Know Your Law Library: East Reading Room

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On the east side of the 5th floor of the library (nearest to 4th Street) is the East Reading Room. Last week several bookcases and display shelves and journals and furniture were moved to create a new reading room for the library. There are also electrical outlets at the base of the windows. Doesn’t it look inviting?

The current periodical shelving was dismantled and moved to the East Reading Room so that everyone now has a comfortable place to sit and read their favorite journal, magazine or newspaper.

The law library also plans to continue hosting professors speaking on their favorite topics during monthly Coffee Talks. In the coming weeks, the fiction collection and the leadership book collections will also be relocated to this area of the library.

Thanks to everyone who helped create this great space over the past few weeks.

Follow-Up to Banned Books Week at the Charlotte Law Library

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A Poll

Every September since 1982, the library world celebrates the freedom to read by creating programming around Banned Books Week. At Charlotte School of Law Library, we created displays, blog posts, signage, and held a Read Out to raise awareness of the issue of books being challenged and banned.

The American Library Association (ALA) defines a challenge to literature as an attempt by a person or group of people to have literature restricted or removed from a public library or school curriculum.

Few people realize that since the inception of Banned Books Week more than 11,300 books have been challenged. Last year, 311 challenges were reported to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. They track challenges, at least the ones that are reported. A lot are not reported.

In an effort to raise awareness, a librarian decided to ban a book. Scott DiMarco, Director of Library and Information Resources at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania announced the banning of One Woman’s Vengeance by a local author named Dennis R. Miller. DiMarco declared the ban on the library’s Facebook page and got a swift response of outrage, but only eight people actually asked to discuss the ban with him. He wrote about his experience in a blog post.

We are interested to know what you think about this librarian’s method of raising awareness.

JD Career Fit: Equipping Students for Long-term Career Success

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On Saturday, February 7, 2015 the Center for Professional Development (CPD) of Charlotte School of Law hosted Session 1 of its innovative workshops geared toward cultivating the practical, or ‘soft’ skills needed to be successful in the law profession. This effort aligns with CharlotteLaw’s commitment to providing experiential learning from the first day of class to add value to any organization upon graduation.

The JD Career Fit program is a requirement for graduation and includes two sessions to be attended by students in their first semester. Developed by CPD staff, the program focuses on self-assessment and self-knowledge as the basis of creating individualized career plans and objectives that uniquely fit the skills, interests, values and strengths of each CharlotteLaw student.

Students attending JD Career Fit first seek to gain a true sense of self to lay the foundation for personal development. On-going exercises throughout the program enable students to establish personal brand, utilize social media effectively, develop their image, and perfect the art of networking. Employers in the law profession have identified these skills as among the top performance gaps they find in newly-graduated law students.

Aretha Blake, Director of CharlotteLaw’s Center for Professional Development noted “By requiring students to attend JD Career Fit, we are sending them a message of the importance practical skills play to supplement academic theory.”