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Law Library News for Jan. 15, 2007

Law Library News Archive

Cheryl Nyberg, editor

Early Admission

Law students can enter the Library 30 minutes before it officially opens. Swipe your Husky card to unlock the door beginning at 7:30 am weekdays and 10:30 am weekends.

Library Lifesavers

Come to this quarter’s second installment of Library Lifesavers.

Tuesday, Jan. 16, 12:45-1:15 pm, Room 119

  • Westlaw: Advanced Searching with Terms & Connectors
  • Foreign Law Starting Points: Print Sources

New Library Exhibits

Check out the new exhibits outside the Library entrance.

The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, a law student organization is featured, along with books on animal rights.

Visitors coming to the UW School of Law are:

  • Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel & President, NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund. William H. Gates Public Service Law Scholarship Program, Speaker Series 2006-07
  • Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court of South Africa. Condon-Falknor Distinguished Speaker Series

The permanent exhibit on our Government Publications collection has also been updated.

Color My (Research) World: Blue

Little Boy Blue, come conjure your cite.
The prof is watching. You’d best get it right.
Where are the rules you must not overlook?
Between the covers of the evil Bluebook.
Will you learn them? Yes, you must
Lest your career crumble to dust.

Let us begin this series with a title whose cover matches the mood of law students attempting to abide by its contents: The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.

Blue has not always been the cover color nor a part of the proper title. Early editions sported grayish-olive, brown, and white covers as well as blue. But can you image referring to The Grayish-Olive Book?

Blue became the permanent color in the Year of the Bicentennial (1976) with the 12th edition. That choice was enshrined forever in a change in the official title with the 15th edition (1991).

One author, reviewing the 15th edition, suggests that renaming the manual The Bluebook “capitalizes on the authority and elitism implied in blue books generally, such as the Blue Book for the Supreme Court, the National Reporter Blue Book of Cases, the Blue Book of the State of Illinois, or the Blue Book registries of socially prominent persons.”  Jay W. Stein, Bluebook 15 and the Practitioner, 59 Def. Counsel J. 592, 594 (1992).

To which I say: Phooey! Few law students are aware of these other blue books (although you will learn about a couple of them in future installments). Driven to distraction by The Bluebook, law students are more likely to suspect a connection to the Kelley blue books on new car pricing and used car values.

For more on The Bluebook’s evolution, see A. Darby Dickerson, An Un-Uniform System of Citation: Surviving with the New Bluebook, 26 Stetson L. Rev. 53 (1996). The Bluebook: A Sixty-Five Year Retrospective contains the 1st through the 15th editions, although, sadly, the covers are not faithfully reproduced in their original less-than-resplendent colors. KF245.B583 1998 at Classified Stacks