of law to the untamed West. John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Vera Miles also star.

This is the inaugural event in the Law Library’s series of popular feature films that illustrate legal themes. Each screening will start with a discussion led by members of the Georgetown Law Faculty. Future events will include movies like Anatomy of a Murder, A Few Good Men, and many more.

The Library will be holding three RA orientation training sessions.  In the orientation, RAs will learn about library services and policies and will gain an introduction to our databases and to best research practices.

The sessions will be:

• Friday September 25, 2009 from 11 am to noon
• Friday September 25, 2009 from 4-5 pm
• Friday October 2, 2009 from 11 am to noon

 All sessions will be held in EB Williams Room 320

Please RSVP to Thanh Nguyen (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu) with which session you plan to attend.

The Library will be holding two RA orientation training sessions.  In the orientation, RAs will learn about library services and policies and will gain an introduction to our databases and to best research practices.

The sessions will be:

• Thursday May 28, 2009 from 11 am to noon; and
• Thursday, June 4, 2009 from 4-5 pm.

Both sessions will be held in EB Williams Room 420.

Please RSVP to Thanh Nguyen (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu) with which session you plan to attend.

The Library also encourages RAs to make individual appointments with Faculty Services to discuss resources and strategies relevant to their specific summer projects and assignments. Please email Thanh (nguyent2@law.georgetown.edu) if you would like to set up an appointment.

The first issue of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives is now available.  The first issue includes articles about: 

• Philosophical Methodologies of Critical Race Theory
• Hollywood & Race
• The War on Terror & American Exceptionalism
• Voting Rights Enforcement Under the Bush Administration
• Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Continuing Need for Intersectional Discourse
• Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement
• Seattle's Open Housing Movement
• FCC Regulation of Broadcast Hate Speech

There is also a reaction piece to each article. 

Check out the table of contents and purchase individual articles online.  Subscription information is also online.  

Congratulations to all of the Georgetown Law alums and current students who have been involved in the creation of this journal! 

The annual Georgetown Law Library survey has finished, and we got a great response from students.  All students who completed the survey were eligible for a drawing to win an Apple iPod Touch.  We're happy to announce that Lara Turner, a fourth-year evening student was selected at random for the prize.  Congratulations Lara!

Thanks to everybody who completed the survey this year. We value all of the feedback, and we'll read every comment we received. Our annual survey is a great way for us to gauge student satisfaction and information needs. This year, we received 573 responses from students in all program years, including feedback from JD, LL.M., SJD and joint degree students. Following is a quick chart showing the responses received.

One question in the survey asked for feedback on content people are seeking on our website, allowing people to pick multiple options. The highest-ranked item is our collection of past exams. We're happy to see that people also turn to our website to search for books, get general research help, and check to see when the library is open.  Here's a quick chart showing the results of this question.

You can view results of prior surveys on pages for the 2008 Survey and 2007 Survey. We will publish results of the 2009 law library survey when we can.

As noted by Diane Levin in her MediationChannel.com blog, Mediate.com has opened its video archive during the month of April 2009, and the video interviews include Georgetown Law's own Carrie Menkel-Meadow:

"Mediate.com, the world’s premier source for news, information, and articles about mediation, has opened its video archive to the public during the month of April.  Available at no cost are over 100 fully searchable video interviews with leaders in the field of dispute resolution - notable names like Roger Fisher, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Len Riskin, Margaret Shaw, Chip Rose, Frank Sander, Kenneth Cloke, Jeff Krivis, and many more.  Both full interviews and searachable video clips are available for viewing, so don't miss this extraordinary opportunity to listen in as ADR moves and shakers share insights with interviewer Robert Benjamin."

On Point @ Georgetown Law is a new series of interviews by Law Center Dean Alex Aleinikoff  with legal newsmakers. 

The most recent interview is with Thomas Ricks about his recent book The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. Ricks, a Pulitzer-prize winner, is the Washington Post senior Pentagon reporter and U.S. military correspondent.  He is also the author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. 

Other On Point interviewees include John Grisham, W. Gary Sharp, George Mitchell, Justices O'Connor and Breyer, and Anthony Fauci.

The Law Library is currently conducting a survey of all Georgetown law students to get feedback on our services and materials.  We're also looking for feedback on our facilities and a few other library-related items.  Take the 2009 Law Library Survey here.

One lucky student completing the survey will win a free Apple iPod touch (8 GB).  We promise to read every comment submitted, and we'll do what we can to act on and respond to your feedback.  We'll keep the survey open through April 5 and select the winner of the Apple iPod touch the following week. Don't put off taking the survey until the last minute.  It should only take a few minutes to complete.

Here's a summary of last year's survey, together with our narrative responses.

    By this point in time, we know that Recovery.gov was created to track how the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the Stimulus Plan).  We even have a prior blog post about it.  But how would we track the recovery money sent to individual states and parceled out?  Now, Pro Publica has put together a website compiling state various websites and databases to track recovery money. Not every state has the same information publicly available nor in user-friendly formats.  Some states haven't even created websites or databases to track Recovery funds sent to that state.  However, this is a great first stop resource on the web to check out what individual states do offer.  And as always, if state and local governments are not making available information to the public about how they use funds, you can always demand greater accountability from elected officials.