Bar Exam Tips

The Practising Law Institute or PLI has collected a number of links to presentations of experts on the bar exam. They assembled it all into a free page to help students get ready for the bar exam.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

It was a dark and stormy night

Think this phrase was made famous by Snoopy? No, it is the first sentence to a book written by an early 19th century novelist. This is the entire sentence.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

In honor of this bad writing the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was created. Each year writers compete for the wretched writing award. The website host a collection of winners and dishonorable mentions. Let's be happy that Snoopy used the original and not some of these.

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. --Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)

Take a break from studying and read some of the entries. They should at least make you smile.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Expanded Reference Librarian Hours

For those of you who have questions on the off hours - part-time evening students take note - we have expanded our evening and weekend Reference hours. On Monday-Thursday evenings until 9pm and Saturdays, 10am-6pm, you will see some new faces at the Reference desk. Dan and Helena have agreed to help us this summer to provide you with assistance with any of your research or reference questions. They are both knowledgeable and experienced legal reference librarians - and have met my exacting requirements on being feline friendly!

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Specialty Search Engine-Science

If you're looking for accurate, authoritative scientific information using the web, an excellent starting point is Scirus, a science-only specialized or "vertical" search engine from Elsevier. Combining a webcrawler that focuses only on web sites with scientific content, such as university web sites and author homepages, with the publisher Elsevier's massive scientific information resources drawn from thousands of journals and books, Scirus offers a hybrid service that is second to none. To get an idea of the range of scientific content Scirus covers, click here .

Scirus also includes a news feed with the latest science headlines.

Trust the Ernster, this is THE PLACE for science-specific results on the web. Specialized search engines are one way to get better information faster, so you can hit the beach!



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat