Manuscript transcription by crowdsourcing: Transcribe Bentham

Transcribe Bentham is testing the feasibility of outsourcing the work of manuscript transcription to members of the public. UCL Library Services holds 60,000 folios of manuscripts of the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Transcribe Bentham will digitise 12,500 Bentham folios, and, through a wiki-based interface, allow volunteer transcribers to take temporary ownership of manuscript images and to create TEI-encoded transcription text for final approval by UCL experts. Approved transcripts will be stored and preserved, with the manuscript images, in UCL's public Digital Collections repository. The project makes innovative use of traditional Library material. It will stimulate public engagement with UCL's scholarly archive collections and the challenges of palaeography and manuscript transcription; it will raise the profile of the work and thought of Jeremy Bentham; and it will create new digital resources for future use by professional researchers. Towards the end of the project, the transcription tool will be made available to other projects and services

Orthogonally Based Digital Content Management Applicable to Projects-bases

There is defined the concept of digital content. The requirements of an efficient management of the digital content are established. There are listed the quality characteristics of digital content. Orthogonality indicators of digital content are built up. They are meant to measure the image, the sound as well as the text orthogonality as well. Projects-base concept is introduced. There is presented the model of structuring the content in order to maximize orthogonality via a convergent iterative process. The model is instantiated for the digital content of a projects-base. It is introduced the application used to test the model. The paper ends with conclusions.digital, quality, orthogonality, projects-bases

Cyberbullying - when does a school authority\u27s liability in tort end?

Cyberbullying in schools is increasing on an alarming rate. The development of the Internet and smartphone technology have increased the potential scope of a school authority’s duty of care for its students. A question frequently asked by educators is “Where does a school authority’s duty of care end in the interconnected, 24/7 world of the Internet?” This paper argues that a duty of care will be owed where the school is in a school/student relationship with its students. That relationship can exist outside the school gates and outside of school hours. There are no decisions of senior appellate courts that deal with a school authority’s liability for cyberbullying. The authors, therefore, analyse the nature of the relationship to identify the key features that must be present to establish the existence of a duty of care. Three features are identified as critical to the existence of the duty of care outside of the normal school hours. They are the extent to which the school authority controls or ought to control a given situation, the extent to which it has encouraged students to participate in a particular activity and the extent to which a school authority is aware or ought to be aware of risks associated with the relevant activity of its students

COMPARATIVE LAW AND THE PROCESS OF DE-JURIDIFICATION: THE JOINT-EMPLOYMENT LAW CASE IN LABOUR LAW

The process of de-juridification is, in some respects, ambiguous and paradoxical. While in certain areas, we see a proliferation of detailed legislative regulations, in others, we detect tendencies pointing in the opposite direction. One of the most interesting cases is that of labor law, where both tendencies emerge. Recent reforms in many European countries show a trend towards a relaxation of rules, inspired by the aim to stimulate growth in employment. In this context, the newly-introduced concept of \u201cjoint employment\u201d plays a pivotal role. The process of de-juridification clearly invests labor law, in particular within enterprise networks, where arrangements under joint employment seem to give the parties of a commercial contract the highest standard of contractual freedom. This social phenomenon is not therefore regulated by detailed legislative provisions, but simply through non-specific norms inspired by general goals. In considering several recent reforms of labor law in European countries, in this paper, we aim to determine the real level of de-juridification currently present within traditionally rigid legislative system

A tiny heart beating: Student-edited legal periodicals in good ol' Europe

This paper has a twofold aim: to analyze the possible opportunities disclosed by the observed growth of student- dited law reviews in Europe and to propose an innovative model of student participation to legal publication. The first part explores the phenomenon of student-edited law reviews in the U.S., focusing on its recognized educational benefits. Among others, it is observed that participation in student-edited law reviews might promote greater scholarly maturity among J.D. students, who might in turn be better equipped for a career in the academia after finishing law school, in comparison to their same-age European peers. Hence, there follows an examination of the possible beneficial repercussions that the establishment of student-edited law reviews may yield on the process of faculty education in (continental) Europe, in light of the general practice therein endorsed of academic “apprenticeship” under a mentor. Such benefits may consist, among others, in the enticement of larger numbers of potential academicians and in their possible greater intellectual maturity, providing new meaning to the aforementioned time-honored European practice. The second part of the paper focuses, instead, on the drawbacks brought about by excessive proliferation of student-edited law reviews in the U.S., such as alleged decrease in the quality of published scholarship as a consequence of the superficial quality control that student editors sometimes perform. In view of the foregoing, an innovative model of student publication is proposed, in order to prevent the onset of such drawbacks in Europe, while retaining the above-outlined benefits of early student involvement in academic discourse. It is suggested to complement few, authoritative sources of published scholarship in the form of peer-reviewed journals with student-edited working paper series which, if based on the guideline to provide substantial constructive feedback to authors, could ultimately help foster a quality improvement of published scholarship

Defining International Law Librarianship in an Age of Multiplicity, Knowledge, and Open Access to Law

Many law librarians are experts in international law and legal research. The concept of ‘international law librarianship’, however, encompasses something more than a field of study in which a group of experts practise their profession. In the broader sense, the idea suggests a common calling, similar interests, and goals shared by librarians with a range of specialties beyond international law, working in all types of law libraries. What commonalities create and sustain the concept of international law librarianship? This paper suggests that they can be found in: law librarians’ common need to respond to the ‘multiplicity’ of information sources facing twenty-first century legal researchers; the development and nurturing of a shared base of professional knowledge; and a common commitment to work toward ensuring free and open access to legal information globally

Locating Legal Periodicals and Journal Articles

Can you really read a law review or journal article on the Web? The answer is, it depends. There are a growing number of legal periodicals that are freely available via the Internet, but sometimes determining if a specific article or topic is available and then tracking it down can be a lot of work. For example, what if you are interested in identifying some current articles published in a certain legal field, such as immigration? No matter how good a searcher you are, it is nearly impossible to put recent Immigration Law articles into Google and get back a concise, usable list of articles. Instead, the best searching method to follow is making use of specialized websites, which assist in finding articles and legal periodicals on the Internet. Below are a few of these sites that will make the task of searching out articles easier and more time-efficient

Legal News and Periodicals

There are a growing number of legal periodicals and news sources that are freely available via the Internet, but sometimes tracking down a specific topic or article can be a lot of work. For example, what if you are interested in following news on a certain legal topic or identifying some current articles published in a certain legal field, such as immigration? No matter how good a searcher you are, it is nearly impossible to put recent Immigration Law News into Google and get back a concise, usable list of articles. Instead, the best searching method to follow is making use of specialized legal websites which assist in finding legal news and periodicals on the Internet. This paper contains a few of these sites that will make the task of searching out legal news and periodicals easier and more time-efficient