Pierce County Law Library Opens Kiosk at Lakewood Library from the Tacoma Daily Index (Hooray for law library partnerships!) How Hackathons are Helping to Decode the Justice Gap by Jack Karp for Law360’s Access to Justice newsletter Legal Deserts Push NM to Consider Non-Lawyer Services by RJ Vogt for Law360’s Access to Justice newsletter (Aside from unauthorized […]
Author Archives: alynnmatthews
Update: Law Library Job Interview & Library School
Wow – it’s been almost a solid three months since I last updated this blog! Time really flies. As promised (to myself), I’ve been really buckling down in library school and at my job in the law library. The previous semester, I struggled to balance family and motherhood, school, work, and my own self-care (if […]
“Tinkering” with the Law: Imagining Law Library Makerspaces
It’s been a while since my last blog post! I’ve been focusing on getting through my LIS program (I’m halfway done) and learning as much as I can in my job as an academic law librarian. I’m currently writing a paper for my Library Management class on planning law library facilities as makerspaces. A makerspace, […]
A Brief Note on Librarianship & Information
The library school semester officially started this week, and I’m already swimming in textbooks and articles to read. I switched to part-time status in order to give myself more time to absorb the huge onslaught of information, while also maintaining a healthy work-school-life balance. As I was reading the Hack Library School blog this morning, […]
Law Libraries in ICE Detention Centers
I’m in the middle of my summer internship with the Law Library of Congress. Among other duties, I’ve been working on compiling immigration law resources. I came across this article, and thought it had some interesting tidbits. From the Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania): Standards of care ICE has created detention standards that state the basics of care needed […]
Round-Up: What I’m Reading
Can a dormant proposed constitutional amendment come back to life? from the National Constitution Center The Law and Police Searches from Et. Seq., the blog of the Harvard Law School Library Why Prison Libraries Matter for Inmates, Jailers, and Book Donors from ilovelibraries, a publication of the American Library Association An Academic Librarian-Mother in Six […]
Illinois Legal Aid Online Debuts Re-designed Self-Help Center Pages
Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) recently re-designed their directory of legal self-help centers. Site users in need of legal help should now be able to better understand what each center does and doesn’t offer. The ILAO network includes 173 legal self-help center (LSHC) locations in 99 counties, and they organized the information on the site in a way that […]
The ABA Legal Fact Check Site is Pretty Awesome
The ABA Legal Fact Check** website takes current events (mass shootings, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, presidential/congressional speeches/quotes/tweets, the #metoo movement, flag burning, etc.) and uses cases and statutory law to “separate legal fact from fiction”. I think it’s a fun take on the bizarre issue of “alternative facts”. I’ve advised my family and friends to use […]
Round-Up: What I’m Reading
How Do We Engage with Ideas that Make Us Uncomfortable from the RIPS Law Librarian Blog Digital Divides and Justice Gaps from Ex Libris Juris, a blog publication for the Harris County Law Library Legal Reference for Public Libraries from the Maryland State Law Library 2013 National Self-Help in Libraries Survey by the Self-Represented Litigation Network’s Library Working Group […]
Resource Highlight: Arizona’s Handbook for Self-Represented Litigants
I came across this helpful guide through the Self-Represented Litigation Network‘s listserv. I think it’s well-written, concise, and clear, so I wanted to save a copy here on the blog. I’m actually not sure if any actual law librarians worked on this, but I’d imagine it’s incredibly useful at legal self-help centers. I really like […]
