Cambridge Squire Law Library: historical development and current status of International Law collections

The Squire Law Library has existed since 1904, and it has occupied three sites: Downing Street (till 1935); The Cockerell Building, Old Schools (1935-95); and West Road (1995-present), but until the mid-1950s, there was no designated collection space for International Law materials. Prior to this, the Whewell professors had their own collections, while the arrival of Harold Gutteridge as Professor of Comparative Law in 1930 saw a nucleus of international books develop in his room in the mezzanine of the Downing Street library. Similarly, when Hersch Lauterpacht became Whewell Professor in 1937, international material tended to be concentrated in his room 6 of the Cockerell Building. Finally a space was designated within the Squire Law Library for Foreign & International Law in 1957, and in 1962 the Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Room was created for this purpose. In the mid-70s, Professor Parry arranged for the whole of the 1st floor in the Cockerell Building to be set aside for these collections. Currently, the 3rd floor of the Sir David Williams Building on West Road houses both Foreign and International materials. Collection development policy has been driven by Faculty interests, especially those of the incumbent of the Whewell Chair of International Law, which was established in 1868. Since WWII, the main growth areas have been in Human Rights, Law of the Sea, Trade Law, and Investment Law, largely prompted by UN/EU/global trade-centric studies. Since 1982, journal acquisition policy has been increasingly dictated by the University Library, especially since 2003, when the UL Journals Co-ordination Scheme was piloted. After the 1980s, material has been increasingly of an electronic nature. Establishment of a specialist post (1997) singled out International Law as the premier component of the Squire Law Library collections. Currently ~30% of both Faculty staff and research students engage in International Law

Cytotoxic activity of marine sponge extracts from the sub-Antarctic Islands and the Southern Ocean

publisher versionOver the past 50 years, marine invertebrates, especially sponges, have proven to be a valuable source of new and/or bioactive natural products that have the potential to be further developed as lead compounds for pharmaceutical applications. Although marine benthic invertebrate communities occurring off the coast of South Africa have been explored for their biomedicinal potential, the natural product investigation of marine sponges from the sub-Antarctic Islands in the Southern Ocean for the presence of bioactive secondary metabolites has been relatively unexplored thus far. We report here the results for the biological screening of both aqueous and organic extracts prepared from nine specimens of eight species of marine sponges, collected from around Marion Island and the Prince Edward Islands in the Southern Ocean, for their cytotoxic activity against three cancer cell lines. The results obtained through this multidisciplinary collaborative research effort by exclusively South African institutions has provided an exciting opportunity to discover cytotoxic compounds from sub-Antarctic sponges, whilst contributing to our understanding of the biodiversity and geographic distributions of these cold-water invertebrates. Therefore, we acknowledge here the various contributions of the diverse scientific disciplines that played a pivotal role in providing the necessary platform for the future natural products chemistry investigation of these marine sponges from the sub- Antarctic Islands and the Southern Ocean. Significance: This study will contribute to understanding the biodiversity and geographic distributions of sponges in the Southern Ocean. This multidisciplinary project has enabled the investigation of marine sponges for the presence of cytotoxic compounds. Further investigation will lead to the isolation and identification of cytotoxic compounds present in the active sponge extracts.University of Cape Town; South African Medical Research Council; National Research Foundation (South Africa); CANSA; Rhodes University; Department of Science and Technology; Department of Environmental Affairs; SANA

Legal biography, oral history and the Cambridge Eminent Scholars Archive

ESA is a digital archive based on interviews with prominent personalities associated with the Law Faculty of Cambridge University. It constitutes a unique repository of audio, textural and photographic materials, providing insights into the careers of scholars, jurists and practitioners. Motivations for the establishment of the archive in 2005 were: recording reminiscences of scholars back to WWII and its immediate aftermath; documenting developments in administration and teaching in the Faculty and colleges; archiving voices of scholars taking about their early lives, careers and published works; compiling a cross-indexed reference of personalities mentioned in interviews; and generating an awareness amongst students and younger staff of the rich heritage of the Faculty. The methodology and strategy of conducting interviews and compiling entries is briefly described. Finally, in the broader context of legal biography, it is argued that such oral histories are an essential component because they capture aspects of personality that written accounts cannot and thereby reveal traits that conventional biographies may miss. This claim is illustrated by selected examples from the archive,that currently contains twenty interviewees