Research Librarian and Assistant Professor Andrew Martineau Writes Article for AALL’s Spectrum Magazine

Andrew Martineau is a research librarian and assistant professor in the Wiener-Rogers Law Library.

Martineau recently penned an article titled “Comfort, Functionality, and Popcorn: How UNLV’s law library remodel is improving the law student experience” for the May architectural issue of Spectrum, the magazine of the American Association of Law Libraries.

In the article, which discusses the library’s repurposed space and improvements, Martineau writes: “The conversion of the microform room into a student lounge/microform room was only a part—albeit an important part—of the library remodel. On the nearside of the skybridge, we retooled an area that had previously been occupied by a few carrels into a group study area. …Once patrons cross to the other side of the skybridge (and veer to the right a bit), they are greeted by another set of whiteboards, new chairs and ottomans, and a row of standing desks overlooking a scenic courtyard. Further down the way we’ve set up even more standing desks, and these feature a panoramic view of the greenbelt that runs across UNLV’s campus as well as views of the mountains that surround Las Vegas.”

The Wiener-Rogers Law Library Hosts Civil Rights Exhibit at the Nevada Legislature

From April 26^th through May 13^th, the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law is hosting an exhibit at the Nevada Legislature in Carson City. Titled Civil Rights in Nevada: The Experience of African-Americans in Southern Nevada, the exhibit celebrates the African-American community’s unique contributions to Nevada’s cultural, economic, and political history, as well as the challenges and victories of the struggle for equality in the state.   

The exhibit brings together archival material maintained by both the Wiener-Rogers Law Library and UNLV’s Lied Library, including collections of oral history interviews and historical photographs. The exhibit was developed and its display coordinated by Andrew Martineau, Digital Services and Research Librarian at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library. The exhibit would not have been possible without the contributions of Professor Rachel Anderson, who kindly loaned her Purposeful Spaces, Living History banners and whose scholarship provided much of the source material for the exhibit, and Claytee White, Director of the Oral History Center at UNLV, who conducted many of the interviews referenced in the exhibit.

The Wiener-Rogers Law Library is the largest law library in the State of Nevada. Its mission is to serve the William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV, and the state by providing access to law-related materials, supporting the scholarship of students and faculty, and reaching out to the community to share resources. Working with the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association, Professor Anderson, and Ms. White, the Wiener-Rogers Law Library has collected an archive of materials that relate to the contributions of African-Americans to Nevada law and government and to the history of civil rights in Nevada. That archive includes oral histories of a number of prominent African-American jurists in the State. The Law Library is committed to preserving all nature of materials that reflect Nevada history.

Andrew Martineau is a member of the law library faculty at the William S. Boyd School of Law; he coordinates many of the law library’s digital initiatives and supports faculty and student scholarship.

Ms. Betty Willis: Her Famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” Sign and Her Artistic Legacy in Las Vegas Neon

Photo (c) 2015 Gary A. Trimble

On March 23, 2015, Ms. Marjorie Holland, the daughter of Ms. Betty Willis, visited the Boyd School of Law to speak to Boyd students, faculty, and guests about her mother, a beloved artist who shaped the history of Las Vegas neon sign design. Ms. Willis, now 91, is most well known for her iconic sign “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas,” which she designed in 1959; the sign still welcomes visitors on Las Vegas Boulevard at the south end of the “Strip” today. But Ms. Willis’ legacy includes many other signs, including the famous sign for the Moulin Rouge Casino, which opened in May 1955 as the first desegregated hotel and casino in Las Vegas, and the sign for the Blue Angel Motel.

Photo (c) 2015 Gary A. Trimble

Ms. Holland's talk was co-organized by the Wiener-Rogers Law Library and Professor Marketa Trimble, and gave students from Professor Trimble’s Advanced Intellectual Property Seminar an opportunity to learn about Ms. Willis’ artistic legacy, career, vision, and concerns, and also a practical background for considerations of legal protection and the limitations of legal protection that apply to artists and their art, particularly in the context of art created for public places.

Photo (c) 2015 Gary A. Trimble

The Advanced Intellectual Property Seminar, offered at Boyd each year by either Professor Mary LaFrance or Professor Marketa Trimble, is designed for students who complete at least one of Boyd’s foundational intellectual property law courses and want further specialization in an area of intellectual property law. The Seminar expands students’ knowledge of intellectual property law and policies that affect the law by building on the students’ knowledge from the foundational courses. Students write an extensive research paper for the Seminar that explores an advanced intellectual property law topic of their choice. For example, the students in the Seminar this year are writing research papers covering topics such as the patenting of computer programs, the patenting of financial business methods, the patenting of artificial intelligence, parodies made of fashion brands, copyright and creativity in hip-hop music, and recent amendments to the Korean patent law.

Nov. 20 Boyd Briefs Now Available

The Nov. 20 edition of Boyd Briefs is now available.

This week's edition features Weiner-Rogers Library faculty members Jennifer Gross, Andrew Martineau, David McClure, Sean Saxon, Chad Schatzle and Matthew Wright.

Professor Gross is an expert in Nevada legal research and co-edited the Nevada Legal Research Guide. She also manages most of the library's physical collections, making those books more useful and accessible to the law school community.

Professor Martinaeu's expertise in intellectual property law research serves students, faculty and the library well. Additionally, his interest in new technologies has led to better communication among the law library and the communities it serves.

Professor McClure manages services to a productive and prolific faculty at Boyd by coordinating research support for faculty scholarship, helping faculty integrate new technology into their scholarship and teaching, and hoping to promote and share scholarship with new audiences. He also oversees the library's student research assistants.

Professor Saxon manages the systems that document the more than 180,000 books and 60,000 digital titles that the library makes available to the law school community. He additionally serves on the executive committee of the faculty senate.

Professor Schatzle is often the force behind library innovations in services to students. He is also a faculty advisor to the Society of Advocates and a liaison to the Nevada Law Journal and the UNLV Gaming Law Journal.

Professor Wright has led the development of the law library's collections since he joined Boyd in 1999. His work has resulted in a collection that is the largest among law libraries in the state and that is close to comprehensive with respect to U.S. authorities.

To subscribe to Boyd Briefs, visit law.unlv.edu/BoydBriefs.

Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle

Flyer

UNLV’s Office of Diversity Initiatives and the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law will sponsor a series of film screenings, community discussions, and other activities that explore the civil rights movement in the United States. UNLV is one of nearly 500 institutions across the country that were chosen to participate in Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle, a grant-funded program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Created Equal centers on four films that bring the civil rights struggle to life. During the next three years, the NEH grant will support a variety of activities at UNLV and around the state, including discussions among students, scholars, and community members, film screenings, and displays and exhibits.

The first Created Equal event takes place on Tuesday, April 1, at UNLV’s Student Union. The program will feature excerpts from PBS’ Freedom Riders, a film that focuses on the Freedom Rides of 1961, when a group of volunteers traveled to the South to bring civil rights injustices to the attention of the nation. A group of scholars and community members will discuss with students and others the challenges facing civil rights workers in the 1960s. Panelists include Hannah Brown, local civic and community leader, Jean Childs, former director of Region IX Head Start, Joseph M. Neal, Jr., former Nevada State Senator, and David Tanenhaus, Chair of UNLV’s History Department and James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law.

Additional programming is planned throughout 2014 and 2015. During the Nevada legislative session in 2015, the Created Equal films (The Abolitionists, Slavery by Another Name, Freedom Riders, and The Loving Story) will be shown outside the State Senate Chambers in Carson City on four consecutive Fridays during the month of February 2015. In late spring 2015, Created Equal materials will be part of a multi-media installation in the State Legislative Building in Carson City.

For information about Created Equal programming, please contact Jose Melendrez, Assistant Vice President of UNLV’s Office of Diversity Initiatives (jose.melendrez@unlv.edu), or Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV (jeanne.price@unlv.edu).

Law Library and Office of Diversity Initiatives Awarded NEH Grant

By Jeanne Price

The Wiener-Rogers Law Library and UNLV’s Office of Diversity Initiatives have been awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to host a series of film showings and discussions focusing on the civil rights movement in the United States. Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The NEH grant provides funds to communities across the country to support film showings and programming on the history of civil rights in the United States.

The Law Library and Office of Diversity Initiatives will incorporate the film series in existing programs and develop new programming to highlight the issues described in the four featured films – The Abolitionists; Slavery by Another Name; The Loving Story; and Freedom Riders. Over a three year period beginning in September 2013, UNLV scholars and community leaders will participate in forums – including the Diversity Leadership Forum and Latino Youth Leadership Conference – in which the films will play an important role.

The film series complements the Law Library’s collection of documentary films, one of the largest collections of its kind among academic law libraries. We hope that the initiatives and programming that the grant supports will not only inform and encourage dialogue, but also inspire students and other scholars to undertake research in primary source material in the Law Library’s collection, research that might enhance our understanding of the minority experience in Southern Nevada. The Law Library’s collections include the archives of the Las Vegas Chapter of the National Bar Association, the oldest minority bar association of African-American attorneys.

Professors Gross and McClure Represent Boyd at WestPac Annual Meeting

The Boyd School of Law is proud to announce representation by Professor Jennifer Gross and Professor David McClure at the Western Pacific Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries (WestPac) Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 18 through 20.

Professor Gross, who currently serves as Vice President and President-Elect of WestPac, as well as Chair of the Education Committee, arranged the program for the annual meeting. A founding member of the Law Library Faculty at Boyd, Professor Gross also serves as Reference and Collection Management Librarian at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library.

Professor McClure serves as Co-Editor of the WestPac newsletter (WestPac News) and as an ex-officio member of the WestPac Executive Board. Professor McClure joined Boyd's Law Library Faculty in 2009 and currently serves as Head of Research and Curriculum Services.

Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom

By Jeanne Price

On Saturday, October 6, the ACLU of Nevada, together with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, Nevada Humanities, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the American Institute for Graphic Arts, hosted "Uncensored Voices: Celebrating Literary Freedom." The event marked the celebration of Banned Books Week in Las Vegas and focused on censorship's past, present, and future. The event, held at the Clark County Library, opened with remarks by Jeanne Goodrich, Director of the Las Vegas Clark County Library District, and Dane Clausen, Executive Director of ACLU of Nevada.

Discussions were moderated by Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Panelists included Tony Diaz, author and founder of the Librotraficante Movement, Professor Jeanne Price, Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library at the William S. Boyd School of Law, Dr. Auggie Romero, Director of Student Equity at the Tucson Unified School District, and Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Much of the discussions centered on recent state and federal legislative initiatives focused on, in the case of state legislation, public school curriculum, and, at the federal level, national security and restrictions on access to information.

On Friday, the panelists spoke on KNPR’s State of Nevada about censorship issues in the news today.

The Banned Books program anticipates the opening of the Vegas Valley Book Festival on November 1, 2012.

Professor Price Places Her New Article in the Cleveland State Law Review

The Boyd School of Law is very pleased to announce that Professor Jeanne Price placed her new law review article, "Wagging, Not Barking: Statutory Definitions," in volume 59 of the Cleveland State Law Review.

The article focuses on the role played by definitions in a reader’s understanding and application of a statute. Despite the frequency with which terms are defined in the United States Code (the Code includes more than 25,000 defined terms), statutory definitions remain relatively unexamined. Professor Price frames her analysis by distinguishing two functions served by legislation – statutes are both communication vehicles and instruments of governance. She suggests that a better understanding of the effect of definition on a reader’s interaction with a text, coupled with an appreciation of the different roles served by definition, will enable legislators to draft more useful definitions and enable interpreters to better apply those definitions

Professor Price, who also serves as Director of the Wiener-Rogers Law Library, joined the faculty in 2008. She teaches Research Methods and enjoys focusing on information sources and strategies in business and commercial contexts. As illustrated by her new law review article, Professor Price's research interests focus on law and language, law-related taxonomies, and cross-language information retrieval.

Before coming to UNLV, Professor Price served as Associate Director of the Tarlton Law Library and Lecturer at The University of Texas School of Law as well as Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas School of Information. A member of the Texas Bar, Professor Price practiced corporate and securities law in Houston and overseas for nearly ten years. Professor Price is a graduate of Yale University (B.A.), The University of Texas (J.D.), and the University of Maryland (M.L.S.).