Tuesday, August 08, 2006

FAQ About Law Dawg Blawg

Why did you start the Law Dawg Blawg? We started this blog July 1, 2004, primarily as a way to share research tips, library announcements, news, and links to interesting articles, websites, and blogs with members of the SIU Law School community, and also with other members of the legal and library communities.

What happened to the research tips? Although we have not recently met our goal of posting a weekly research tip, we will be posting more frequent research tips when our legal research classes resume in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can link to our previous tips from Archive of Research Tips.

What's the deal with the dog pictures? The biggest – and most popular – change to Law Dawg Blawg over the past year has been the addition of the SIU Law Dog of the Week. Each week we post a dog picture submitted by an SIU School of Law student, professor, staff member, or alumnus. To see photos of all previous Law Dogs of the week, visit our Gallery of SIU Law Dogs.

Why did you name it Law Dawg Blawg? A blog is a frequently-updated website, usually arranged with new items at the top. Blawg is a term sometimes used to describe a law-related blog. Dawg comes from the fact that the mascot of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale is the Saluki, a breed of dog. And Law, because our intended readers are the law school and legal communities.

What is a saluki? Salukis were the royal dog of Egypt and are believed to be the oldest known distinct breed of dog. Southern Illinois has long been referred to as “Little Egypt.”

Little Egypt? According to Baker Brownell in The Other Illinois, “Although the legend probably was invented after the fact, it is persistent. There was a drought in the northern counties (of Illinois) in the early 1800's . . . the wheat fields dried up, the streams died in their beds. But in southern Illinois rain fell and there were good crops, and from the north came people seeking corn and wheat as to Egypt of old. Thus, the name ‘Egypt.’” See also Tales and Songs of Southern Illinois by Charles Neely.

For more information on the Saluki breed, see what the American Kennel Club has to say; for a more extensive discussion of SIUC's mascot, see What the Hell is a Saluki?

How can I subscribe to Law Dawg Blawg? We have a Feedburner feed for those wishing to subscribe using a blog aggregator or news reader, such as NewsGator, MyYahoo! or Bloglines. You can also subscribe via email using the subscription form in the sidebar to the right, below the Site/RSS Feeds options. To receive one email for each day that we post something new – sent out in the early morning hours of the next day – enter your email address in the box and click on the "Subscribe Me!" button below it.

For more information about subscription options, click on Subscribing to RSS Feeds in this paragraph or toward the top of the sidebar.

Can I add a comment to an entry on Law Dawg Blawg? To avoid the problem of comment spam, we have made this a moderated blawg. Comments do not appear until one of us has had time to review and release them, but all non-spam comments will eventually be released.

You can e-mail us at llibweb@siu.edu. For more information about our law library, visit the Southern Illinois University School of Law Library site.

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