HeinOnline: new alert service

HeinOnline has announced that they have added a new alert feature "with the help of machine learning and natural language processing tools." You can now receive email alerts when articles are added to the database that are similar to those written by a specific author. Instructions for using this feature are included in the announcement on the HeinOnline blog.

Public Domain talk by Peter Hirtle

The American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy is hosting a free online "CopytTalk" with Peter Hirtle giving an overview of the public domain: what it is, how works rise into it, what is copyright renewal, and some of the common mistakes he has made when trying to determine the public domain status of a work.
Peter Hirtle is the author of the frequently cited resource, “Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States." He is an Affiliate Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Until his retirement from Cornell in 2015, he served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Cornell University Library with a special mandate to address intellectual property issues.
The one-hour webinar will be held on Thursday, Dec. 7, at 2pm Eastern time. You don't need to register; just go to the OITP copytalk Adobe Connect site and sign in as a guest at the appointed time.

Blockchain

Debbie Ginsburg, who is the Educational Technology Librarian at Chicago-Kent College of Law (and a very gifted law librarian) recently wrote a post titled "Law and the Blockchain" on the Blockchains for the Information Profession blog. Debbie's post discusses what blockchain is and how it is starting to be used in the US legal landscape. The blog, which is a project of the School of Information at San José State University, has introductory information about blockchain technology and is gathering ideas for ways in which this technology can be used in libraries.
And speaking of Blockchain, Pittsburgh-based K&L Gates has announced that it has become "one of the first major law firms to implement own private Blockchain."

HeinOnline's Reports of U.S. Presidential Commissions and Other Advisory Bodies now available

The Barco Law Library now subscribes to HeinOnline's Reports of U.S. Presidential Commissions and Other Advisory Bodies, available from the HeinOnline's main collections page. According to the description, "This work is the most current and comprehensive listing of publications created by presidential advisory bodies, and will be useful to researchers interested in U.S. history, political science, and law. Presidents have created such advisory groups (also called committees, commissions, boards, blue ribbon panels, or task forces) to advise them on particular problems or issues such Pearl Harbor, civil rights, the status of women, the assassination of JFK, the 1967 riots, Iran Contra, HIV/AIDS, the Challenger Space Shuttle accident, and 9/11. The bibliographic listings of more than 6,000 reports and other documents from the administrations of Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama are indexed by commission/advisory body name, report title, report subject and presidential administration. Links to the full text of the reports are provided whenever possible. The companion database contains not only the bibliographic listing of reports but also many reports themselves as well as related United States congressional hearings, scholarly articles, and a bibliography."
The user-friendly search interface for the collections means Users can browse or search the collection by President, Commission Name, Commission Subject or Report Title. There is an alphabetical listing of all the reports by title and other useful discovery aids. There are also links to scholarly law review articles written about these reports which are also in HeinOnline; for example the article, "President's Commission on the Status of Women Established [Notes] by Marguerite Rawalt from the Women Lawyers Journal (1962) is linked from the "Scholarly Articles" page.

GPO "seeking community input" on FDLP shared libraries

The US Government Publishing Office has annuonced that it is looking at the models for shared regional depository libraries, and has made a draft of proposed guidelines for establishing regionals available online (just click the blue "Download" link). The draft guidelines mention that

"different models of sharing resources and responsibilities between regional and selective libraries within the states they serve have been implemented over the years, with GPO approval. These include different models of intra- and inter-state sharing between regionals and selective libraries, and for sharing of some services between regional depository libraries in one state and selective depository libraries in an adjacent or near-by state where no regional library exists.
In recent years, technological innovations and the ease of disseminating digital information have made it possible for a number of depository libraries to participate in multi-state collaborations for rapid delivery of shared services. This has also made it possible to develop models and networks that create cost effective shared print resource archives and digital repositories. Both intra- and inter-state shared regional models can offer practical and economical means to maintain public access and reallocate library space, while achieving operational efficiencies for the participating regional and selective depository libraries."

GPO is interested in commentary about the guidelines and suggestions for making them more useful. Suggestions and comments may be submitted until Jan. 20, 2018.

A sobering cautionary tale- don't make friends online

Wired magazine has just published a horrifying true story titled "How One Woman's Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her." The woman in question develops an online friendship that goes sour and results in her and everyone in her family being stalked and hounded for years, on the phone, online, at home, at work. Eventually it becomes a court case (with K&L Gates representing her) that is time-consuming and expensive. Despite a positive outcome it's still not over for her as the case is being appealed and the harrassment continues.
When it comes to social media, be very careful.

There's a bootleg Bluebook out there...

Sharp-eyed librarians at Brooklyn Law School Library have discovered that there are FAKE BLUEBOOKS being distributed by third-party vendors... and the fakes are riddled with errors. It's all very ironic. For the full story, see the Brooklyn Law School Library Blog post "Beware the Bootleg Bluebook."
And you would probably be better off borrowing one of the Barco Law Library copies of the Bluebook (20th edition) rather than buying a cheap knockoff online.


hat tip: Karen Shephard

Judge Rules Canada Can't Make Google Delete Search Results in U.S.

Slashdot reports that a U.S. District Court judge has blocked a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada requiring Google to delete search results globally. The decision marks a significant win for Google in its efforts to prevent any one country from dictating what can be posted or searched online around the world. The problem began when a court in British Columbia ordered Google to globally block search results linking to sites associated with Datalink Technologies Gateways Inc., which Canadian courts earlier sought to shut down. Google took the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada which affirmed the order, saying that "the internet has no borders." Google then filed suit in the US arguing that that the Canadian order is “unenforceable in the United States because it directly conflicts with the First Amendment, disregards the Communication Decency Act’s immunity for interactive service providers, and violates principles of international comity.” The court order, written by judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California, agreed with Google, saying that the Canadian order violated a federal law giving internet content providers strong legal protections against lawsuits over what internet users post on their sites. The judge did not address Google’s First Amendment claim.

Scholarly publishers and access to research

The Canadian law blog Slaw has an excellent article today discussing scholarly publishing. The author says, "(t)he current series of legal kerfuffles in scholarly publishing involves property and access rights in an industry that is, for all intents and purposes, moving toward universal open access..." but the publishers' "legal strategy is about reminding the academic community that such publishers own the better part of this body of knowledge and, as such, have a legal right to determine the financing of access to it now and into that uncertain future." He makes an interesting suggestion at the end of the article, saying that it may be time to reform the law, to create a new catgory of intellection property that is for scientific and academic research.

Changes to BNA coming in the new year

Bloomberg BNA has announced changes to our Bloomberg BNA Premier subscription coming on Dec. 31, 2017. All of the BNA news about energy, safety, and the environment will be moved to an "enhanced delivery platform under the Bloomberg Environment brand." Because of this some of the titles that we have subscribed to will no longer be stand-alone publications: Daily Environment Report™, International Environment Reporter™, Chemical Regulation Reporter®, Energy & Climate Report, Right-to-Know Planning Guide Report™, and State Environment Daily™ will cease publication and be replaced with the Bloomberg Environment & Energy Report. Occupational Safety & Health Reporter℠ and Environment Reporter℠ will also move to the new platform on December 31, 2017. Environment Reporter now includes reporting on water law and policy in addition to its former coverage areas. Water Law & Policy Monitor™ will cease publication on a stand-alone basis. Occupational Safety & Health Reporter will move here permanently.
Until January 16, the old URLs will still give you access to the old interfaces. Any users currently signed up to receive email highlights to the publications listed above should have already begun receiving alerts that link into the new platform.

GPO Director leaving

The GPO has just posted an announcement that Davita Vance-Cooks has announced her departure from Federal service to accept a job in the private sector. She was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as the 27th Public Printer of the United States. GPO says that "Vance-Cooks leaves behind a legacy of achievement and fiscal responsibility at GPO. Under her leadership, the agency cut costs while improving services, generating positive net income each year and consistently receiving clean opinions from annual independent audits of GPO’s finances. She reversed the previous decade’s pattern of requesting ever greater appropriations from Congress while overseeing increased digital productivity and transformation. During her tenure GPO acquired digital equipment, developed new digital products, and implemented digital processes."
By law, GPO Deputy Director Jim Bradley will assume the duties of Acting GPO Director until a replacement is appointed.

FDLP webinar series "How Laws Are Made"

The FDLP Academy recently hosted an excellent three-part series of webinars: How Laws are Made: The Legislature; How Laws are Made: The Administrative Agencies; and How Laws are Made: The Courts.  The series was created and is presented by Sharon Bradley, Special Collections Librarian, University of Georgia School of Law. Each archived webinar is available for anyone to watch. Each lasts about 45 minutes and provides well-organized information about the law-making functions of each of the three branches of government. In addition to the recorded webinars, there is a libguide for each of the three topics on the University of Georgia law library website. 

The Federal Courts Web Archive

The Law Library of Congress recently launched a website called "The Federal Courts Web Archive." The archive is a resource for scholars and others interested in doing historic research about the federal courts and federal judiciary. It has captured archival links to over 200 websites including the federal courts as well as specialty courts like the U.S. Court of International Trade, U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
The interface will be familiar to anyone who has used the Wayback Machine, because it uses a local installation of the Wayback Machine.

New Google initiative begins in Pittsburgh

MIT Technology Review has a story titled "Google Hopes $1 Billion Will Help Americans Adapt to the Future of Work" reporting that "The tech giant may have a guilty conscience. It says it will pony up $1 billion (and 1 million hours of employee time) to retrain people around America with digital skills that “they need to get a job or grow their business.” Money for training will be handed to non-profits, and a national tour of courses in things like coding and social media will roam the U.S., starting in Pittsburgh. The hope: that the initiative will help save some of the careers that technology (such as Google's) is already destroying." You can read all about it (and also feel good about Pittsburgh) on Google blog, in an article by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.

ResearchGate starts removing research papers

Inside Higher Ed reports that ResearchGate, a scholarly social media platform used by scholars to share their work, has started taking down large numbers of research papers because of publishers warnings that many of the papers uploaded there are in breach of copyright. ResearchGate provides an easy platform for uploading scholarly papers, but apparently publishers have gone from being irate to threatening legal action. A group called the Coalition for Responsible Sharing posted a statement saying that "ResearchGate’s primary service is taking high-quality content written and published by others and making as many as 7 million copyrighted articles – 40% of its total content – freely available via its for-profit platform...numerous attempts to agree with ResearchGate on amicable solutions... remained unsuccessful." Inside Higher Ed says that the coalition planned to initially issue more than a hundred thousand takedown notices to ResearchGate. It also reported that ACS and Elsevier were suing ResearchGate in its home country of Germany.  Now the Coalition has published an online notice that ResearchGate has removed a significan number of copyrighted articles. 

Resources Supporting Research On Cybersecurity

From the Federal Depositories Library Program:

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), celebrated each October, was established to educate the public about the need to be safe and secure online and to be prepared in the event of a cyber incident. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team are two agencies concerned with informing the Nation about these crucial matters. Stop.Think.Connect. is a DHS national public awareness campaign which provides promotional materials as well as educational videos and brochures. The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is a partnership between the Government, academia, and the private sector which focuses on cybersecurity education, training, and workforce development.

In addition, GPO has recently cataloged a number resources on this critical issue; examples:
- Prospects for the rule of law in cyberspace
- Is cyber deterrence possible?
- Task force on cyber deterrence
- The achievable multinational cyber treaty: strengthening our nation’s critical infrastructure
- Assessing Russian activities and intentions in recent US elections

"Clickbait" corrupting scholarship

The Tax Prof Blog posts and quotes from a recent article in Inside Higher Education, which says that "academe has been “hacked” by scholars and journals looking to up their citation and impact figures." The problem has received attention because of the recent furor over an article called "The Case for Colonialism" published in the Third World Quarterly. The article has been criticized as being "a thrice-rejected piece that failed on basic scholarly standards of intellectual rigor, accuracy or integrity ” and some critics claim that the only reason it was published was as "clickbait" to raise the profile of the journal. The paper achieved a higher Altmetric Attention Score than any other paper published in the journal.

Hollywood versions of true crime

The ABA Journal has an interesting article about how Hollywood portrays true crime stories in films. The article discusses the movie version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, about the 1959 murder of an entire family in Kansas by two men; it says "Critics have suggested Capote took a few creative licenses with certain scenes and conversations for dramatic impact as well: a 1988 biography concedes that at least one of the scenes was Capote’s own creation... there’s evidence that Capote arranged scenes and added fiction to what he claimed was a factually accurate account."

CASA from Google Scholar and HeinOnline

The HeinOnline blog reports that Hein has expanded its existing relationship with Google Scholar (Google Scholar provides links to articles in HeinOnline when available). Now off-campus users can access HeinOnline articles seamlessly, without having to log in through a proxy server. This service, developed by Google Scholar, is called Campus-Activated Subscriber Access (CASA). The blurb from Google says that " With CASA, a researcher can start a literature survey on campus and resume where she left off once she is home, or travelling, with no hoops to jump through. Her subscribed collections are highlighted in Google Scholar searches and she is able to access articles in exactly the same way as on campus.”
The blogpost points out that with CASA, subscribing libraries are still abot to comply with license agreement terms and copyright laws, and material accessed via CASA is correctly attributed to the subscribing institution, so usage statistics remain accurate. One caveat is that Users must access HeinOnline on-campus at least every 30 days to maintain off-campus access.

Historical Congressional Record for the 1920s now available from GPO

The Government Printing Office (GPO) has announced that the GPO, in partnership with the Library of Congress, has uploaded the digitized Congressional Record from 1921 - 1930 to GPO's govinfo website. This release covers the debates and proceedings of the 67th through the 71st Congresses and the presidential terms of Wilson (final 2 years), Harding, Coolidge and Hoover (first 2 years). It includes Congressional debates of important historical topics, such as the lengthy debate about the Immigration Act of 1924. GPO points out that other topics covered include Prohibition, the Teapot Dome Scandal, The Dawes Plan for WWI reparations, and The Stock Market Crash of 1929.

A new look for the Bloomberg BNA website

Bloomberg BNA has announced that on Thursday, September 28, the BNA.com website will be updated. The website will have a new look and feel, which will slightly change the way you sign into your Bloomberg BNA and Bloomberg Law products. On the new home page, click on the green “Sign In” button at the top right of the page, enter your user name and password, and you should be signed in and able to access Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg BNA.
Here's hoping the transition will be smooth.

Bar Exam results are improving

The blog "Excess of Democracy", written by Pepperdine Law professor Derek Muller, has been following the latest bar exam results closely as they are reported. Last week he reported that bar exam scores this year have rebounded to the highest point since 2013 (note that not all state bar exam results have been reported yet). Today he has a post analyzing these results titled "Why are bar exam scores improving?" In the post he looks at how law schools' strategies for improving their bar pass rates may have affected this year's results. He concludes by saying,

"I wonder if institutions have found better strategies of intervening with at-risk students, or providing more robust bar exam support for at-risk students. Perhaps in the last couple of years, students have been sufficiently scared of failing the bar to study harder or earlier... These are matters that institutions may have the data to examine (or may be in the process of collecting). Regardless, it remains good, albeit still slightly mysterious news--and those in legal education hope that it is the beginning of a continued trend of good news."

Facebook and privacy

Gizmodo has an interesting blogpost about Facebook called "Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won't Tell Me How." The author says:

"Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook , however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of “People You May Know,” the social network’s roster of potential new online friends for me. The People You May Know feature is notorious for its uncanny ability to recognize who you associate with in real life. It has mystified and disconcerted Facebook users by showing them an old boss, a one-night-stand, or someone they just ran into on the street.
What makes the results so unsettling is the range of data sources—location information, activity on other apps, facial recognition on photographs—that Facebook has at its disposal to cross-check its users against one another, in the hopes of keeping them more deeply attached to the site. People generally are aware that Facebook is keeping tabs on who they are and how they use the network, but the depth and persistence of that monitoring is hard to grasp. . . . Rebecca Porter, we discovered, is my great aunt, by marriage. She is married to my biological grandfather’s brother; she met him 35 years ago, the year after I was born. Facebook knew my family tree better than I did."

File under creepy.

FDLP webinar: Preservation for Free

The FDLP has scheduled another of their excellent free webinars for librarians called "Preservation for Free." It will be held on Wednesday, August 23, 2017 from 2:00 pm until 3:00 pm EDT. Description: Preserving library collections can seem both daunting and potentially expensive. Yes, hiring a Conservator, purchasing ‘archival’ quality preservation housing materials (like boxes, envelopes, sleeves, and folders), and acquiring all of the equipment necessary for an on-site Conservation Lab are all major investments, but there are also small things everyone can do *for free* to prolong the life of their materials. In this webinar, you’ll learn some tips on how you can aid in the preservation of your collection with minimal or no cost. No prerequisite knowledge required.
Register here.

ProQuest Ebook Central will be temporarily unavailable

ProQuest has announced that to maintain the currency and security of ProQuest ebook platforms, Ebook Central, used by the Pitt University Library System, will be unavailable for approximately three hours beginning Saturday, August 12, 2017 at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
If you are interested in seeing what law books are available on ProQuest, click here.

Government Attic website

The ALA govdocs listserv had a post today about a website called The Government Attic,a site that provides electronic copies of thousands of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The site says "Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and fun stuff and government bloopers, they're all here. Think of browsing this site as rummaging through the Government's Attic -- hence our name." The site menu, accessed by clicking on the "Documents" tab at the top of the page, is worth browsing. Documents are organized by federal agency; there is also a category for "State Records/Miscellaneous Records/Interagency Records." Most of the documents have been run through optical character recognition (OCR) so they can be searched by word, and most items include an agency release letter. The "rummaging through the Government's Attic" description is apt - there are plenty of "oddities", like the FBI file on the subject of a certain "Midwest Stag Film and Burlesque Showman, 1952-53" or "The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) emails and memos that include the word “hemp,” 2006 – 2007" or the "Report of Investigation of the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) by the Department of Education Office of Inspector General, 2013" which sounds vaguely interesting but is so heavily redacted as to be unreadable.
There isn't much info about who created and is maintaining the website; the "Acknowledgments" page says that "The governmentattic.org web site (“the site”) is noncommercial and free to the public...The public records published on this site were obtained from government agencies using proper legal channels... The Government Attic website receives no funding from any outside source. All costs are paid for by the site owners."

GPO wants to change Title 44

Over at the Free Gov Info blog, James A. Jacobs has a post titled " Here we go again: GPO wants to change Title 44." The director of the GPO, Davita Vance-Cooks, has asked the Depository Library Council (DLC) to make recommendations for changes in Chapter 19 of Title 44 of the U.S. Code. A link is provided to the FDLP page where comments and ideas about changing Title 44 are solicited. But Mr. Jacobs discusses why he is very leery of this request. For example, he says, "Changing the U.S. Code is a complex, lengthy, political process. The results of suggesting changes to the law are unpredictable. Even if you begin the process with clear, unambiguous, and lofty goals, the outcome can end with very, very bad unintended consequences.... The first and most important question is: What does GPO want to accomplish by changing Chapter 19? Unfortunately, GPO has not told us what they want or why or if they were directed to do this. It has not told us what parts of Chapter 19 they think need to be changed or why they need to be changed. It has not told us what changes it wants or what it would wish to accomplish with those changes."

FCC cracking down on robocalls

Reuters reports that the Federal Communications Commission has voted unanimously to pursue rules that will help consumers block unwanted robocalls. One report estimates that there are 2.5 million of these unwanted automated messages made to US consumers each month. The FCC press release states that "In its latest step to combat annoying and malicious robocalls, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking public comment on standards that will help differentiate legitimate phone calls from those that attempt to trick consumers through caller ID spoofing. The Commission will explore ways to set up a reliable system to verify that a phone call is really coming from the phone number that it claims to be." These calls are easy for scammers to make thanks to inexpensive automatic dialing machines and spoofing tools that hide the source of the call from your phone company and make your phone’s caller ID display a bogus number.  FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said robocalls are a top consumer complaint. "Americans are mad as hell" that they still get these calls in spite of efforts by Congress and the FCC to stop them.

ABA mulls changes in full-time faculty requirements

Inside Higher Ed reports that the American Bar Association is considering changing its requirements on full-time faculty members at law schools. Currently the ABA requires that more than half of credit hours offered at a law school must be taught by full-time faculty, or that more than two-thirds of "contact hours" are taught by full-time faculty. The ABA is considering cancelling this requirement. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has come out against loosening this regulation because of the effect it would have on the number of full-time law school faculty. In comments submitted to the ABA Section of Legal Education this week, the AAUP stated:

    "In the current climate for legal education, for the Council to adopt the proposed revision to Standard 403(a) would be tantamount to abandoning its longstanding commitment to tenure as the best system for assuring intellectual merit, professional excellence, and academic freedom. At this important juncture, we cannot afford for American legal education to be less rigorous in its expectations of scholarship and classroom performance, or less committed to the highest standards of free inquiry and professional integrity."

new: Happy! Effective lawyer

Pittsburgh attorney Robert Creo is the principal of a new website (launching officially 8/1/17, but fully operational now) called Happy! Effective Lawyer , an initiative focusing on lawyer contentment and peak performance. The site has information and links to sites about mindfulness, wellness, self-care, insights on human behavior, and other resources. The full site is set to be a subscription but you can have a free 30-day trial without giving any credit card info. From the homepage (which is a cheerfulness-inducing bright yellow):

"Lawyers deserve to lead an integrated life 24/7 and to find contentment in their daily tasks. The HAPPY Lawyers at Work approach rejects the concept of mainly focusing on achieving a work-life balance. We believe that this is a false duality between work as drudgery contrasted with time away from work as “living”. Whether you work 20 hours or 80 hours each week, not all of these hours are going to be performed with passion. Work, however, can be structured to be engaging while maximizing individual core competencies. There is a correlation between happiness, peak performance, and effective judgment and decisions. You can take affirmative steps to enhance your engagement, productivity, competency, and happiness. Best practices can be creatively crafted to meet the individual expectations for success while providing effective representation for clients."

article: Information literacy for law school graduates

The current University of Hawai'i Law Review has an interesting article by professors Ellie Margolis and Kristen E. Murray titled "Using Information Literacy to Prepare Practice-Ready Graduates." The article addresses the difficult problem of preparing “practice ready” law graduates when the practice of law is rapidly changing as a result of new developments in technology. Building upon their prior work on legal information literacy, the authors suggest a new way to think about how to prepare law students to be “practice ready” for the legal research and writing tasks they will face as they enter law practice, and how to equip them with the skills to communicate with older generations of lawyers while adapting to new and evolving technologies. From the article:

"What constitutes “cutting edge” legal research and writing skills is almost ever-changing; these are also areas where senior practitioners are likely to feel wedded to the methods and technologies they learned and first encountered in practice. Bridging this gap poses a great challenge to both the new lawyers trying to navigate it and educators striving to prepare new graduates to enter the profession within the ability to hit the ground running...The first step in helping law students and new lawyers bridge the technology gap is to shift from thinking about research and writing as fixed skills, and to focus instead on self-learning and skill development, so that new lawyers can be flexible and adapt as the technological landscape continues to change. Thinking about these skills in terms of “information literacy” can help us take this first step."

City of Pittsburgh database of city-owned properties that are for sale

The City of Pittsburgh Department of Finance has created an online searchable database listing more than 3,000 city-owned vacant lots and abandoned buildings that are for sale. The database website features a map and search options for 3,089 properties. Many of the properties are "vacant land" but there are also houses and other buildings. Some of the listings have photographs. All listings show the lot area, zoning, and assessed value. There are forms available online for anyone interested in applying to purchase any of the properties.

Lexis Advance enhancements announced

Lexis recently announced new enhancements to Lexis Advance. Lexis Answers uses "machine learning technology" to understand and anticipate your research questions as you type into the search box. The new technology suggests natural-language questions for your search and delivers a clear, concise and authoritative answer plus comprehensive search results for deeper research.
There is more info available on the Lexis website; Lexis also provides a short (2 minute) video overview of Lexis Answers on Vimeo.

Access to CRS Reports... now available to the public!

This great news came from Emily Feltren, who is the Director of Government Relations at the AALL and a tireless proponent of open access to government information.

"(T)he House Appropriations Committee just took a giant leap toward making Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports available to the public. During its mark up of the Fiscal Year 2018 Legislative Branch Appropriations bill, the full Committee approved language directing CRS to report back to the Committee within 90 days of enactment with a plan to make its non-confidential reports available to the public. This has been more than 20 years in the making, and it was only possible thanks to the hard work of the many advocates−including many of you--who have written, called, tweeted, and spoken to their members of Congress about CRS over the years. While there are still some hurdles to get over (namely, the bill must pass the House, and there must be a companion bill in the Senate), the report language in legislative branch appropriations bills is generally adhered to even if not passed into law. Please join us in celebrating this win for public access! AALL will continue to work hard to make sure public access to these valuable reports becomes a reality in the coming months. .. Here is the appropriations report language: 'Public Access to CRS Reports: The Committee directs the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) to make available to the public, all non-confidential reports. The Committee has debated this issue for several years, and after considering debate and testimony from entities inside the legislative branch and beyond the Committee believes the publishing of CRS reports will not impede CRS’s core mission in any impactful way and is in keeping with the Committee’s priority of full transparency to the American people. Within 90 days of enactment of this act CRS is directed to submit a plan to its oversight committees detailing its recommendations for implementing this effort as well as any associated cost estimates. Where practicable, CRS is encouraged to consult with the Government Publishing Office (GPO) in developing their plan; the Committee believes GPO could be of assistance in this effort.'"

Ravel Law bought by LexisNexis

LexisNexis has issued a press release announcing their acquisition of Ravel Law, " a legal search, analytics, and visualization platform that aims to turn lawyers into data analysts." Ravel was started in 2012 by law student Daniel Lewis et al in a dorm room at Stanford. According to the email announcement that Daniel sent out, "Simultaneously, we will begin work on integration with LexisNexis. You can expect that Ravel's analytics offerings will continue to expand and be fully integrated into Lexis Litigation Profile Suite. Additionally, Ravel's search visualization will be integrated into Lexis Advance. Finally, Ravel's Harvard caselaw content will enrich the already expansive caselaw collection available from LexisNexis. We hope to complete integration with LexisNexis by early 2018, at which time we will ensure a seamless transition for our customers."
News of the acquisition has been widely reported as an indication that data analysis is of increasing importance to the practice of lawyering and conducting legal research.  The Wall Street Journal reported the acquisition as "When it comes to the future of lawyering, LexisNexis is doubling down on big data." SLAW says that "LexisNexis Seeks to Turn Lawyers into Data Analysts." The ABA Journal says that "LexisNexis Legal and Professional has acquired legal research and litigation analytics firm Ravel Law, and will integrate Ravel's data visualization and profiling technology into LexisNexis services."

Publishers announce anti-counterfeiting measures

In March, academic publishers Cengage and McGraw-Hill Education, along with Elsevier and Pearson, formed the Education Publisher Enforcement Group to raise awareness about counterfeit textbooks. Now, Inside Higher Education reports that this Cengage Learning & McGraw-Hill Education textbooks will have a "certification seal" that can be scanned by a smartphone ?QR code-reading app to verify that the books are from the publisher and not a counterfeiter.

LawPORT: Online tutorials from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

The University of London's Institute of Advanced Legal Studies has announced the launch of LawPORT, a collection of training tutorials "designed to improve the information literacy skills of law PhD students." Of course these are geared towards law students in the UK, but they are very well done. The tutorials "Researching customary international law" and "Treaties and international conventions" both have useful information for anyone doing international legal research (the third tutorial, using OSCOLA, is about using the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, similar to our Bluebook). The tutorials are free-to-use, can be accessed anywhere, at any time and be undertaken at your own pace.

Interactive database from the U.S. Courts

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts recently made available an enhanced database containing information about civil and criminal federal cases going back to 1970. The Integrated Database (IDB) is available to the public for free on the Federal Judicial Center website. According to the announcement, "The interactive database contains docket information from district, appellate, and bankruptcy court filings and terminations, including plaintiff and defendant names, filing date, termination date, disposition of the case, type of lawsuit, jurisdiction, and docket number. It excludes judges’ names as a preventative measure against judge-shopping by plaintiffs..."

GPO Director on transforming the GPO for the 21st Century

The new Director of the Government Publishing Office, Davita Vance-Cooks, recently met with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on House Administration at a hearing on "Transforming GPO for the 21st Century and Beyond." She reported on the continuing evolution and transformation of the GPO from a print-centric to a content-centric publishing operation, and detailed the GPO's current and future digital publishing initiatives for Congress and Federal Agencies. Her prepared statement is available on the GPO website as a 16 page pdf.

UN Libraries announce new free resource

The librarians at the UN have announced that the United Nations Digital Library (UNDL) is now available and can be accessed globally free of charge. From the announcement:

"The new platform runs on innovative open source technology... and is a result of the successful collaboration between the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at UN Headquarters and our sister library at the UN Office in Geneva...Phase 1 of the features the integration of ... 3  databases into one; it incorporates digital content, mainly official UN documents and selected UN maps, with metadata  as well as speech and voting records... We plan to add and integrate additional collections of digital materials as they are created or are made available to us by UN departments, offices, and agencies."

Features of the new platform include:
• Content organized into collections (by UN body, agency, and type of document).
• Various search options (simple keyword, advanced, Boolean, search using field tags, include/exclude search in full text).
• Links between related documents.
• Interface in 6 official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) – in progress.
Users who register for an account at the library can access additional features, such as search alerts, saved searches, and "baskets" for saving documents and collaborating with others.
There is a promotional video on YouTube.  The librarians add "We are developing more features and functionalities and are committed to implement enhancements on a continuous basis. You can help us by sending us your comments and observations."

New Readex interface

Readex has announced enhancements that are now available on a number of their databases. These enhancements include "Fresh new looks featuring compelling graphics and streamlined designs to spur fresh interest and higher use; More intuitive navigation, including a prominent search box and larger tabs to encourage searching and discovery; Better image viewing to make working with historical documents far easier for both novice and seasoned users.
The search page for each of the Readex databases looks quite different, with larger and more obvious visual cues for searching. And when you pull up a document to view, the display is larger and easier to navigate. You can see for yourself at the new Readex Congressional Serial Set homepage. ULS also subscribes to several other Readex databases that have been updated:

•  Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports  
• American State Papers, 1789-1817
• American Broadsides & Ephemera
• African Newspapers
• Latin American Newspapers

TRAC reports increasing FOIA backlog at USCIS

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University issued an FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Project report yesterday which stated

"The backlog of unprocessed FOIA requests to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continues to climb. In just a two-year period, the backlog of unanswered FOIA requests has tripled, climbing from 17,998 at the end of December 2014 to 46,550 at the end of December 2016. This means that countless requesters – including reporters, scholars, and those subject to immigration actions – are not getting the information they need to check against unlawful actions and to better hold the government accountable to the governed."

Detailed data is included at the website link.

the privacy paradox

Harvard Business Review has an interesting article titled "Why We’re So Hypocritical About Online Privacy." The author discusses the "privacy paradox", or why so many say they are concerned about their online privacy yet so few do anything about protecting it. An example is that most of us are annoyed at the targeted marketing that follows us around as we browse online, but few of us actually change our online shopping behavior. A scary piece of information is that "Our digital footprint can already be used to infer our deepest character traits; a 2013 study of 58,000 Facebook users (who volunteered for the study) was able to reliably predict sexual orientation, gender, race, age, religious and political views, level of intelligence, alcohol and cigarette use, drug use, and whether the volunteer’s parents were separated. The researchers were also able to predict, to some degree, personality traits, such as extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, emotional stability, and agreeableness." This is particularly true of social media users, who, despite expressing concerns about privacy, are careless in what they reveal on social media and allow a wide range of external apps to access their information. The author of the article gives some psychological reasons for this behavior, but he questions whether there is, really, "any such thing as a 'secret' life anymore?"

Airtable online database creator

The Informed Librarian Online has a recent post titled "Is There Such a Thing as an Easy to Use, Lightweight Relational Database?" by Dana DeFebbo, a law librarian at the Tarlton Law Library at U of Texas. The article is about Airtable, a new online resource for building databases. The author says that "Airtable is a cloud-based, lightweight relational database that integrates the relational database function of something like Microsoft Access with the overall easier to understand layout of a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel. However, Airtable is by and large much easier to use than Access and Excel, it is web-based so it can run on any machine with nothing to download, and it is mostly free."
Airtable is flexible like a spreadsheet, but it's made for organization rather than number crunching. You can use it to organize anything and when you start using the website you can view and explore of the ways Airtable is used for collections of information and project management. A nice feature is that you can customize your fields for a large variety of data types including text, attachments (like photos), checkboxes, date, email address, number, currency, formula, barcode, and many other types of information. Airtable has some preconfigured templates that you can modify for your own needs; you can also import an existing .csv file to create your own "base" from scratch. The interface is very user-friendly with "help" and "information" popups readily available.

The 14th Amendment

The ABA Journal has an excellent article that details the history of the 14th Amendment titled "The 14th: A Civil War-era amendment has become a mini-Constitution for modern times." The article features analysis and discussion by a number of prominent legal scholars. Included with the article is a digital slideshow of 14th Amendment Milestones, from the Dred Scott decision (1857) through Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

Microfiche webinar

The Federal Depository Library Program is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, May 9, at 2 pm titled "Everthing you need to know about Microfiche." From the description: "Managing a microfiche collection can be challenging, especially as this format becomes obsolete and collections of fiche begin to show signs of physical degradation. This webinar will discuss how microfiche is produced, examine risks and risk mitigation for microfiche collections, and options for reformatting microfiche to digital."
The webinar is free, but you should register here.

GPO. LOC release digitized Congressional Record for the 1960's

The Government Publishing Office and the Library of Congress have announced that they have partnered in making the digitized Congressional Record 1961-70 available on GPO's govinfo website. Comprising ~ 380,000 pages, these Congressional Records include Congressional debates and proceedings from the turbulent 1960's. They cover important historical topics including:
·The Administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and the first two years of the Administration of President Nixon
·The Civil Rights Era
·The Vietnam War
·The Space Program and Moon Landing
·Legislation of the Great Society and the War on Poverty, including:
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964
    The Voting Rights Act of 1965
    The Fair Housing Act of 1968
    The Medicare and Medicaid Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
    The Immigration Act of 1965
    The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
    The Endangered Species Act of 1966
    The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
The bound volumes have been digitized chronologically and are available as pdfs.

Google Earth relaunched

Google Earth has been completely revamped, in a "stunning relaunch" according to Search Engine Watch.  They have an article authored by Clark Boyd that gives a detailed look at the new product. For those of us who use Google Chrome as our browser the best news is that Google Earth is built into Chrome so one no longer has to download the app.  It works quickly and smoothly and is quite amazing. When you launch it for the first time there is a brief video tour "This is the new Google Earth, here are the top 5 things to try" which can help you get started. 

Fake Review Detector

Have you every doubted a review on Amazon or Yelp?  There's an app/browser extention/website to help with that. It's called Fakespot.  Because there are lots and lots of fake reviews out there, and this will help you separate the junk from the useful ones. It also has a webpage called "worst fake reviews" where you can see products whose online reviews are pretty much 100% fake. 

New: USA Facts website

CIO and others report that Steve Ballmer, late of Microsoft, has a new project called USA Facts (Our nation, in numbers) that has the grand goal of fixing the US government.  According to the New York Times, "The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments." The website states that "USAFacts is a new data-driven portrait of the American population, our government’s finances, and government’s impact on society. We are a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative and have no political agenda or commercial motive. We provide this information as a free public service and are committed to maintaining and expanding it in the future. We rely exclusively on publicly available government data sources. We don’t make judgments or prescribe specific policies."  The site already contains a wealth of information but it is still in beta. 

WK Study Guides: interface update tomorrow

Wolters Kluwer has informed us that they are upgrading the portal for the WK Online Study Aid library with the release planned for April 22, 2017. Their website will be unavailable for about one hour on April 22 beginning at 1:00 am while they implement the changes. There will be no change to the content, to a student’s settings, notes, highlights, or bookmarks. Students will continue to access content as previously. Benefits of the new interface for students include:
• Updated online and offline readers.
• Sync notes and highlights between online/offline access when same file format is used.
• Option to view EPUB or PDF when reading online.
• Export notes.
• My Shelf: create custom shelves to organize your books.
• Responsive design for the desktop site and a mobile site for tablets and smartphones.

The very first 1040 form, from the LOC

In a timely post, the Law Library of Congress blog today posted an image of the very first Form 1040, from 1913. The current federal income tax can be traced back to the Revenue Act of 1913, which was passed after the ratification, by the states, of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. The act provided that taxes on individual taxpayers would be imposed beginning for the year 1913 on incomes of $3,000 and up.
Despite being over 100 years old, the 1040 from 1913 resembles our current form in its structure and bureaucratic language, as well as the several "see instructions page ___" However, it was due on March 1, and only taxed income earned between March 1 and December 31 for some reason.

GPO Launches New GPO.gov Website

The Federal Depository Library Program has sent out an announcement that the Government Printing Office has launched a new website (still in beta) that is meant to be more user-friendly for customers, vendors, Federal agencies, libraries, and the public looking for Government information. The site is https://beta.gpo.gov. Eventually this site will replace the current site, developed in 2009.
They welcome your feedback on the site at this feedback form.

FDLP webinar: resources from the Army War College

The Federal Depository Library Program is offering a free webinar on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 2 pm titled "U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE INFORMATION RESOURCES: LANDPOWER, GEOPOLITICS, ARMY HISTORY, AND EDUCATIONAL TREASURES." The presenter is Prof. Bert Chapman,who is a Political Science and Economics Librarian/Professor of Library Science at Purdue University. This webinar will introduce students to the rich variety of information resources provided by the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA. Examples of these resources from the Army’s premier professional military education institution include materials such as course syllabi, podcasts, and detailed studies on the role of land power and strategy in the U.S. and foreign militaries. It will also cover historical materials produced by the War College’s Army Heritage and Education Command that can enhance understanding of the U.S. Army’s role in U.S. and international history. Register here.

Reuters adds "Trust Principles" and "Backstory" to news reports

Reuters recently announced that they "have attached a link to the Trust Principles at the bottom of all stories on Reuters.com. In addition, from time to time, when we think it might be useful to the reader, we will also provide an explanation – which we are calling Backstory – of how we have reported a particular piece. Backstory will be presented as a statement of methodology or a Q&A with a Reuters journalist. These additions reflect our commitment not only to deliver accurate, unbiased news but to share more information about the way we work and the standards under which we operate."

hat tip: Karen Shephard

A graphical history of Google search results

Google has been around for almost twenty years now. Search Engine Watch has created a visual history of Google's evolution, "including its many successes and its few notable failures, through the lens of the humble Search Engine Results Page (SERP)". They also provide an updated look at search engines that are currently an alternative to Google - even though about 80% of desktop computer users vhttps://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=0 Google for their search engine.  

USDA website redesign

The United States Dept. of Agriculture recently announced a complete redesign of thei website. According to the announcement, the  redesign features "stronger visual storytelling components, a more modern user-experience with easy to find services and resources, and to top it off, a completely mobile-friendly design. Through careful planning, thoughtful design, and a primary focus on user experience and usability, we’ve taken the best of government and industry expertise and put it into creating our new website."

GODORT prisoner locator update

GODORT, the ALA section of government documents librarians, maintains the State Agency Databases Project and, as a subsection, the Prisoner Locator Tools page on the State Agencies website. They recently updated the url for that site, which links to inmate locators in a number of US states; they also provide a link to the prisoner locator for Federal prisons.

Unpaywall helps find free online papers/articles

A new Chrome extension called "Unpaywall", though still being tweaked, is available - the official release is April 4th. It searches Open Access sites for accessible materials that are known to be behind paywalls. The organization behind Unpaywall is Impactstory, "a nonprofit working to supercharge science by making it more open, reusable, and web-native." According to the site, Unpaywall is able to get articles behind paywalls for free about half the time, though they claim that this is improving regularly.

hat tip: Karen Shephard

Alternative law school ranking system

The Volokh Conspiracy blog has a post titled "This law school ranking system is much better than U.S. News," by David Bernstein. The related paper, A De Gustibus Approach to Ranking Law Schools by Christopher J. Ryan and Brian L. Frye, is available on SSRN. From the abstract:

This article assumes that the purpose of ranking law schools is to help students decide which school to attend. Accordingly, it describes an approach to ranking law schools based entirely on the revealed preferences of students. Law schools admit applicants based almost entirely on their LSAT score and undergraduate GPA, and compete to matriculate students with the highest possible scores. Our de gustibus approach to ranking law schools assumes that the “best” law schools are the most successful at matriculating those students. This article concludes with a “best law schools ranking” based exclusively on the LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of matriculating students.

hat tip: Karen Shephard

Pitt diversity book club March 30

The University of Pittsburgh Diversity Book Club is having a panel discussion next Thursday, March 30, from 4-6 pm in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge.  In honor of Women's History Month, the topic will be the book Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. Goodreads review of the book says:

"In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better."

webinar Saving government data: A conversation with the future

On Wednesday, March 29, 2017 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. (Eastern) there's a Help! I'm an Accidental Government Information Librarian Webinar about the DataRefuge project and other projects like it that work in conjunction with the End of Term Web Archive to capture and make available federal web content during administrative transitions. The discussion will explore the fragility of digital information, and expand on ideas about what data is. We’ll talk about current projects and efforts, and explore the future of this work. Finally, we’ll address the concept of sustainability, and propose a paradigm of empowered experimentation that aligns with our values and roles within libraries. The webinar is free; RSVP here.

Report on European case law availabilty

A project called BO-ECLI - Building On the European Case Law Identifier - has published "Online Publication of Court Decisions in the EU: Report of the Policy Group of the Project 'Building on the European Case Law Identifier' (178 page pdf)." BO-ECLI is a project involving sixteen partners from ten Member States (Italy, Greece, Croatia, Estonia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain, Romania) that aims to broaden the use of ECLI and to further improve the accessibility of case law. BO-ECLI is co-funded by the Justice Programme of the European Union.  

The report is a comparative study regarding the on-line publication of court decisions within all 28 Member States of the European Union, as well as at three European Courts. The Executive Summary states that "It focusses on three main themes – policy and practices with regard to on-line publication, data protection and Open Data – and two accessory topics: citation practice and the implementation of the European Case Law Identifier... After an introductory section, the five themes (publication, data protection, Open Data, legal citation and ECLI) are discussed in separate sections. Section 7 contains reports for all 28 EU Member States as well as for three European courts: the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights and the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Organization. Section 8 contains the conclusions and a set of 25 recommendations. "

hat tip: LII (Legal Information Institute)

Online resource for veterans appealing denial of benefits

The ABA Journal reports that there is a new resource for veterans who want to appeal denial of benefits hosted by the Veterans Consortium ProBono Program. Through the site, available as an application form, veterans can either appeal their cases on their own or request a free attorney to help with the appeal. The site focuses on helping veterans appeal adverse decisions from the Board of Veterans’ Appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. There are informational materials and explanatory videos explaining the appeals process.
The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program site also has a resource library with materials on a variety of topics pertinent to veterans.

Federal courts: An Inside Look at the Jury Experience

The Office of the United States Courts has posted a 1-hour video to their website titled "An Inside Look at the Jury Experience." The video is of a discussion panel composed of two U.S. district judges, a clerk of court, and a law professor and author on the jury process. Panelists included Judge George O’Toole, District of Massachusetts; Judge Reggie Walton, District Court for the District of Columbia; Robin Tabora, Clerk of Court, District of Connecticut; and Andrew Ferguson, law professor at the University of the District of Columbia. The video of the question-and-answer session also includes several brief educational videos about federal juries.

ACRL: From Shelf to Online Repository

The Association of College and Research Libraries is hosting an online presentation Thurs. 3/16/17 at 2 pm called "From Shelf to Online Repository: Creating a Collaborative Teaching and Research Collection." The presentation will feature a case study from archivists, academics and publishing editors on their involvement in producing Race Relations in America, sourced from the Amistad Research Center. Guest speakers will provide an insight into selection, views on digital preservation, motives for digitisation and value to academics in teaching and research. From the description:

"Curating, digitizing and building a digital collection of primary sources is a truly collaborative process between archive, scholar and publisher. Highlighting the power of digital research, this webinar will discuss different perspectives on processes involved, from development and selection, to digitization and usage."

Registration is free; register here.

Volokh Conspiracy blog cites Prof. Dickinson

Prof. Ilya Somin, who blogs at the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy, recently posted an entry titled "Potential pitfalls of building Trump’s Great Wall of eminent domain," in which he discussed Prof. Gerald Dickinson's recent WaPo article about the difficulty of procuring the land needed for a U.S./Mexico border wall. Prof. Dickinson went into detail about the difficulty of using eminent domain to acquire all the necessary land, and the history of protracted legal battles when the government "takes" land using emininent domain.

Tues Feb 28: Amazon Web Services problems causing various database problems

We've confirmed that Proquest databases and JSTOR are down because of reported problems with Amazon Web Services (see also email msg from our IT Department on the outage).

Lexis Prepare to Practice Program

Lexis has announced the 2017 Prepare to Practice program for law students, available on-demand. Content for the program is based on feedback from legal employers and former summer associates. The Prepare to Practice program is designed to help students master some of the practical skills they need to arrive "practice-ready" on day one of any legal employment. Prepare to Practice has three steps:
(1) Researching an Unfamiliar Topic (Video / Quiz)
(2) Transactional and Litigation Drafting (Video / Quiz)
(3) After completing training 1 & 2, students are eligible for certification.
Lexis says that "Through the Prepare to Practice program, students will learn to quickly and thoroughly research unfamiliar topics, research regulations, their regulatory history, and the administrative decisions that interpret them. They will also learn how to write, prepare, and find any legal document."
For more information visit the LexisNexis Prepare to Practice site. 

ICE Immigration Raids: A Primer

TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data gathering and research organization from Syracuse University, provides comprehensive, independent and nonpartisan information about federal enforcement, staffing and spending. They have just published a report titled "ICE Immigration Raids: A Primer." This report breaks down the numbers on ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) apprehensions in recent years to provide a better picture of the role of ICE fugitive operations as compared with other components of ICE. The data presented in the report provide a useful baseline against which arrests under the new Trump Administration by fugitive operations teams and other components of ICE can be compared.

New Law Librarian of Congress

The Library of Congress has announced that Jane Sánchez has been named the Law Librarian of Congress. Sánchez earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of New Mexico, an MLS from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and a Juris Doctorate from The American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. She has worked in a variety of different libraries. Before coming to the Law Library, Jane was the chief of the Humanities and Social Sciences Division at the Library of Congress. She has previously worked in the legislative branch as the Director of Library Services & Content Management at the U.S. Government Publishing Office. When she was appointed to her previous position she was praised by Mark Sweeney, acting associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress, who said “Ms. Sánchez brings a wealth of experience to this position. Throughout her career, she has developed innovative, dynamic and strategic operations and services, has managed multidisciplinary projects and developed processes, including being an early adapter of technology.”

Visual Personality Quiz by Getty Images

Getty Images has a Visual Personality Quiz online that can help you "discover your visual personality." The quiz uses a unique format in which you answer questions by selecting images rather than text. The colors and images people are drawn to can give indications about their personalities and subconscious. Anyway, it's short, free, and fun. Take the quiz here.

GPO Director reports on goals for the upcoming year to Congress

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) Director Davita Vance-Cooks testified before the Committee on House Administration of the House of Representatives about priorities for the agency in the coming year(s). Vance-Cooks was joined by leaders from the Library of Congress, U.S. Capitol Police, and the Architect of the Capitol at the hearing titled "Priorities of the House Officers and Legislative Branch Entities for FY 2018 and Beyond."
These priorities include:
Modernizing the publishing of Congressional products
Developing a new cost accounting system emphasizing transparency
Strengthening GPO's partnership with the Nation’s Federal depository libraries
Automating GPO’s print procurement process
Releasing govinfo from beta and retiring FDsys
Beginning production of the next generation U.S. Passport

Director Vance-Cooks' prepared statement is available from the GPO website here (20 page pdf).

State of Washington v. Donald J. Trump, 17-35105 (9th Cir. 2017) info

The Court Listener has a link to the opinion in the case, and also has provided the Table of Authorities with links to all the cases that were cited. 

LOC Recommended Format Statement - Open for comment

An announcement from Donna Brearcliffe, Electronic Resources Coordinator at the Library of Congress: "The Library of Congress is calling for input as it looks forward to the upcoming review and revision of the Recommended Formats Statement. In April, the teams of experts charged with maintaining, improving and ensuring the accuracy of the Statement will begin the annual process of examining the Statement and the creative works represented in it, to ensure that it reflects correctly the technical characteristics which best encourage preservation and long-term access.
 Given the interest and the feedback received over the past few years since the Statement was first issued in 2014, we at the Library of Congress feel that the Statement could benefit this time around by focusing the review and revision process on a few key areas. The first of these is the metadata which is so crucial to preservation and access. This has long been an important part of the Statement, but we are aware that it can sometimes be overshadowed by questions of file formats. This year we plan on taking a more focused look at options for metadata, including the work of the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) to determine what might be applicable to the Recommended Formats Statement.
 Similarly, work by the Library of Congress on the archiving of podcasts has raised some interesting questions about the metadata used for this particular and important type of sound recording, which potentially might be included in the Statement as well. Taking a closer look at metadata across the creative categories has the potential to better identify metadata or even metadata schemas which could prove very valuable for preservation and long-term access and should be included in the upcoming version of the Recommended Formats Statement.
 This is not to exclude the examination of other aspects of the Statement. As this is the first year in which Websites have been included, we are very interested in reviewing the first iteration and determining what holds up and what should be changed – and the Library would very much like to get feedback from external stakeholders in the web archiving community on this as well. Likewise, we will be asking about how best to ensure that, when it comes to Software and Electronic Gaming and Learning, we are very clear on the preference of source code and of direct file submission. If this is not absolutely clear, we need to know. So, the Library of Congress requests that anyone with input, comments or feedback, either on the topics above or on any aspect of the Recommended Formats Statement, including on ways in which to make it more user friendly, please share that with us by March 31, through one of the e-mail contacts listed on the Recommended Formats Statement website." 

The MIT AgeLab, in collaboration with founding member Monotype, has launched a new research consortium called the Clear Information Presentation consortium (Clear-IP) that will look at how typography and design affect readability and reading comprehension of content that is viewed at a glance. Although there has previously been research into readability of print-based media,the way we read has changed dramatically in the past few decades. Our default method is no longer to read ink on paper but digital type on screens of all sizes – from handheld phones and tablets to large-scale billboards. Most of us now consume information at a glance: a brief look at a text message, a pop-up notification on your desktop, the screen of your smartwatch or the Sat Nav in your car. We often read on the move and in visually noisier environments than ever before. Clear-IP will investigate how reading behavior is changing in an increasingly mobile world, where more and more information is taken in at a glance, as well as the factors that underlie what makes a piece of information more legible or easier to understand.

LII: The Inbox Project

Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII) has launched The Inbox Project in partnership with the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). The project, part of LII's Wex community-built legal encyclopedia, is a collection of materials that are related to email anti-spam law. It includes information about national and international legal frameworks dealing with email and electronic commerce, including comparison tables.  According to the site:

"This Inbox Project collection will seek to answer important questions about the law governing commercial email, including the following:  What laws control spam?  How do anti-spam laws deal with free speech issues?  How have anti-spam laws been interpreted and enforced?  Can I make a case against a spammer?  What would an effective spam-control law look like, and how might legislators write one?  How can I avoid spam-related problems with my business?"

New search tool for African American history

The University of Minnesota library recently launched Umbra Search African American History, a search interface that provides access to over 400,000 digitized materials that document African American history. These are freely available resources that are in the digital collections of more than a thousand partner libraries, archives, museums and other institutions located across the United States. The materials include music, oral histories, photographs, maps, handwritten letters, and more. Director of the project Cecily Marcus says:

"No library is able to digitize all of its holdings, but by bringing together materials from all over the country, Umbra Search allows students and scholars to tell stories that have never been told before. Umbra Search partners have amazing collections, and now those materials can sit side by side with related content from a library on the other side of the country.”

Librarian links: Refugee Resettlement

A govdocs librarian in NC has created a page with links to Refugee Resettlement Information in the US. She is still gathering links for the page if you have anything to contribute.

Canada's Supreme Court launches online archive to alleviate link rot

Slaw, Canada's online legal magazine, reports that there is a new online archive of Internet Sources Cited in SCC Judgments (1998 - 2016). The archive was set up by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in order to deal with the problem of "link rot" in SCC opinions - cited links that go to URLs that no longer work because the document has been removed or moved without updating the link. Slaw quotes from the the Terms of Use: 

“The Office of the Registrar of the SCC, recognizing that web pages or websites that the Court cites in its judgments may subsequently vary in content or be discontinued, has located and archived the content of most online sources that had been cited by the Court between 1998 and 2016 in order to preserve access to them. These sources were captured with a content as close as possible to the original content"

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GPO webinar "Beyond Google"

The GPO is hosting a free webinar on Thursday, Feb. 2 at 2 pm Eastern time titled "Beyond Google - Another Look at Finding Government Information." The webinar will cover intermediate and advanced searching techniques, deep web search engines, and ways to find and use "hidden" resources. During the webinar, sample searches will be for statistics, born-digital, and digitized historical publications. You can register here.

GPO Style Manual: new edition

The Government Publishing Office (GPO) has announced the release of a new edition of their Style Manual. It's available as a free download in several different formats from the GPO website. According to the announcement,

"Besides a thorough revision throughout, new features in this edition include:

•  GPO’s most recent digital initiatives 
• Updates to foreign nation information 
• Updates to State demonyms 
• Treatment of words related to native entities recognized by the Federal Government 
• Clarification of punctuation rules 
• Updates to capitalization, abbreviations, and computer terms 
• Inclusion of many suggestions from users."

ALA & Google to launch phase 2 of code-teaching program

"the American Library Association (ALA) and Google, Inc., announced a call for Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty to participate in Phase Two of the Libraries Ready to Code project. This work will culminate in graduate level course models that equip MLIS students to deliver coding programs through public and school libraries and foster computational thinking skills among the nation’s youth."

Northeastern law students compile civil rights & restorative justice archive

The ABA Journal has an interesting article about the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. The project has been identifying lynching deaths that occurred "during the reign of racial terror that lasted from the end of Reconstruction through the 1950s." It aims to create an archive of documents, photographs, news clippings, and interviews about as many of these deaths as possible—particularly the overlooked and unnamed among them. The idea is to create a record of each murder, a trove for historians and researchers and family members who are searching for news of their ancestors.

Librarian webinar: Research Data Management

Those great govdocs librarians from North Carolina are having another information-filled webinar next Wednesday, Jan 18, 2017 from noon to 1 pm. The topic is Research Data Management, and the presenter is Katharin Peter, the Social Sciences Data Librarian for the Von KleinSmid Center Library for International and Public Affairs at the University of Southern California. The webinar will present an overview of Research Data Management including: data management planning, how data fits into the research lifecycle and scholarly communication, and key resources/strategies for liaison librarians working with faculty and other researchers. You can register for the session here; it will be broadcast using Webex.