Readex online training

Readex is offering free fall training sessions for its various database collections, including a September 29 training in America's Historical Government Publications (including U.S. Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers).  You can find out more about the trainings and register on the Readex website. 

Voting booth privacy and selfies

The ABA Journal has an article about... well, another article, in the New York Times... about whether people who take selfies in the voting booth (to show their cast ballots) are violating laws that protect privacy in the voting booth.  The NYT is quoted as saying "concerned that the practice could threaten voting rights, some lawmakers have expressly banned doing so. In other states, existing laws concerning voting and photography at least arguably prohibit selfies".

New journal focuses on technology and privacy

beSpacific reports the launch of an important new academic journal, The Journal of Technology Science.  The new journal focuses on the intersection of technology and its various impacts on society. The journal is examining this topic in breadth and depth, explaining on its web site: “The scientific study of technology-society clashes is a cross-disciplinary pursuit, so papers in Technology Science may come from any of many possible disciplinary traditions, including but not limited to social science, computer science, political science, law, economics, policy, or statistics.”  Institutional one-year subscriptions are listed as costing $25,000, "which (according to the license agreement) is currently discounted at 50 percent from the $50,000 regular license fee. " (!)
The first articles in the new journal include:
Did you really agree to that? The Evolution of Facebook’s Privacy Policy, and
Who’s Paying More to Tour These United States? International Travel & Price Discrimination.

Amusing musings on The Bluebook

With school starting and a new batch of 1Ls arriving and the publication of the 20th edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, the ABA Journal has published some amusing commentary by Bryan Garner on the Bluebook.
A few quotes:

"What I’ve come to realize is that when it comes to The Bluebook, small changes are made for the sake of making small changes."

"From an author’s standpoint, the most irksome thing about a new Bluebook is the nettlesome changes that take place."

"There are rules, you see, exceptions to rules and exceptions to exceptions. These are all elaborated in the 560 pages of the 20th edition. By contrast, the earliest edition of The Bluebook in my possession is the 10th edition of 1958. It weighs in at 124 pages."

Orientation!

1L orientation for the Class of 2018 begins Tuesday August 18 and runs through Friday. The schedule is available here on the Pitt Law website.
 Welcome everyone!

New HeinOnline interface for the new school year

HeinOnline has updated their website for the new academic year. The Hein interface is clearer and better than ever - and it has always been a straightforward website to use. In addition, Hein is continuing to link to caselaw on Fastcase, and Fastcase has also made some major improvements to their website - you can read a review titled "Fastcase 7: Better than a Tesla" on Internet for Lawyers.

Laptops in the Classroom?

Whether or not to allow students to use laptops in the classroom has been something of an issue for many years - but usuallly it's the faculty who question laptop use. Now the Harvard Business Review has published an article titled "What You Miss When You Take Notes on Your Laptop" that may convince some students that they will learn a lot more if they go back to the old-fashioned pen-and-notebook method of note-taking. Studies show that synthesis and retention of lecture information are much better when notes are taken by hand.