The United States Marshals Service recently held an online auction (May 18 to June 2, 2011) for some personal items owned by  Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber.   The purpose of the auction was to raise money to compensate Kaczynski’s victims.  In all, the auction was able to raise $232,246.  The items auctioned ranged from a typewriter, handwritten papers, and Kaczynski’s infamous hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses.

Pictures of all items auctioned

Kaczynski plead guilty in 1998 for a string of bombings between 1978 and 1995 that killed three people and wounded 23 others.  He is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison (commonly referred to as Supermax) in Florence, Coloroado.  Other notable inmates at Supermax include Robert Hanssen (FBI Agent who spied for USSR & Russia), Eric Rudolph (Centennial Olympic Park bombing), and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City bombing).

If interested in learning more about Kaczynski’s life as the Unabomber, his victims, and the Supermax prison, check out some of the following books Law Library and University Library’s collection:

• Unabomber: a desire to kill by Robert Graysmith (1997)
• Harvard and the Unabomber: the education of an American terrorist by Alston Chase (2003)
• Drawing life: surviving the Unabomber by David Hillel Gelernter (1997)
• The United States of America versus Theodore John Kaczynski: ethics, power and the invention of the Unabomber by Michael Mello (1999)
• Supermax: controlling risk through solitary confinement by Sharon Shalev (2009)
• Supermax prisons and the Constitution: liability concerns in the extended control unit by Williams C. Collins (2004)

Very few events are a more accurate indicator of the arrival of summer than library construction projects.  This year is no different. No sooner was Joseph Zukusky hooded as the last Juris Doctor candidate at this year’s commencement and hooding ceremony than the Law Library started knocking down walls with an eye to finishing before our new crop of law students arrive in August.  This year’s library construction includes three projects:

• new study rooms
• additional soft/relaxed-style seating area
• upgrading the Instructional Lab.

Study Rooms (184A-C)

Room 184 in the University Center wing of the Law Library (more commonly known as ‘up the steps’) is being renovated to accommodate three new study rooms.  This space had previously served as an unneeded copy room and more recently a seldom-visited student lounge. The new study rooms will be outfitted with networked tables similar to our other study rooms.  After the project is completed in late July the law library will offer eighteen study rooms that can be reserved by study groups via the Law Library Study Room Reservations System.

Soft Seating Area (across from the Georgia collection)

The bizarre brick silos that pepper Urban Life create unique and cozy spaces.  The Law Library is outfitting one of these spaces with soft/relaxed seating and improved lighting.  Hopefully this will make the space more inviting. This space is located immediately beside the Georgia collection.

Instructional Lab (113B)

The instructional lab (more commonly known as the back half of the computer lab) is being renovated and upgraded.  The instructional lab had supported 24 worn and weathered workstations with out-of-date CRT monitors.  The new instructional Lab will support 16 new workstations with considerably more desk work space allowing students to spread out and take notes when the space is used as a classroom.  The Instructional Lab will also offer an instructor’s workstation and mounted LCD projector that will project a larger image than before.  This project will also be completed in late July.  Until that time the back lab is unavailable to students; however, the front lab consisting of the help desk, 12 workstations, and printers (PantherPrint, Westlaw and Lexis) will remain open over the summer.