2016 Black History Month

Pictured: shield of Delta Sigma Theta,
the sorority of Justice Rose Sconiers

Did you know that Alpha Phi Alpha, the first and oldest successful African-American collegiate fraternity, was founded in 1906 at Cornell University? And that Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Rueben Davis were all Alpha Phi Alphas? If you'd like to learn more, check out our Black History Month display, where this year we honor historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Greek organizations.

From A to Z

Popular with our patrons, the New York State Bar Association's Practical Skills Series covers nineteen different practice areas, from arbitration to zoning. These annual softbound volumes offer step-by-step guidance, practice tips, checklists and forms (almost all of the titles include Forms on CD) in a format and size practitioners seem to find useful. This year we've been able to purchase a second set to meet demand.

Arbitration and mediation
Business/corporate law and practice
Criminal law and practice
Debt collection and judgment enforcement
Elder law, special needs planning and will drafting
Guardianship
Labor law and workers' compensation
Limited liability companies
Matrimonial law
Mechanic's liens
Mortgages
Mortgage foreclosures
New York residential landlord-tenant law and procedure
Probate and administration of decedents' estates
Real estate transactions--commercial property
Real estate transactions-- residential property
Representing the personal injury plaintiff in New York
Social security law and practice
Zoning and land use

And new this year, Legislative highlights.

Wishing you a Happy New Year

Front page news

You'll find quite a good article on the NYCRR Digital Archive in the Buffalo Law Journal today. The reporter does a nice job of capturing the collaboration it took to get it done, as well as its usefulness to legal researchers. We're so thrilled to have helped make the project happen!

If you need help using the database, please call our reference desk at 585-530-3251. If you've already used it, we'd love to hear your feedback!

Update (November 17, 2015): the Buffalo Law Journal story was picked up by national library news! (Look for the picture of "Team Green.")

The NYCRR Digital Archive is up and running!

After three years of concerted effort the Appellate Division Law Library, the Charles B. Sears Law Library at the University of Buffalo Law School, and the State Supreme Court Law Library in Buffalo are pleased to announce the "greatest thing since sliced bread" is now available free online.

The New York Codes, Rules and Regulations (NYCRR) is where you would find environmental rules about car emissions or the guidelines for what a stop sign should look like. Like most law, the NYCRR is constantly changing. Although it is easy to find the current version, finding past versions was very difficult. If you needed to know what regulations governed the mortgage you took out in 1991, your only option was to travel to one of the few libraries that kept the old print versions and sift through hundreds of binders until you found what you were looking for. The process could take hours, even days to complete.

This is no longer the case, thanks to the NYCRR Digital Archive. This free online database allows anyone to search through past versions of rules and regulations that were in effect from 1945-2001.

If you need help using the database, please call our reference desk at 585-530-3251.

Salem Witch Trials

The Daily Record today featured a review by Christine Bowersox, Collection Management Librarian at Harris Beach, of resources on the Salem Witch Trials. That piqued our curiosity: did we own any of the works on her list? We do have one, "Trials for Witchcraft Before the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer." It's in Volume 1 of American Criminal Trials, in our Rare Book Room. You can find a free electronic version of American Criminal Trials in the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

We also have books on the subject from two excellent series:
The Salem witchcraft trials : a legal history
from the series Landmark law cases & American society
and
Narratives of the witchcraft cases, 1648-1706
from the series Notable Trials Library.

Also worth mentioning is the University of Virginia's Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project, an impressive collection of primary sources, historical maps, and contemporary commentary.

Villain or victim?

The Wolf: villain or victim?
The Three Pigs: innocent or at fault?
The Jurors, Miss Muffet, Bo Peep, Cinderella and Humpty-Dumpty: solid citizens or characters with a past?

RAPA Family Theatre promises fun-filled proceedings in The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf, running October 23 through November 1. By the author of The Trial of Goldilocks.

For details, please visit the website of the Kodak Center for Performing Arts.