Special Libraries, May 1917

Volume 8, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1917/1004/thumbnail.jp

James DeWitt Andrews: Classifying the Law in the Early Twentieth Century*

This paper examines the efforts of New York lawyer James DeWitt Andrews and others to create a new classification system for American law in the early years of the twentieth century. Inspired by fragments left by founding father James Wilson, Andrews worked though the American Bar Association and organized independent projects to classify the law. A controversial figure, whose motives were often questioned, Andrews engaged the support and at times the antagonism of prominent legal figures such as John H. Wigmore, Roscoe Pound, and William Howard Taft before his plans ended with the founding of the American Law Institute in 1923

Special Libraries, November 1949

Volume 40, Issue 9https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1949/1008/thumbnail.jp

Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Writings on the Form and Structure of the Published Law

Robert C. Berring\u27s writings about the impacts of electronic databases, the Internet, and other communications technologies on legal research and practice are an essential part of a larger literature that explores the ways in which the forms and structures of published legal information have influenced how American lawyers think about the law. This paper reviews Berring\u27s writings, along with those of other writers concerned with these questions, focusing on the implications of Berring\u27s idea that in the late nineteenth century American legal publishers created a conceptual universe of thinkable thoughts through which U.S. lawyers came to view the law. It concludes that, spurred by Berring and others, the literature of legal information has become far reaching in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, while the themes struck in Berring\u27s work continue to inform the scholarship of newer writers

Rare books as historical objects: a case study of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library rare books collection

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015Once upon a time all the books in the Arctic were rare books, incomparable treasures to the men and women who carried them around the world. Few of these tangible remnants of the past have managed to survive the ravages of time, preserved in libraries and special collections. This thesis analyzes the over 22,000-item rare book collection of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the largest collection of rare books in the State of Alaska and one of the largest polar regions collections in the world. Content, chronology, authorship, design, and relevance to northern and polar history were a few of the criteria used to evaluate the collection. Twenty items of particular value to the study of Alaskan history were selected and studied in depth. The collection not only reflects the social, political and economic development of Alaska, but also the interests, personalities and expertise of collectors and authors, including works owned or written by key individuals in Alaska history, such as Hieromonk Gideon, Ivan Veniaminov, Ivan Pan’kov, Iakov Netsvietov, Kiril Khlebnikov, Hubert Howe Bancroft, George Davidson, Hudson Stuck, Sheldon Jackson, James Wickersham, Charles Bunnell, Alfred H. Brooks and others. Accident and happenstance also played a role in filling the shelves. There are more mysteries than answers—why some of these particular works resisted hundreds of years of neglect, cold, flood, and fire can never be known. While some books have no marks, no identifiable owners or traceable past, the provenance of others makes them unique. Sometimes the story behind the story is the story.Chapter 1: Rare Books Studies: Methodological Discussion -- 1.1 Historical Research Based on Libraries -- 1.2 Research Statement -- 1.3 Description of the Data – The Elmer E. Rasmuson Library Rare Books Collection -- 1.4 Defining Rare Books and Their Roles in Library Collections -- 1.5 Structure of a Book -- 1.6 Book Materials -- 1.7 Methodological Conclusion -- Chapter 2: The Book in Alaska -- 2.1 Arctic and Antarctic Books as Travelers -- 2.2 Arctic and Antarctic Libraries as Travelers: Ship Publishing, Ship Libraries -- 2.3 First Books in Alaska -- 2.4 Nikolai Rezanov’s View of the Enlightenment -- 2.5 The Kodiak Library -- 2.6 The Sitka Library -- 2.7 The Sitka Museum -- 2.8 Ivan Veniaminov: Language Studies and the Sitka Seminary -- 2.9 Educated “Americans”: The Case of Ivan Pan’kov -- 2.10 RAC Officials and Missionaries: The Necessity of Bilingual Communication -- 2.11 The Educational Backgrounds of Russian American Governors -- 2.12 Conclusion -- Chapter 3: Missionaries, Prospectors, and Collectors -- 3.1 Early American Era: The Battle of School Books -- 3.2 American-Era Missionaries: Books, Reading, Literacy -- 3.3 Gold Rushes in Alaska and the Yukon: Illusion and Ephemera -- 3.4 Missionary Periodicals at the Time of the Alaska Gold Rushes -- 3.5 Periodicals Exchanges, Reading Rooms and Libraries during the Late Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Century -- 3.6 Collectors of Alaskana and Alaskan Collectors of Rarities -- 3.6.1 The Challenges of Rare Book Collecting in Alaska -- 3.6.2 The Bancroft Library -- 3.6.3 The George Davidson Library -- 3.6.4 The James Wickersham Library -- 3.6.5 The Clarence L. Andrews Library -- 3.6.6 Valerian Lada-Mocarski Library -- 3.6.7 Women in Book Collecting: Laura K. Lada-Mocarski -- 3.7 Conclusion -- Chapter 4: Rare Books as Historical Objects, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library Rare Books Collection -- 4.1 History of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library and Its Rare Books Collection -- 4.2 Study of the Rare Books Sample, Elmer E. Rasmuson Library Rare Book Collection -- 4.2.1 Books in Russian Published before 1867 -- 4.2.2 Books in English Published before 1867 -- 4.2.3 Books in English Published after 1867 -- 4.2.4 Books in Alaska Native Languages Published after 1867 -- 4.2.5 Nineteenth-Century Missionary Literature -- 4.2.6 Nineteenth-Century Writings by U.S. Government Officials -- 4.2.7 Nineteenth-Century U.S. Exploration Literature -- 4.2.8 Twentieth-Century U.S. Exploration Literature -- 4.2.9 Gold Rush Literature -- 4.2.10 Twentieth-Century Business Literature -- 4.2.11 Late Nineteenth-Early Twentieth Century Periodicals -- 4.2.12 World War II Literature -- 4.2.13 Rare Books Sample: Summary -- Conclusion -- Literature cited

Specimen poetics: botany, reanimation, and the Romantic collection

This essay argues that the modern literary anthology—and specifically its aspiration to delimit both aesthetic merit and historical representativeness—emerged as a response to changes in eighteenth-century botanical collecting, description, and illustration. A dramatic upsurge in botanical metaphors for poetic collections around 1800 was triggered by shifts in the geographies, aims, and representational practices of botany in the previous century. Yoking Linnaean taxonomy and Buffonian vitalism to Hogarth’s line of beauty, late eighteenth-century botanical illustrations imbued plucked, pressed specimens with a new vitality. Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden (1789, 1791) translated the aesthetic reanimations of visual art into a collection of poetic specimens, spurring compilations that promote a vitalist standard of literary value. By rejecting aesthetic reanimation as the figurative ground for poetic collecting, Charlotte Smith and Robert Southey forward an alternative historical model of literary merit, one grounded in the succession and continuity of representative literary types. These competing metrics for selection and valuation underwrite the anthology as we know it today

Special Libraries, Spring 1995

Volume 86, Issue 2https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1995/1001/thumbnail.jp

Law Libraries and Laboratories: The Legacies of Langdell and His Metaphor

Law Librarians and others have often referred to Harvard Law School Dean C.C. Langdell’s statements that the law library is the lawyer’s laboratory. Professor Danner examines the context of what Langdell through his other writings, the educational environment at Harvard in the late nineteenth century, and the changing perceptions of university libraries generally. He then considers how the “laboratory metaphor” has been applied by librarians and legal scholars during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The article closes with thoughts on Langdell’s legacy for law librarians and the usefulness of the laboratory metaphor

An examination of automatic video retrieval technology on access to the contents of an historical video archive

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an initial understanding of the constraints that historical video collections pose to video retrieval technology and the potential that online access offers to both archive and users. Design/methodology/approach – A small and unique collection of videos on customs and folklore was used as a case study. Multiple methods were employed to investigate the effectiveness of technology and the modality of user access. Automatic keyframe extraction was tested on the visual content while the audio stream was used for automatic classification of speech and music clips. The user access (search vs browse) was assessed in a controlled user evaluation. A focus group and a survey provided insight on the actual use of the analogue archive. The results of these multiple studies were then compared and integrated (triangulation). Findings – The amateur material challenged automatic techniques for video and audio indexing, thus suggesting that the technology must be tested against the material before deciding on a digitisation strategy. Two user interaction modalities, browsing vs searching, were tested in a user evaluation. Results show users preferred searching, but browsing becomes essential when the search engine fails in matching query and indexed words. Browsing was also valued for serendipitous discovery; however the organisation of the archive was judged cryptic and therefore of limited use. This indicates that the categorisation of an online archive should be thought of in terms of users who might not understand the current classification. The focus group and the survey showed clearly the advantage of online access even when the quality of the video surrogate is poor. The evidence gathered suggests that the creation of a digital version of a video archive requires a rethinking of the collection in terms of the new medium: a new archive should be specially designed to exploit the potential that the digital medium offers. Similarly, users' needs have to be considered before designing the digital library interface, as needs are likely to be different from those imagined. Originality/value – This paper is the first attempt to understand the advantages offered and limitations held by video retrieval technology for small video archives like those often found in special collections

Special Libraries, April 1953

Volume 44, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1953/1003/thumbnail.jp