Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library

The Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library is pleased to offer two specialized collections to our law school students, faculty and staff.  Please come to the library and check them out!!

Tower Reading Room Recreational Reading Collection

The Tower Reading Room Collection contains books for recreational reading including novels, biographies, travel guides, poetry and other non-law related reading. We welcome your suggestions for additions to this collection (hard-cover only, please). The PDF suggestion form can be filled in online, printed and dropped off at the Circulation Desk.  Paper forms are also available at the Circulation Desk or you can e-mail your suggestions to June Kim. 

Law and Popular Culture Video Collection

The Law and Popular Culture (Law 595) Video Collection contains a large collection of law-related videocassettes and DVDs (we now have most titles in both formats) to support the Law & Popular Culture course (Law 595). These can be checked out from the Circulation Desk for use in the Library's Video/DVD Rooms or for home use (generally a one week loan is given). During the semester when the Law 595 is being taught, the loan period is reduced to overnight and priority use of these materials may be given to the students who are enrolled in the course.

Posted by Donna Gulnac at 2:51 PM | Permalink

I recently received an issue of Real Simple Food in which the editors reported on a taste test of 100 frozen meals.  I thought this would be useful information for students, so I am passing it along.  They also mentioned a helpful website that rates microwave meals called HeatEatReview.com (their motto is “We eat it so you don’t have to”).  The site also arranges meals by rating, brand and ingredient. 

If you would like to read my abbreviated report of Real Simple’s results, please follow the link below.

Real Simple divided the meals into 4 categories and listed the winner and runner-up in each division:

• Winner:  Marie Callender’s Beef Salisbury Steak & Gravy ($3.50) – The meat is tasty, the gravy is “rich, peppery, and not over-salted like most packaged gravies.”  It comes with red-skinned potato wedges and green beans with bits of bacon.
  
• Runner-up: Boston Market Country Fried Chicken ($4) – “…tender and juicy, with a crisp, ungreasy coating.”  The mashed potatoes and glazed peas with carrots were also described as delicious.

• Winner: Kashi All Natural Lemon Rosemary Chicken ($4) – “Best part: The seven-whole-grain pilaf—rich and nutty.”  The chicken is “moist and tender; the sugar snap peas, sweet and slightly crunchy. The light lemon, rosemary and white-wine sauce perfectly complemented both.” (Note:  HeatEatReview.com's reviewer preferred the Southwest Style Chicken.)
  

• Runner-up:  Lean Cuisine Fiesta Grilled Chicken ($3.50) – “Tasters were wowed by the herb-coated chunks of white-meat chicken.”  Also contains black and pinto beans, sweet roasted red and yellow bell peppers and Spanish-style rice.

• Winner: Stouffer’s Lasangne with Meat & Sauce ($6.50, serves 5) – Noodles weren’t rubbery or gooey like most.  “The meat sauce had ‘a simmered-all-day taste’ with 'a nice balance of herbs and spices.'”
  
• Runner-up: Trader Joe’s Cheese Enchiladas ($4, serves 4) – I know you’ve all had these, so I’ll skip the description!

• Tandoor Chef Chicken Curry ($4) – “It tastes like it came from a restaurant.” This one “garnered raves” for an authentic tasting sauce and tender chunks of chicken breast.  (Note: This doesn’t come with rice)
  
• Runner-up: Amy’s Teriyaki Bowl ($4.50) – Almost all organic.  Vegetables are “remarkably crisp” and the brown rice “perfectly cooked.”

Posted by Donna Gulnac at 4:14 PM | Permalink

Rhonda Lawrence, the Library’s Head of Cataloging, has worked in the UCLA Law Library since 1989.  As the co-author of three editions of Cataloging Legal Literature: a manual on AACR2R and Library of Congress subject headings for legal materials, Rhonda is one of the foremost authorities in American legal cataloging. She is also very active and well-known in national library associations.

Law librarianship is a second career for Rhonda.  Fresh out of college with her B.S. in English and a minor in Inner City Education from Iowa State, she taught junior and senior high school English for four years at an inner city school in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Rhonda originally decided to go to library school to become a school librarian.  But she entered the UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Fall 1978, just after California’s Proposition 13 was passed, which made employment prospects for school librarians pretty dismal. While in library school she became interested in government documents and legal research after working at the now defunct Public Affairs Service on the A-level of the Young Research Library.

Rhonda’s first job after library school was as a government documents librarian with the L.A. County Public Library. Returning to UCLA to take courses in law librarianship and legal bibliography,  she was offered a job as a cataloger for the L.A. County Law Library while interviewing the library director for a research paper. She had taken four or five cataloging classes while in library school, and discovered that she really enjoyed it.  She had always wanted to return to UCLA, so seven years later when a cataloging job opened up in the law library, she applied for it.

Rhonda loves working at UCLA and enjoys her wonderful colleagues (in fact, she met her husband of 13 years here, Professor Arthur Rosett).  Rhonda confesses that she also has a thing about organizing, to the extent that she arranges her husband’s shirts by sleeve length, color and pattern!

Her personal interests include gardening (the library often benefits from her gorgeous flower garden), playing Mah Jonng with other law library staff, reading mysteries, and singing in a choir, which she has done for as long as she can remember.  In high school, her honors chorus was selected to attend the Salzburg Music Festival.  Rhonda still sings in her church choir and she loves belting out the “Star Spangled Banner” at sporting events.

Rhonda has two cats in her household: a 14-month old Maine Coon cat, Dr. Watson (left), and the recently adopted Don Pio Pico (right), a 12-week old Ragdoll cat. She had hoped that the new cat would distract Dr. Watson from one of his favorite pastimes, hanging out in her bathroom sink, but now she finds that she has two cats in her sinks. (Follow the web link to see that this is appears to be a common practice among cats!)

Rhonda is quite the movie buff and has won the library’s Oscar pool more often than not.  I am trying to encourage Rhonda to contribute regular movie reviews to this blog, so look for those in the future!

Posted by Donna Gulnac at 1:44 PM | Permalink