About food, table manners, and libraries

Seeing that a considerable amount of space was dedicated to the discussion of food matters in the last Quid Novi http://quid.mcgill.ca/, I would like to add my little share to this conversation.

NO food is allowed in the Law Library. By saying NO food in the Law Library, I do indeed mean NO food. You can bring water and other beverages in sealed containers, but we do not allow any kind of food in the Library because food smells, and leftovers can attract insects or rodents, and we would not like to have mice and cockroaches here. So, please, please, when you bake your lovely carrés or muffins using the recipe from the last Food for Thought section, find another place to eat them. On n’est pas permis de  ‘grignoter’ quoi que ce soit à la bibliothèque 🙂

I enjoyed reading “The Law students guide to business lunch etiquette” by Mary Angela Rowe. Personally, I am convinced that it is about the time to remind to everybody about the table manners that have been almost destroyed by the invasion of fast-food, plastic-plate, hastily-eaten meals. To somebody who is interested in the topic I can suggest searching our Classic Catalogue – Advanced Search – Keywords in subject – table etiquette. The McGill Library has an interesting selection of books on this topic ranging from “The rituals of dinner: the origins, evolution, eccentricities, and meaning of table manners” to “Galateo; or, A treatise on politeness and delicacy of manners… With the whole art of carving; illustrated with a variety of cuts”.

More about scanning

Last year, Nahum Gelber Law Library got a new Spirit Book Scanner – a self-service machine that gives you a real time preview and saves your scanned documents directly to a USB key. The scanner is located in the copy room at the 2nd  floor. To learn how to use, this device you can watch the video: http://youtu.be/NtFzvvZcaXY  

Library tours for law students

If you would like to know more about our facilities and services, we will be glad to offer you a tour of the Nahum Gelber Law Library. Half-an-hour tours are given to the groups of students (minimum of three) during our opening hours. You can send a request for a tour to the law.library@mcgill.ca Please do not forget to indicate the number of participants and your preferred time.

Yale Law Library exhibit: “The Comic Art of Joseph Hemard”

Joseph Hémard (1880-1961), was in his lifetime one of the most prolific French book illustrator. His illustrations are the focus of the latest exhibit in the Yale Law Library, “‘And then I drew for books’: The Comic Art of Joseph Hémard.” The exhibit showcases eight of the 183 illustrations in Hémard’s Tax Code, donated to the Yale Law Library by Farley P. Katz, a tax attorney from San Antonio, who has one of the world’s finest collections of Hémard’s works, and other books from the Yale Law Library’s Rare Book Collection. You can find more information about the exhibit at the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

Post-1907 decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada available on CanLii

Legal researchers can now access on CanLII a collection of over 9,000 decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada dating back to 1907. These decisions are fully integrated and cross-linked to any subsequent case on CanLII in which they are referenced. The addition of a 1,600 cases ensures that CanLII users will have access to all judgments published in the Supreme Court Reports since 1907.  More comprehensive collection of 1876-1907 cases can be found at the Supreme Court of Canada website.

Making Legal History : Approaches and Methodologies

This collection of essays discusses the fundamental questions and the issues of the methodology of legal history research. The authors explore the approaches, methods, and sources that form the basis of legal research and illuminate the complexities and the challenges of researching into the history of the law posed by visual, unwritten, non-legal , and traditional archival sources. You can find more information abou this books here.

History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500

This is the newest volume in the History of Medieval Canon Law series that gives a detailed overview of the history of Byzantine and Eastern canon law. Authors discuss the origin of canon law and the development of church order in the Early eastern Church, the corpus canonum before the Quinisext council, the Byzantine  canons, and the imperial legislation and jurisprudence on church matters. You can find more information about this book here.

Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice

The author uses records of Inquisition witchcraft trials in Venice to explore how different classes of the Venetian society understood characteristics and boundaries of nature and the supernatural. This work describes the complex forces shaping early modern beliefs a through their manifestations and evidence in the witchcraft trials’ records. You can find more about this book here.

Medieval Legal Process : Physical, Spoken and Written Performance in the Middle Ages

In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was just one mean of communication among many other, e.g. the spoken word and the ‘action’ of legal ritual. This work discusses fifteen cases, ranging from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, and from England to Galician Rus’. It is is volume 22 of Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (USML), the series edited by Professor Marco Mostert. You can find a detailed list of the series’ content at their website. USML series is a forum for publications on the history of all form of communications in the Middle Ages, non-verbal, oral, and written. You can find more about this book here.