Alison McIntyre is no longer using Room 208 in the Law Library as her permanent base. It is therefore available to other people looking for a home. Catherine will set this uo for bookings as soon as she can find a minute. In the meantime I have ensconced myself in that room for as much time as it is available.

BUT I HAVE NO SEIGNIOURIAL CLAIM ON ROOM 208, SO IF YOU NEED A PLACE TO WORK PLEASE JUST COME AND KICK ME OUT!!!
Margaret G

Hi Again folks!

I am sorry to be using an elephant gun rather than a stiletto, but I must once again raise the question of Lending activities in the Law Library. We are picking up a lot of oddities here, either because Central Stff are switching on to automatic & operating as though they were still in Central, OR because Law Library staff are doing exactly that,AND/OR both groups are tired and confused!

We are still getting quite a bit of stuff eroneously checked in (see my message yesterday), but now we are also finding a new phenomenon: spine labels are being helpfully generated by people who find books without them, but fail to note that the default print for spine labels within this Library will be headed (LAW). So it would be good to check that the label you create says the correct stuff!

I would normally try to locate the person or persons involved, and speak to them privately – but unfortunately, I am not always clear about who is here when, and so I am embarrassed to have to raise the issue in this broadcast, scatter-gun fashion.

My apologies to all those wonderful staff who are battling their way through this difficult and problematic time, and my sincere thanks to all who battle at the grass-roots of the coal-face in the Law Library salt-mine!

Cheers

MG

We are enormously grateful for all the help we are receiving from so many fabulous colleagues from Central. We would certainly have no chance of managing on our own! I do want to thank everyone who has so willingly helped out over here.

But I do have to ask anyone who spends any time on the Lending Desk at Law to be mindful of the following:

ALL books returning through the Law Library MUST be checked in as if it were a Law book. This will then generate a transit slip. This will tell you where it should be, and if it turns out to be ‘Central’, scan the barcode into the programme to convert it into ‘Central at Law’ collection. Then recheck the item into Law to make the status ‘recently returned.

Failure to do this means that a large number of Law & Edu books are winding up on trolleys destined for shelving on ‘Central at Law’ shelves – even though they are labelled as Law or Edu books.

(I believe this has become standard procedure at Edu, and it makes sense to have the same standard running across the system.)

Many thanks!!!

Dear Colleagues: if I may add yet another deviation from Standard Practice to your already overburdened minds: should any Detective Fiction books find their way into Drop boxes or across Desks elsewhere in the Library system, would you please send them on to us in Law. Although the collection has been sent to starage for the Interregnum, we have a small stash here for serious addicts.

MG

I have a ticket free to a good home to the Law Revue, tonight at the Ngaio Marsh.

Let me know if you’d like it, & I’ll ensure you get the ticket.

Margaret

Context is all.
This morning I was fortunate enough to attend an address by our Chief Justice, Dame Sian Elias. She reviewed the development of public law in New Zealand – particularly since the late 60s – early 70s, when both she and I were at Auckland Law School. At the end, there was just time for a couple of questions. One student asked about the experience and value of ‘sharing’ judges – that is, common law judges acting in other jurisdictions. The Chief Justice’s response was germane to the situation in the Library today.
Dame Sian spoke of her humbling experience acting as a Supreme Court judge in Fiji (in the days when they and we did such friendly things), and how starkly aware she very quickly became of her lack of context for decision-making. In contrast to the strict doctrine of the ‘division of powers’ to be found in Dicey, and especially in the US constitution, a common law constitution is much more fluid, and adapts to local socio-political circumstances. In the Fiji Supreme Court, she found herself lacking the perspective and judgement upon which she could always rely in New Zealand, and consequently became very respectful of her Fijian colleagues on the bench in relation to their grasp of indigenous conditions.
Her second example was acting as Counsel before the Privy Council for the appellants in New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney General [1994] 1 AC 466 (the case relating to Maori claims to radio air-waves). In the course of the hearing, one of the English Law Lords asked her, “…how long have these people been off the Reservations?”
It is incidents such as these that stop us in our tracks and make us suddenly very conscious of the dangers of too doctrinaire an application of a paradigm plucked from one jurisdiction to another where the context is not the same, and has not yet been explored.
Great Britain has a population of over 60 million; New Zealand has just over 4 million. Our population is very thinly spread up and down a long thin country, with half the population in Auckland, and only half of Auckland’s population sprinkled over the entire South Island. The University of Canterbury is six hours drive from the University of Otago.
There is good government support (yes! money!) for collaborative undertakings among research libraries in Britain (For example, in Law, there is FLARE: http://ials.sas.ac.uk/flare/flare.htm ). There is no parallel here.
In the first iteration of the Proposal there was a strange absence of a number of words we have come to expect to see in foundation documents. ‘Maori’, ‘Treaty of Waitangi’, ‘Tangata Whenua’ are just some of these. A few such terms began to make their cautious appearance in the Review.
It is to be hoped that for the future good health of the University of Canterbury, and for its Library, the haste with which the current proposed changes have been articulated and set on their course will be tempered somewhat before their final application by an increase in attention given to the realities of indigenous needs, aspirations, and conditions.
MG

Lucky Dip?

This position has found its way on to the UC Vacancies site, but NOT into the Diary. If you know of anyone who may be interested in a part-time position for the rest of the year, please point them in the direction of:

http://vacancies.canterbury.ac.nz/positiondetail.asp?p=4391

Margaret

Many of you will have worked with or will know Glyness Taylor, who has worked in the Law Library for a very long time, and before that, in Central Library Lending. Glyness’s mother died at the weekend. Sue & I attended the funeral today, and Glyness will be taking a few days off to spend with family, and sort things out. She is obviously very much in grief, but still in good heart. Those of you who know Glyness may like to have heard about this beforehand, so that you may be able to have a few words with her when next you see her.
Margaret Greville.

Those with long memories will be delighted to hear that John Arnold, presently employed at Lincoln, and in a previous incarnation in our Systems (as it then was) Department, is coming home. John starts work in the Law Library on Monday 26 January as an Information Librarian, and any remaining members of his fan club should take the opportunity to drop in and say hello, and help welcome him back!
Margaret