FDLP: No more "Fugitive Documents"

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) has announced that it is discontinuing use of the term "fugitive documents" to describe "Public information products that are not discoverable through the Government Publishing Office's Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP)."  According to the announcement, "It is time to replace the phrase “fugitive documents.” Going forward LSCM will use “unreported publications.” This change was approved by the Depository Library Council, the Superintendent of Documents, and the GPO Director.
You may notice some changes over the next several weeks as LSCM staff work to reflect this change in external and internal documentation, public facing web pages on FDLP.gov, and in askGPO. We will not replace the term in past conference presentations or in previously published articles. Our goal is to have changes completed by the end of May 2021."

Justice Clarence Thomas "goes rogue on the Bluebook"

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently made the headlines in both the ABA Journal and Law 360 for using what both publications termed a "rogue" Supreme Court citation in the opinion he wrote for Brownback v. King, 141 S.Ct. 740 (Legal Writing Professors take note). 
The ABA Journal says that Justice Thomas "went rogue on the Bluebook when he embraced an appellate lawyer’s suggestion for dealing with 'citation baggage'... that distracts from the point."
What was this bold move? Justice Thomas used the suggestion to used the parenthetical "(cleaned up)" after a citation to denote the court's omission of quotations within quotations and the need for a quoting citation parenthetical, as dictated by Bluebook Rule 5.2. The appellate lawyer who made the suggestion in an SSRN article is Jack Metzler of the Federal Trade Commission. Metzler told the ABA Journal that this is a big deal, "at least in the world of legal citation."

Open Access to Research and the Covid pandemic

 An interesting article on Slaw (Canada's online legal magazine) by John Willinsky discusses growth in the Open Access movement during the past year. 

It is influencing the opening of scholarly publishing, more generally...After an initial start with two publishers, there are now, one year later, nine publishers moving away from selling traditional subscriptions to research libraries to having those same libraries pay much the same price to make this research publicly available. The growth of this model over the course of this extraordinary year has meant that what is now available to readers everywhere includes research reviews in areas of public health and cancer biology, as well as research in anthropology, water, mathematics, political economy and other areas.

And what's more, the article says, "Librarians are making clear the serious consideration that some are giving to moving research and scholarship to open access." The author has embarked on an interesting project to develop usage statistics for open access articles. 

Coronavirus Regulations State-By-State

 Law360 has an article titled "Coronavirus Regulations: a State-by-State Review." The article has an interactive map of the United States (powered by LexisNexis state-net) that lets you click on any of the states or territories of the US to view legislative, regulatory, and executive order information with a link to full text reports for each measure. The site tracks federal, state, and local government activity related to coronavirus, including pending bills, new regulations, and executive orders. 

2021 NELLCO Symposium for Law Libraries begins this Wednesday

 The 2021 NELLCO Symposium: Uncertainty - Living with Reality. Finding Opportunity. is scheduled to begin this Wednesday, with a host of interesting sessions spread out over 6 days March 17-19 and 24-26. Registration is free. The Symposium will be conducted on Zoom. Some of the sessions: 
3/17 from 1-2 pm,  Best Practices for Negotiating with Vendors
3/17 from 4-5 pm, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in Collections & Acquisitions
3/18 from 1-2:30 pm, Back to Normal? Law Libraries After the Pandemic
3/24 from 2:45 - 3:30 pm, The Fight for the Right to Loan: Digital access, lending, and preservation in crisis
Plus lots more interesting sessions, and presentations from law library vendors like Fastcase, Bloomsbury, PLI Plus, vLex, and others. 
The full program is available here. Register here.