Volume 46, Issue 2

This article provides a very brief introduction to practical information useful for building special collections at an academic law library rather than addressing theory or the history of special collections.

Given the instant availability of information and the proliferation of questionable news, the ability to critically examine information before consuming it, is of increasing importance. The need for excellent information literacy skills is evident but lacking. This article highlights reasons as to resistance to existing information literacy efforts and suggests components for information literacy programming with a focus on fake news.

Why do we still have books? To answer this question with views based not on the market trend, nor on the popular feeling that print is outdated and irrelevant, but on the American Bar Association's stated mission of Law Libraries to provide resources that enable legal education, 1 this article reviews the potential benefits and determents of different types of legal sources using both print and online formats and discusses whether external pressures should outweigh these factors dependent on the audience.

A decade after the inauguration of the national working group on the reform of criminal justice administration in Nigeria by the then Attorney General of the Federation, Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN, Nigeria was presented with a newly signed law—Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), which was a direct response to the growing call for reforms that would address the plethora of problems confronting the administration of the criminal justice system in Nigeria. The 495-section law harmonized the existing two principal laws: the Criminal Procedure Act (CPA) and the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), which hitherto governed the administration of criminal justice system across all Federal-owned Courts in Nigeria and the Courts within the Federal Capital Territory. Both CPA and CPC operated for many decades in Nigeria, but had many challenges, hence the urgency for the newcomer— ACJA.

Prior to designing strategies and information literacy programs to combat the dissemination and proliferation of fake/false news, it is instructive for legal information professionals to understand the characteristics of fake news and the context of its historical development.

Now that we have a better understanding of the history and context of fake news, I am going to discuss why fake news and combatting it matters and how the recent rise of fake news correlates with a change in how society views expertise. I will also share the recently released results of a huge research project examining how fake news spreads.