Survey of Academic Library Blogs
List of IHEs covered in Crawford's Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples and sample entries are available in the February 2008 issue of Cites & Insights [PDF and HTML]. [JH]
Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples
Walt Crawford
289 pages, 2008
Paperback: $29.95 | PDF Download: $20 | Available from Lulu
Description: The purpose of this book is to guide you to blogs that you might find useful when thinking about your own library’s case—blogs from nearby libraries, blogs from institutions you regard as similar, or blogs that specialize in topics or work in ways that you’ll find interesting. Most of this book is examples: 231 blogs from 156 institutions of higher education in the United States, Canada, Australia, Botswana, England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales, arranged geographically.
February 15, 2008 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Can Blogging Derail Your Academic Career?
In previous posts we've noted that blogging may be a plus for one's career. For students, that is. For academics, well, The Chronicle asked seven academic bloggers to weigh in on the Juan Cole case and on the hazards of academic blogging. A critic of the Iraq War and the treatment of Palestinians, Cole is a University of Michigan professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history who was not offered a tenured position at Yale despite recommendations from two departments. No reason for the decision given; was it because of the opinions he expressed in his blog? Read more about it. [JH]
August 13, 2007 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Court Opinion Cites to Blog Posts and Open Source Legal Scholarship
UCLA Law Prof, long-time blogger, and renowned wine connoisseur Stephen Bainbridge found the following in Chancellor William Chandler's In re Tyson Foods Shareholder Litigation opinion:
Academic commentary on the relationship between spring-loading and insider trading is decidedly mixed. See, e.g., Victor Fleischer, Options Backdating, Tax Shelters, and Corporate Culture 9 n.27 (Univ. of Colo. Legal Studies Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 06-38, 2006), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=939914; Stephen Bainbridge, Spring-loaded Options and Insider Trading, on ProfessorBainbridge.com, http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/07/springloaded_op_1.html (July 10, 2006) (presenting argument of Iman Anabtawi that spring-loaded options constitute a form of insider trading or breach of fiduciary duty); Larry E. Ribstein, Options and Insider Trading, on Ideoblog, http://busmovie.typepad.com/ideoblog/2006/07/options_and_ins.html (July 11, 2006) (refuting Anabtawi’s insider trading argument).
Bainbridge writes "I offer this ... as further support for my belief that legal academics who are interested in affected judges and practicing lawyers need to blog. I believe legal academic blogging is creating a very important feedback loop between the bench/bar and the academy."
NB: The above quote also references to open source scholarship posted on SSRN. Hat tip to Ian Best. [JH]
February 20, 2007 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
From Blog to Book: Saddam on Trial
I have received a complimentary copy of Saddam on Trial: Understanding and Debating the Iraqi High Tribunal. It was written by Prof. Michael Scharf and Prof. Greg McNeal of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, along with other contributors. A press release about the book is here. (Not that it’s relevant, but I went to Case for undergraduate.)
This is probably the very first time that a compilation of essays from a legal academic blog has been turned into a book. The essays first appeared at Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog, and have been edited and updated for the print publication.
It is very refreshing to see the contents of an academic blog being turned into (and thus recognized as) a scholarly publication. Of course I would argue that the Grotian Moment blog was a scholarly publication to begin with, contra this professor. Hopefully Saddam on Trial will become the first “blog-to-book” initiative among many in the 21st century legal academy. Readers who are interested in the Saddam trial can order the book here.
Update: Originally I said that this was probably the first time essays from “an academic blog” had been turned into a book. I changed it to “a legal academic blog” because I was informed of at least one earlier example: the linguists at Language Log have turned many of their blog posts into a book entitled Far From the Madding Gerund. The book is advertised on the right margin of their blog. If readers know of any other examples of academic blogs becoming books, please let us know in the comments.
October 26, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A New Blog on Law School Innovation
An exciting new blog has been launched, devoted to Law School Innovation. It is being headed up by Prof. Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy fame, and will include other contributors as well. I sincerely hope that “LSI” provokes many beneficial discussions about how to modernize the current system of legal education. The initial posts and reader comments show a lot of promise, and are highly recommended:
October 25, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Law School | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Academic Blogging News
A couple of news items on the academic blogging front:
1. The Northwestern University Law Review has begun a new law journal blog. I learned of this via Sentencing Law and Policy. The list of blogs and online extensions by law journals now include:
- Harvard Law Review: Forum
Northwestern University Law Review: Northwestern Colloquy
- University of Pennsylvania Law Review: PENNumbra
- Yale Law Journal: The Pocket Part
2. Prof. Daniel Solove has completed a new Law Professor Blogger Census. This is Census version 5.1, and has over 300 law professor bloggers. The list is divided up by schools. The Census introduction and law schools A-M are here, and law schools N-Z are here.
The introduction contains a lot of useful information, charting the growth of professor blogs since the first census was taken, and noting which schools have the most blogs. One aspect of the Census worth mentioning is how many law professor bloggers are in the Midwest. I'm not able to verify this now, but my guess is that if the U.S. is divided up into traditional regions (New England, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West), there are more law prof bloggers in the Midwest than anywhere else. This is a slightly unfair method of categorization, since not all regions have as many law schools, and the Midwest includes the Chicago Law Faculty Blog with its 16 bloggers.
Many of the more respected and scholarly law prof blogs are located in the Midwest, including:
- Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog (a large group blog, but identified with Case-Western Reserve University)
If anyone has the time and inclination to break up the blogs (or bloggers) in the Census into regions, please make your results known in the comments and I will post about it later. There are different ways of breaking up the states into regions, but this one appears representative of the typical designations.
October 13, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blogging as Scholarship: The Debate Continues
I wrote previously about the collection of essays on “The Future of Legal Scholarship” at the , several of which focused on blogging. The collection has since been updated with two new essays:
- Prof. Rosa Brooks: What the Internet Age Means for Female Scholars
I quoted Prof. Brooks on a previous occasion here, because of her blog post that stated, “[T]he vast majority of law review articles are read by few people, and cited by even fewer.” Prof. Brooks suggested that it was time for her to say goodbye to law reviews. Now she writes in her essay at the Pocket Part:
The very existence of the Pocket Part testifies to the nature of the changes the Internet has brought. Once, we all waited patiently for The Yale Law Journal to arrive at the library; now, we read half the articles in advance on SSRN and the rest when they show up on the Journal’s website. And as legal blogs have proliferated, we can all produce and read real-time analysis of court decisions, legislation, and political events. Who would wait to open a law journal next year to see what Jack Balkin thinks about Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, when we can find out right now by reading his blog?
...
At the Harvard Law School conference on blogs and legal scholarship, mentioned above, conference participants disagreed about some particulars, but few of them questioned the premise that the Internet is, indeed, transforming legal scholarship. The participants agreed that we will see more and more “short form” legal scholarship, ranging from the thirty-page essays that law journals print but also make available online, to the few-thousand word pieces in the Pocket Part, to blog entries of a few paragraphs. For practitioners, students, and even many other scholars, these developments will make legal scholarship far more useful, accessible, and user friendly. (I’ll leave for another day—or another commentator—the question of whether scholarship will be less deep in a world of more frequent but smaller units of scholarship).
The second essay, by Prof. Leiter, gives the skeptical perspective on legal blogging as scholarship:
Of course, there is another culprit in this story, namely, the blogs themselves. If the leading law blogs were written only by the leading scholars, the availability cascades that occur would be more likely to raise, rather than lower, the level of scholarly discussion. But that is, unsurprisingly, not the case. The most visible and highly trafficked law-related blogs have one, and only one, thing in common: they were started relatively early in the “blog boom,” that is, in 2001 or 2002. (Many, but not all, also tilt noticeably to the right.) Latecomers, like the Becker-Posner Blog or the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog, which generally have much higher intellectual content, get nothing like the traffic of the early arrivals. As the economists like to say, the “barriers to entry” to the Internet in general, and the “blogosphere” in particular, are low, and not just in monetary terms. One need not be a good scholar, or an intellectual heavyweight, to have a blog, and if one got into the blog game early enough, one can thrive, especially with an audience of non-expert consumers.
The following quote from Prof. Leiter’s essay strikes me as unsupportable: “The most visible and highly trafficked law-related blogs have one, and only one, thing in common: they were started relatively early in the "blog boom," that is, in 2001 or 2002. (Many, but not all, also tilt noticeably to the right.)” Most of the blogs which have received the greatest number of citations from court cases and law review articles (which I would consider proof of visibility) do not fit Prof. Leiter’s description of starting early or tilting noticeably to the right. Most of these blogs began after 2002, and they contain a variety of political viewpoints (or are apolitical in nature).
To be specific, the blogs which have been cited the most are Balkinization, The Becker-Posner Blog, How Appealing, Legal Theory Blog, Leiter Reports (no right-leaners there!), Lessig Blog, Patently-O: Patent Law Blog, ProfessorBainbridge.com, SCOTUS Blog, Sentencing Law and Policy, The Volokh Conspiracy and White Collar Crime Prof Blog. Not only are they visible (hence their being cited), but many receive high amounts of traffic. In my opinion, these twelve legal blogs represent a new, legitimate, and respectable form of scholarship.
Eventually, the citation of blogs in court cases and law review articles will no longer be considered a novel development. Instead, it will be just as valid and worthwhile to ask which law review articles are being cited by blogs, and which court cases are attracting the most attention in the legal, scholarly blogosphere.
(As an aside, please note via this important correction that the Yale Pocket Part came into existence before the Harvard Forum.)
October 9, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blogging and the Future of Legal Scholarship
There is a fascinating collection of essays on “The Future of Legal Scholarship” at the Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, all of which are written by law professors who blog. The essays explore the ways in which the online world is changing the nature of legal scholarship.
The essays are:
- Let the Law Journal Be the Law Journal and the Blog Be the Blog, by Prof. Ann Althouse (Althouse)
- Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message, by Prof. Jack Balkin (Balkinization)
- A Blog Supreme?, by Prof. Christopher A. Bracey (Blackprof.com)
- The Long Tail of Legal Scholarship, by Prof. Paul Caron (TaxProf Blog)
- Law Reviews, the Internet, and Preventing and Correcting Errors, by Prof. Eugene Volokh (Volokh Conspiracy)
I learned of them via this post by Prof. Vladeck at PrawfsBlawg. It is worth pointing out that the print version (pdf) of Prof. Vladeck’s article has 39 footnotes (including 2 citations to 3L Epiphany), while the digital version contains active hyperlinks and thus requires no footnotes at all.
September 7, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Blogs and Law Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Blogging the Harvard Bloggership Conference
I attended the Harvard Conference on “Bloggership” last Friday, which was a fascinating event. It was wonderful to meet these bloggers in person and listen to their ideas. Prof. Paul Caron of TaxProf Blog deserves great credit for organizing the conference, and I’d also like to thank him for inviting me.
I have collected a group of blog posts which discuss the conference. The posts are in reverse chronological order unless they specifically follow the day’s events. I include the blogger’s name where it is not obvious. Readers who are aware of missing blog posts can add them in the comments.
Althouse (Prof. Ann Althouse)
Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports
Concurring Opinions (Prof. Daniel J. Solove)
The Conglomerate (Prof. Christine Hurt)
The Conglomerate (Prof. Gordon Smith)
Discourse.net (Prof. Michael Froomkin)
eon (Prof. Charles R. Nesson)
How Appealing (Howard Bashman)
Instapundit (Prof. Glenn Reynolds)
Is That Legal? (Prof. Eric Muller)
Kenneth Anderson’s Law of War and Just War Theory Blog
The Legal Janitor (Si Han Xu, Singapore)
Legal Theory Blog (Prof. Lawrence Solum)
Opinio Juris (Prof. Roger Alford)
Orin Kerr
Sentencing Law and Policy (Prof. Doug Berman)
Technology and Marketing Law Blog (Prof. Eric Goldman)
Timothy K. Anderson
The Volokh Conspiracy (Prof. Jim Lindgren)
April 30, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1)
Academic Blogging Reminder
When I first began 3L Epiphany I compiled a collection of posts on Academic Blogging from 21 different blogs. This was followed by Addendums 1 and 2. These posts discuss whether blogging can be considered academic scholarship. It seems appropriate to remind readers about this collection in the wake of the Bloggership Symposium at Harvard Law School on Friday. For the related topic of how blogs compare to traditional law reviews, see this index.
April 25, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
3L Epiphany Gets Cited in Four Academic Papers
I will be attending the Bloggership Symposium at Harvard this Friday. The papers of the participants have already been posted here. It was extremely gratifying to learn that four of the papers cited 3L Epiphany. Those papers are:
- Scholarship in Action: The Power, Possibilities, and Pitfalls for Law Professor Blogs, by Prof. Doug Berman.
- Blogging and the Transformation of Legal Scholarship, by Prof. Lawrence Solum.
- Blogging While Untenured and Other Extreme Sports, by Profs. Christine Hurt and Tung Ying.
- The Public Face of Scholarship, by Prof. Larry Ribstein.
Much thanks, professors!
It is worth pointing out that I have been blogging at 3L Epiphany for only three months, yet I've now been cited in four academic papers by well-known law professor bloggers. On the other hand, the case note that I wrote for law journal took more than a year to write, edit, and publish. It is still not in print and so it has not been cited once by anyone. If my case note has been read at all, it is because I've already posted it on my blog at Footnote 123 (with an explanation here).
Blogging is not an elixir, but its advantages over traditional forms of publishing are obvious and extraordinary.
April 24, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
New Census of Law Professor Bloggers
Prof. Daniel Solove, of Concurring Opinions, has posted a new Law Professor Blogger Census. This is the most current and thorough list of law professor bloggers online. According to this update, the list includes 235 law professor bloggers.
Prof. Solove breaks the bloggers down into schools,and compiles some useful statistics about blog growth, blog additions and subtractions, and the gender of professor bloggers.
I used a previous version of Prof. Solove’s census for this post on a Futuristic Summer Job, which led to responses from several law professors here.
March 17, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Blog Collections | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What about Academic Blogging in Business Schools?
Blogger David Tufte (whom I envy for living near Zion National Park, one of my favorites) writes about whether blogging constitutes scholarship from a business school perspective. Also, Mr. Tufte informed me of a Crooked Timber post that I missed here, which will join the other four on this list if/when I revise the collection.
At 3L Epiphany I have obviously focused on academic blogging within legal academia, but I am very curious about similar conversations taking place within graduate, business and medical schools. (For example, I referred here to one graduate student’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled Do Not Fear the Blog.) The debate within the legal academy over whether high-quality blogging is a legitimate form of scholarship would surely be enriched by similar conversations taking place among other professional disciplines.
March 1, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Article: Blogging Law Profs Assault Ivory Tower
This article from The National Law Journal, Blogging Law Profs Assault Ivory Tower, discusses blogging by law professors and the controversy over whether it constitutes scholarship.
Prof. Caron of TaxProf Blog (who is quoted in the article) has collected numerous responses from law professor bloggers here.
As a reminder, my previous collection of blog posts and articles on the topic of Academic Blogging is here.
February 28, 2006 in Academic Blogging, Blog Articles | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Addendum 2 to Academic Blogging
Here are four more excellent blog posts on Academic Blogging, from Chuck Tryon at The Chutry Experiment.
The fourth post is a response to the infamous (and pseudonymous) Prof. Tribble, and is thus added to the responses mentioned here.
February 24, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Addendum to Academic Blogging
Here are a couple of other articles on the subject of Academic Blogging that were not in the original list:
- An informative overview of blogging and the “Google effect,” by Prof. Roger Alford at Opinio Juris, entitled The Megaphone of Blogging.
- An article from graduate student Rebecca Goetz, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled Do Not Fear the Blog.
Rebecca’s article is one of several reacting to the pseudonymous Prof. Tribble, who criticized academic blogs here and here. Reactions from professor-bloggers to Tribble's articles are here, here, here, and here. In my collection of posts and articles on Academic Blogging, Prof. Tribble’s articles appear under the “Chronicle of Higher Education,” and the four posts from (non-law) professors are under “Cliopatra et al.”
I am currently seeking new articles and blog posts on the topic of “Academic Blogging,” especially concerning the matter of whether blogging is a legitimate form of scholarship. (My personal opinion is easy to guess.) Readers may feel free to suggest additions in the Comments.
February 24, 2006 in Academic Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Introduction to Academic Blogging Collection
A consistent theme of 3L Epiphany is that blogs are superior to traditional forms of legal scholarship in a multitude of ways. For this reason, I have:
- quoted a practitioner on why he prefers blogs to law reviews;
- demonstrated by hypothetical example the advantages that blogs have for timeliness;
- created “Footnote 123” as a perpetual online continuation of my otherwise-conventional student note; and
- predicted that law reviews will eventually incorporate blogs into their modus operandi, and that law students not on journal will form authoritative blogs of their own.
But most importantly, I collected numerous blog posts and online articles on the topic of "Academic Blogging" and made them available as an onlin