The Kenyan Law Reports (KLR), a free Kenyan Law database, was just announced winner of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) 2011 Website Award Competition. With this award, Kenyan Law Reports joins the ranks of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law websites that claimed …
This week’s interview is with LeeAnne Rupple, Special Assistant to the Law Librarian. Enjoy! Describe your background. I was born in South Carolina to a family of die-hard, born and bred, Texans! I spent the bulk of my adolescent years in St. Louis, Missouri; however, my dad’s job required us to move frequently, so I …
The following is a guest post by Nicole Atwill, Senior Foreign Law Specialist in the Global Legal Research Center. I recently watched Dominique Strauss Kahn’s return to France on the French news as I vacationed there. There was nonstop live television coverage during the day. Many commentators pointed out that although Dominique Strauss Kahn (“DSK”) …
When doing my cool job, I never know what will cross my path. Recently, I happened to discover some items covering early sumptuary laws in England. These laws were prohibitions against what the Monarch at the time considered to be “extravagance,” typically in the form of food or clothing. They were reportedly aimed to preserve the class system …
This week’s interview is with Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb, Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress. Describe your background My background is a bit complicated: my mother was Slovenian and my father was a Levantine from Egypt. I grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, spoke French at home, and went to …
The 2011 Rugby World Cup kicked off in New Zealand on September 9th with a glittering opening ceremony followed by the first match between New Zealand and Tonga. (Note that the New Zealand national rugby team is commonly called the “All Blacks.”) I’ve had a couple of very busy weekends watching a number of the …
This month marks the ten year anniversary of Italian scholar Barbara Frale’s discovery of lost medieval documents relating to the trial of the Knights Templar. Frale, a scholar of medieval paleography, was doing historical research at the Vatican Secret Archive when she uncovered a fourteenth century manuscript which recounts a previously unknown chapter in the history …
The following is a guest post by Ángel García, a summer intern in the Law Library’s Global Legal Research Center. March 19, 2012, will be the 200th anniversary of the Constitution of Cádiz. Seizing on the opportunity while interning at the Law Library of Congress, I asked the rare book technician, Nathan Dorn, to find …
In Custodia Legis started one year ago today on August 2, 2010. We celebrated being a mere week old and now can’t believe how quickly a year has passed. We’ve posted 275 times in the past 365 days (this is number 276). It’s been an interesting year for the blog. I thought I’d ask around …