Reaping the Digital Dividend: Is it Time to Take the Great Leap?
Five years ago I wrote about some of the key issues and problems that confronted academic law libraries, and speculated about what the future might hold. I discussed trends in legal education and developments in legal research instruction; the changing physical environment of the library, including an idea that was once anathema, the growing move to allow patrons to eat and drink in the library. Time has passed all too quickly and there have been many momentous changes in the world, including the trauma of September 11, 2001, and the protracted war in Iraq.
The Virtual Law School Library
What do the next twenty years hold for law school libraries? How will they look in 2021? What will be in them? Who will use them? Will we still use books, or will everything be accessed through an electronic medium? These questions are canvassed in the context of a law school library that is, in 2001, uneasily poised at a junction where signposts point to alternative futures for the delivery of legal education itself. I. Introduction We seem, yet again, to be at one of those moments in time, so common in the last quarter of the 20th century, and likely to be continuous in the 21st, when the future appears as a melting pot of possibilities for law libraries, particularly university law libraries. This time the uncertainty is largely driven by the potential advent of Web-based learning, and the as yet largely undeveloped nature of the law school response to the possibilities of education outside of the traditional classroom model. Uncertainty is also due to the growing awareness that IT literacy is increasing rapidly among our user community, and that students in particular now prefer electronic sources of information over print – sources which, increasingly, they can access from places other than the physical law library.
The Tsetse Problem on the Eastern Cattle Route in the Gold Coast
1. Primary fly-belts round Makongo consisted of three different vegetational communities: a Cynometra-Vitex association along the main length of the Makongo river, on a clay soil; a Ficus congensis association along the river close to the town, on a sandy soil; and Isoberlinia doka woodland on moist sandy soil north-west and south of Makongo. 2. Secondary fly-belts of less dense vegetation occur in the orchard bush savannah round Makongo, and these are not colonised until the commencement of the rainy season. 3. Glossina tachinoides and G. palpalis both occurred in the riverside communities, and G. palpalis alone in the Isoberlinia woodland. 4. Along the river G. palpalis outnumbered G. tachinoides by 3:1 in the dry season. At the commencement of the rains G. tachinoides increased more quickly than G. palpalis , bringing their numbers very nearly equal, but at the end of the rains there was a decrease in G. tachinoides which restored the original proportion. 5. G. morsitans had been found at Makongo formerly but was not met with at the time of this investigation, its absence being due to the disappearance of the larger antelope from the neighbourhood. 6. Smaller game animals, small mammals and reptiles afforded an adequate food supply for tsetse in the fly-belts, and also passing herds of cattle, as well as natives from the village and travellers. 7. The distribution of G. palpalis within the fly-belts was markedly influenced by the proximity of a cattle road along which herds of cattle passed almost daily, and by village water-holes. 8. During the dry season the primary foci were always found to be the places of greatest relative humidity, and the fly does not tend to move out of these until the general atmospheric humidity has reached a certain fairly high degree. 9. In clearing the fly-belts the removal of all primary foci within a quarter of a mile of the town and of thick bush within 100 yards of water-holes was undertaken. The work lasted from the beginning of February to the end of March 1931. 10. The effect of clearing the Isoberlinia doka woodland was to banish G. palpalis completely, and it never returned to these clearings. 11. On clearing the riverside Ficus congensis fly-belt, G. tachinoides was practically eliminated for the first three months, but reappeared in the clearings in June when there was a general increase and up-stream migration of this fly. G. palpalis remained in this clearing in fluctuating numbers up to June, when observations were suspended. 12. 565 marked tsetse were liberated in the fly-belts immediately previous to clearing. Of G. palpalis 12·7% were recaptured in the clearings and 11% outside the clearings. Of G. tachinoides 5·5% were recaptured in the clearings and 6·8% outside.