Westlaw Webinars for Faculty

Westlaw has scheduled a series of webinars for faculty during the next couple of months. If you click on the link you will automatically be registered for the webinar.
September 26th Noon Practical Law
October 3rd 2:30 pm Terms & Connectors on WestlawNext 
October 7th 1:00 pm Digests
October 18th 1:00 pm TWEN 101
October 25th 1:00 pm From Classic to Next
October 28th 3:30 pm Alerts
November 1st 2:30 Secondary Sources on WLN
November 8th 1:00 pm WLN Productivity Tools
November 10th 1:00 pm From Classic to Next
November 21st 1:00 pm Advanced TWEN

Thomas transitioning to Congress dot gov

The Library of Congress has announced that starting in November, when you click on a link in Thomas you may be redirected to the up-and-coming Congress.gov; though Thomas will remain accessible from the Congress website through late 2014.
They are also looking for feedback about the site. Starting today through next Monday, September 30 they are doing a more in depth user test. They are looking for people who are interested in Congress and legislation to take 15 minutes to test Congress.gov. with a new test that can be done from your computer anytime and is absolutely anonymous. Your input will help make it a better site for everyone.

New Bloomberg BNA State Tax Law content

The Bloomberg BNA Tax and Accounting Center has been enhanced to include new Excise Tax, Property Tax, and Estates Gifts and Trusts navigators and chart builders that provide detailed state-by-state tax information and allows users to quickly create custom charts and compare state tax details among states. Three State Tax Nexus tools – Corporate Income Tax, Sales & Use Tax, and Trusts Nexus Evaluator Tool – allow faculty and students to create reports to compare company activities to what the states report as nexus-creating contacts. The nexus tools are an excellent way to teach students the importance of nexus in the state tax area. A new State Tax Development Tracker allows tax faculty and students to track and summarize daily state tax developments across a full range of topics.
The Tax and Accounting Center can also be accessed directly from your Bloomberg Law account. 

The U.S. Constitution for iPhone: the pursuit of Appiness

Just in time for the 226th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, the Library of Congress has a free iPhone app of the U.S. Constitution: Analysis and Interpretation, aka the Constitution Annotated or CONAN. This is a comprehensive analytical legal treatise prepared by attorneys of the Congressional Research Service. It contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law. This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic. The Featured Topics and Cases page highlights recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that demonstrate pivotal interpretations of the Constitution's provisions.  

New: consumer law treatises online

The Barco Law Library owns the 20 print treatises published by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). We now have access, via law school IP range, to the “companion websites” of these treatises. These books are practical guides that can be used by laypeople or attorneys in dealing with a wide range of consumer law issues. They include lots of useful forms and sample documents for pleadings. Check them out at www.nclc.org/ipaccess . To get into the content, use the links in the lefthand menu to go to the title you want, like “Access to Utility Service”. The next page will let you search the content of that title. To see all the contents, click on the “Contents” tab at the top of the page.
 The books are divided into 4 libraries:
 Debtor Rights Library: •Consumer Bankruptcy Law and Practice •Fair Debt Collection •Foreclosures •Repossessions •Student Loan Law •Access to Utility Service
 Credit and Banking Library: •Truth in Lending •Fair Credit Reporting •Mortgage Lending •Consumer Credit Regulation •Consumer Banking and Payments Law •Credit Discrimination
Consumer Litigation Library: •Collection Actions •Consumer Class Actions •Consumer Law Pleadings •Consumer Arbitration Agreements
Deception and Warranties Library: •Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices •Federal Deception Law •Automobile Fraud •Consumer Warranty Law
You can also find these resources by using PittCat, which includes a master record (search for title: “Consumer Law Manuals”) with all the titles and website info.

Law Student Technology Use: fall 2013

Law librarian extraordinaire Rich McCue, at the University of Victoria (British Columbia), surveys incoming law students about their technology use every year. This fall he had a 90% response rate to the survey. Here's what he found (the full report, including graphics, is on his website):

• Phones: 96% of incoming law students own Smart Phones: 54%  iPhones, 31% Android and 11% Blackberry (Blackberry usage is down from 27% two years ago). New law students are primarily using their mobile devices for directions, email, and looking up schedules & contact information. 
• Tablets and eBook ownership have doubled in the past year with 44% of students owning tablet devices or ebook readers, up from 31% last year. However, 64% of students never bring their tablet or ebook reader to school, "probably indicating a preference for laptops for note taking and research, and still heavy reliance on printed text books". 
• When asked if they would use a library run tablet lending program, 53% said they would not use it while 18% said they would use it daily or weekly. 
• Phone communication: 92% of students use Skype for real-time audio/video calls and collaboration. 42% use Apple Facetime and 9% use Google Hangouts. 
• Email: 59% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 22% Outlook.com, and 6% use their university email. 
• Data storage and collaboration: 49% of students use Dropbox, up from 22% last year. 41% use Google drive, up from 33% last year. 15% use Apple iCloud up from 4%. 3% use Microsoft Sky Drive which is unchanged from last year. 
• Social Media: 92% of students use Facebook (down from 97% two years ago), 31% user Twitter, 19% Linked In, 8% Google+ and 3% don’t use online social networks. 
• Laptops: 97% of students own laptops. 57% of laptops are Macs, up from 49% last year. 44% use Windows, down from 48% last year. 68% of students bring their laptops to school regularly & 21% bring them never or rarely. 
• Class Notes: 73% of students use laptops to take class notes, 72% use pen and paper, 3% use tablets and 4% use cell phones. 11% record lecture audio with their laptops or audio recorder.

Anti-bribery & -corruption laws app

New: the AB&C Laws Application is free from the Apple iTunes app store. The app, created by firm Latham & Watkins,is designed to inform users about anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws. about anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in major jurisdictions around the world, including China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Users can look up the anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws in a covered jurisdiction and find out what constitutes an offense, whether the laws in one country apply outside its borders, how to reduce risk, and what potential punishments are available. The app also includes pop-up windows that define legal terms. hat tip: Law Technology News

2 new libraries from HeinOnline

Two new HeinOnline libraries are now available from Barco Law Library.

• Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law Publications: This collection includes more than 50 publications from the prestigious Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law at Columbia Law School. View publications such as the 22-volume set, A Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law. Book and Articles in English by Charles Szladits, along with An Introduction to the Legal System of the United States by E. Allan Farnsworth, among various others. A more detailed description of the content is on HeinOnline (4 page pdf). 
• Immigration Law & Policy in the U.S.: This monumental collection is a compilation of the most important historical documents and legislation related to immigration in the United States as well as current hearings, debates and recent developments in immigration law. This first comprehensive database includes BIA Precedent Decisions, legislative histories, law and policy titles, extradition titles, scholarly articles, an extensive bibliography, and other related works. A more detailed description of the content is on HeinOnline (4 page pdf). 

Google enters the MOOC arena

There's an interesting article today in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Google and edX Create a MOOC Site for the Rest of Us".  MOOC, of course, stands for Massive Open Online Courses. It seems that Google is partnering with a nonprofit company founded by MIT and Harvard called edX and together they have created a website called MOOC.org .  The site will provide a platform allowing "any academic institution, business, and individual to create and host online courses,” according to the article. In an interview, Anant Agarwal, president of edX, referred to the site as a “YouTube for courses.”  At the moment, MOOC.org is still in its formative stages - if you visit the website you will see a message saying "mooc.org goes live in the first half of 2014. Are you interested in creating or hosting courses on mooc.org? Complete one of the three forms below and let us know how mooc.org fits into your plans. We'll be in touch as we get closer to launch".

Tarlton Law Library Digital Resource

The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas School of Law has announced the release of a number of digital resources created by Tarlton's staff. The resources chronicle aspects of the history of Texas law and of the University of Texas School of Law, and can be found at the Tarlton Special Collections web site. The following are some of the newest digital collections:
 Texas Constitutions 1824-1876, completely updated and revised in 2013, contains the text of all the organic documents of Texas, including those from the period under Mexican rule and of the Republic of Texas. Also part of the collection are constitutional convention journals and debates and the printing history for each version of the state's constitution.
The Texas Jurists Collection includes over 400 photographs of Texas jurists that were donated to the Tarlton Law Library by Texas Supreme Court Justice Jack Pope. This collection complements the related web site, Justices of Texas, 1836-1986, which features photographs and brief biographies of Texas Supreme Court justices and judges of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
 The World War II News Sheets were created by Helen Hargrave, the University of Texas' Law Librarian from 1940 to 1965. Her goal was to provide information on UT law students, alumni and faculty serving in the military during World War II; the News Sheets, published between March 1943 and August 1945, were central in keeping the close-knit law school community connected during the war.

New! CALI webinars begin Friday Sept. 6

On Friday, Sept. 6, at 3 pm,  Sarah Glassmeyer of CALI will host the first of a series of short - SHORT! 15 minutes! - webinars on CALI tips and tricks. More information including the registration link is here.  The webinar will use Go to Webinar, which allows for screen sharing, easy interaction with the participants and CALI has a license. Recommended for law students, librarians and faculty.