Help! I'm an Accidental Gov Docs Librarian webinars

"Help! I'm an Accidental Government Information Librarian" webinars are sponsored by the Government Resources Section of the North Carolina Library Association.  The webinars are designed to help librarians do better reference work by increasing familiarity with government information resources and the strategies for navigating them.  Upcoming webinars include "The Bureau of Labor Statistics" on October 22 and "Data and Statistics for Researching Education" on December 3.  Their website has information on these upcoming webinars as well as links to webinar recordings of past webinars including "Regulate This! Federal Regulations",  "Geocoding for Beginners", "Historical Economic Data Sources", and "British and Commonwealth Legal Materials." 

JSTOR launches daily magazine

JSTOR, the academic database used by scholars across the disciplines, has launched a new daily magazine called "JSTOR Daily: Where News Meets Its Scholarly Match" (still in beta). It already features over 100 blogposts and articles, including a post about Pitt's 2014 MacArthur fellow Terrance Hayes. The website says that "JSTOR Daily offers a fresh way for people to understand and contextualize their world. Our writers provide insight, commentary, and analysis of ideas, research, and current events, tapping into the rich scholarship on JSTOR, a digital library of more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of monographs, and other material."  Catherine Halley, the magazine's editor, adds  "“Humankind’s best thinking is taking place at universities and scholars are helping develop this collective wisdom, and that’s what’s important about it.. Finding a way to take those thoughts and make them accessible to the public makes us all smarter.”
You can sign up to receive the email newsletter on the website.

Congress dot gov out of beta

The Library of Congress has announced that the Congress.gov website is officially out of beta. There are also several new features and improvements:
Congress.gov Resources A new resources section providing an A to Z list of hundreds of links related to Congress
An expanded list of "most viewed" bills each day, archived to July 20, 2014
House Committee Hearing Videos Live streams of House Committee hearings and meetings, and an accompanying archive to January, 2012
Advanced Search Support for 30 new fields, including nominations, Congressional Record and name of member

Bestlaw extension for Chrome browser

A new browser extension for the Chrome browser has been developed by a Berkeley law student. It's called Bestlaw and it "adds features to Westlaw Next to make legal research more efficient, cost-effective and enjoyable".  Once you install it on your Chrome browser, it adds an unobtrusive toolbar to your Westlaw Next.  Then when you pull up a case, it offers some features that are useful:
Copy a perfect Bluebook citation with one click
Clean, readable view
Automatically-generated table of contents
Quick link to jump to footnotes
One-click copying for citations, titles, and full text
Collapse and expand statutory sections
Find the document on free sources like CourtListener, Cornell LII, Casetext, and Google Scholar
Prevent getting automatically signed off
Share the document by email or on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
It's a neat little extension and the creator, Joe Mornin, says he is working on one for Lexis.

hat tip: Sallie Smith

Fastcase partners with Clio

Fastcase, the legal research database, has announced that it is partnering with Clio, the time tracking practice management software.  By integrating the two,  legal professionals can track time spent researching without focusing attention away from the task at hand. From inside Fastcase, you can now select from clients and matters in Clio, start a timer for your research session, and record the activity automatically in Clio. According to the announcement, "In addition to the smarter research already provided by Fastcase, this partnership means more billable time and less administrative time, more accurate invoices, and more time for you".

Title 52 of the US Code

The Office of the Law Revision Counsel recently announced new Title 52 of the United States Code (U.S.C.),  Voting and Elections. According to the OLRC, provisions relating to voting and elections are being transferred from Titles 2 and 42 into the new Title 52. The transfers are necessary and desirable to create a well organized, coherent structure for this body of law and to improve the overall organization of the United States Code. No statutory text is altered. The provisions are merely being relocated from one place to another in the Code. The transfers in the online version of the US Code occurred on Sept. 1, 2014. For the printed version, the transfers will occur with supplement II of the 2012 edition of the US Code. Westlaw's US Code Annotated included the changes online on Sept. 3, and Lexis and Bloomberg Law online also have the new Title 52. 

More on laptops in the classroom

The Chronicle of Higher Education Conversation blog has an interesting post titled "Don't Ban Laptops in the Classroom."
The theme of the post is this:   "In the classroom as everywhere else, we must learn how to exercise control over our distraction impulse—not by some imposed rule, but by our own choice. Banning laptops—removing our choice to distract ourselves—is giving up on students, isn’t it?"

law student annual technology survey

Every year for the past 11 years Rich McCue at the University of Victoria (BC) law school conducts a survey of law students asking about their use of technology. Here are this fall's results:
• Smartphones: 100% of incoming law students surveyed own "Smartphones" that can browse the internet (up from 96% last year and 50% four years ago), with 56% of the total being iPhones, 30% Android and 0% Blackberry. New law students are primarily using their mobile devices for directions, email, and looking up schedules & contact information.
• Tablet & eBook ownership has doubled in the past two years with 59% of students owning tablet devices or ebook readers, up from 31% two years ago. iPads make up 53% of those tablets. 35% of tablet owners bring it to school every day. Faculties should endeavour to provide course pack and textbooks in eBook formats for students.
• Videoconferencing: 100% of students use Skype for real-time audio/video calls and collaboration. 48% use Apple Facetime and 17% use Google Hangouts.
• Email: 62% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, and 4% use UVic email. To check their @uvic.ca email, 56% forward their email to another service, and 28% use the UVic webmail interface. Over the past few years many students have complained at lack of storage space and antiquated @Uvic.ca email interface for students.
 • Document Sharing: 77% of students use Google Drive for collaborative document editing, and 62% use Dropbox, both up significantly from last year.
• Social Media: 92% of students use Facebook (down from 97% two years ago), 31% user Twitter, 19% LinkedIn, and 3% don’t use online social networks. In spite of some negative comments about social media, 79% of students used social media to connect with other students before the start of the school year.
• Laptops: 100% of students own laptops. 54% of laptops are Macs, up from 49% two years ago. 46% use Windows. 54% of students bring their laptops to school on a daily basis and 8% never bring them to school.
• Note Taking: 71% of students use laptops to take class notes, 92% use pen and paper, 8% use tablets and 8% use cell phones.
Consideration should be given to discussing the potential drawbacks associated with using laptops for transcription style class notes in a first year class, and faculty members should explore ways to creatively use personal technology to engage students more deeply during class time.
The full report is available online. 

First digital-only Federal Depository Library

The Government Printing Office and the Federal Depository Library Program recently welcomed the newest Federal depository library, Sitting Bull College, of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, serving the people of North and South Dakota. The library is the Federal Depository Library to opt for digital-only publications. Sitting Bull College is building a digital collection to meet their community's need for access to Federal information. Any selective depository now has this same option. GPO recognizes the number of libraries interested in hosting and providing access to digital content continues to increase as the information community moves toward more digital collections. Libraries that participate in the FDLP are required under law to provide free public access to and assistance in using depository resources.

PACER documents news

The Washington Post reports  that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has a plan to restore online access to the PACER documents that were removed. The AALL is following this closely and will be following up to clarify the Post's information, including whether or not the restoration will include entire case files or just the docket sheets. 

PA legislators pass UELMA

The Pennsylvania House of Representatives approved SB 601, a bill adopting the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA). The bill's purpose is:

"Amending Titles 44 (Law and Justice) and 45 (Legal Notices) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, modernizing publication of Commonwealth legal materials; providing for uniformity in electronic legal materials in the areas of designation, authentication, preservation and access; conferring powers and duties on various Commonwealth agencies; and, in publication and effectiveness of Commonwealth documents, further providing for definitions, for the Joint Committee on Documents, for general administration, for payment for documents, for distribution of publication expenses, for effect of future legislation, for publication of official codification, for deposit of  documents required, for processing of deposited documents, for preliminary publication in Pennsylvania Bulletin, for permanent supplements to Pennsylvania Code, for pricing and distribution of published documents, for automatic subscriptions, for required contractual arrangements, for official text of published documents, for effective date of documents and for presumptions created."

The bill is now on to Governor Corbett's desk, where hopefully it will be signed into law. Kudos to Patricia Fox, the Western Pennsylvania Law Library Association (WPLLA) and the Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association (GPLLA) for their successful advocacy.
 To keep up with the status of UELMA bills in the states,  see AALL's bill tracking chart.

CALI Time Trial II

Did you enjoy playing with your CALI Time Trial cards last year? Or did you go directly to the fiendishly captivating online version, available on the CALI website?  Well there is an all new set of Time Trial cards - available for free at the Barco Law Library desk. And it's also available again online.  From the description:
Each card represents a significant case, amendment or Supreme Court Justice. From the clues on the card determine the year of the case or the year the Justice was first appointed. Put the cards into ascending date order from left to right by dragging and dropping them to the left, right or between the cards in the top row. If a card turns red you've put it in the wrong spot. Shift it to the correct spot before placing the next card. The oldest played card will be discarded once there are five cards in play.
It's Educational and fun! And the music is pretty good too. 

More on the PACER brouhaha

There has been a fair bit of negative commentary about the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts recent announcement that a whole bunch of case dockets have been removed from PACER in preparation for their move to a new, updated system.  Jim Jacobs of FreeGovInfo has pointed out that "Neither PACER nor the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which runs PACER, claims that the removal of court cases from PACER was accidental. There are always reasons and excuses and these are usually used to make it sound as if the agency responsible for the removal had no choice (or intention), but that is rarely the case. So far, we have heard two excuses from PACER: The "backwards compatibility" excuse and the "reason" that "the cases that were removed were closed and that many had not been accessed in several years.""
He also provides a link to an interesting article in Tech Dirt titled "PACER Officials Give Weak, Nonsensical Excuse For Why PACER Deleted Tons Of Public Court Records With No Notice" .  He closes by saying

Although digital preservation certainly does require attention and resources and skills, it is not *only* a question of skills or technologies. It is a question of who wants to save information and who does not. This is often a question of who will use the information. Agencies may have a different perspective on who their users are (or who their users might be) than libraries do. For me, and I hope for all of us, there should be one simple lesson from the removal of the PACER court case files: If a library wants to ensure preservation and access for digital information it can do so (can *only* do so) by getting that information and preserving it. Relying on the government to provide perpetual, free access to everything our users want is always going to fail at some point. The question is not "when" or "if" it will fail. The questions are "how much?" and "how soon?" and "who will be hurt by the loss?"

Free Federal Rules books from LII and CALI

CALI has announced that 2015 versions of the Federal Rules of Evidence, Criminal Procedure and Civil Procedure are now available. These books are powered by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School and distributed by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction's eLangdell Press. The books come in .epub format, which is compatible with iPads, Nooks, Android devices and basically everything but kindles.
 These editions of the books include:
• The complete rules as of December 1, 2014 (for the 2015 edition).
• All notes of the Advisory Committee following each rule.
• Internal links to rules referenced within the rules.
• External links to the LII website's version of the US Code.
And yes, all totally free. You are more than welcome to download as many copies as you'd like and add to digital collections.
 Here are the direct links to the books:
 2015 Federal Rules of Evidence 
2015 Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure
2015 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

hat tip: Sarah Glassmeyer

PACER news

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has cause an uproar with the recent announcement that many previously available dockets in the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system are no longer available electronically. This is due to an upcoming upgrade in the electronic file management system that they are using - according to the announcement, "the locally developed legacy case management systems in the five courts listed below are now incompatible with PACER; therefore, the judiciary is no longer able to provide electronic access to the closed cases on those systems." No longer available are: 
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit: Cases filed prior to January 1, 2010
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit: Cases filed prior to January 1, 2008
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit: Cases filed prior to January 1, 2010
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: Cases filed prior to March 1, 2012
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California: Cases filed prior to May 1, 2001
Stosh Jonjak, a Pittsburgh law librarian at Reed Smith, has blogged about the news and included links to the major news reports on the topic.  Ars Technica, in a scathing article titled "US courts trash a decade’s worth of online documents, shrug it off", points out that the dockets were removed without any warning, and the announcement came afterwards.
The American Assn. of Law Libraries is monitoring the developments and is considering a more detailed response to the AOC (comments from members to the Govt. Relations Office are welcomed).
Meanwhile, some of the dockets are available from Bloomberg Law, depending on whether they were ever requested by a Bloomberg account holder.  The same is true for Lexis and Westlaw.

back-to-school shopping tips for law students

Above the Law has a post titled "The Essential Law School Shopping Guide" with lots of information on what every law student needs - or maybe not necessarily needs, but might want to pick up - before heading back to law school. It includes all-important tips on buying highlighters and post-it flags for marking up casebooks; buying a good bookbag; useful law student books; and some good sources of caffeine.

Hat tip: Karen Shephard

New website with Presidential Documents & information

The Legislative Research Special Interest Section of the Law Librarians Society of Washington, D.C., Inc. (LLSDC) is pleased to announce the availability of a new website entitled “Executive Orders and Other Presidential Documents: Sources and Explanations". The site attempts to briefly lay out and link to all major sources for these materials which includes Presidential directives, proclamations, signing statements, executive orders, memoranda, and other documents. In addition the site links to many sources, such as CRS reports, that explain these documents. Members of the Special Interest Section have also recently updated their publication, “Questions and Answers in Legislative and Regulatory Research”, which is now only available in (a 21 page) PDF. It's got answers to lots of frequently as well as infrequently asked questions about legislative research. 

Dept. of Energy to provide access to publications

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Department of Energy has developed a plan to give public access to the results of research funded by the DOE.   This is in response to a directive from the Obama administration to plan to make publicly supported research available within a year of publication. The DOE is the first agency to release its plan, which is an online site called "PAGES": Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science. The site is currently in "beta" but you can already search and find articles on the site. The advanced Search function allows you to search by a variety of metadata categories. The resulting documents are, as you might expect, very scientific in nature.

Words you will never hear a lawyer utter

This week's "Question of the Week" on the ABA Journal website is "What is something you will never hear a lawyer utter?" Readers are urged to provide answers in the Comment section. Lawyer jokes anyone? 

Internet Legal Research (on the cheap)

Attorney At Work is a website designed for practicing attorneys that provides "One Really Good Idea Every Day for Enterprising Lawyers".  The site was created by a team of  practice management experts. A recent post, called "10 Must-Know Tips for Internet Legal Research on the Cheap", has some great tips and is provided as a downloadable pdf.
Hat tip: lawlib listserv

Friday fun: Movies!

The ABA Journal has a story today titled "12 movies with pivotal lessons featuring lawyers".  Here's the alphabetical list, with links to the explanation of why each is important.

Absence of Malice (1981)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

And Justice for All (1979)

The Castle (1997)

I Am Sam (2001)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Malice (1993)

My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Philadelphia (1993)

A Time to Kill (1996)

True Grit (2010)

The Verdict (1982)

"Let Me Google That For You Act"

"Let Me Google That For You Act" is the informal title of Senate bill 2206 (summary) (full text of bill), which seeks to abolish the NTIS (National Technical Information Service). The companion bill in the House of Representatives  is H.R. 4382.  A number of library organizations, including the AALL, ALA and ARL have been involved in discussions with Congressional staff about the bill, working to support the NTIS. The Free Government Information (FGI) Blog has more information about the bill, and why these gov doc librarians are opposed to it. FGI points out that the sponsors of the bill seem to lack understanding of how Google works - that Google doesn't actually write the NTIS reports, it just links to them when you are searching on a particular topic. 

"The text of the bill observes that many reports available from NTIS can also be found through publicly searchable websites, such as Google and usa.gov, but fails to appreciate that this availability is often precisely because NTIS had a hand in collecting and publicly distributing them....Furthermore, many of the agencies which published reports in the NTIS collection no longer exist, leaving NTIS as their only surviving source. In fact, over two million of its reports exist only in paper or microform, and are not available in digital form from any source. Alarmingly, this bill makes no provision for the preservation of these reports or the cataloging data which facilitates access to them."

Court says Westlaw, Lexis use of lawyer's briefs not copyright infringement

The White v. West Publishing Company and Reed Elsevier case (S.D.N.Y, available online) begins: "On February 22, 2012, plaintiffs Edward L. White, Edward L. White, P.C., and Kenneth Elan filed a putative class action alleging copyright infringement against defendants West Publishing Corp. ("West") and Reed Elsevier, Inc. ("Lexis")." The plaintiffs were claiming that their legal briefs' inclusion in the Lexis and Westlaw databases was copyright infringement. However, District Judge Rakoff ruled that the use of the briefs by West and Lexis is fair use. Both companies transform the documents to a different purpose and use according to the Judge’s analysis: West and Lexis’s processes of reviewing, selecting, converting, coding, linking, and identifying the documents “add.. something new, with a further purpose or different character.” 

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act approved in DE

The governor of Delaware has signed UELMA,the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, which allows the electronic versions of legal material published by the state to be designated as the official version. The material includes the Constitution, the Laws of Delaware, the Delaware Code, and the Delaware Administrative Code. The text of the new law is available on the Delaware General Assembly website.

hat tip: Cynthia Cicco, Janet Lindenmuth

Studying law in prison helps convict win freedom

The ABA Journal online has an interesting (and inspiring) article today about Rodell Sanders, a Chicago man who spent 20 years in prison for murder. Sanders decided to learn the law while he was in jail, and committed himself to studying law after his family helped him purchase $1000 worth of law books (titles not mentioned). He was able to secure a new trial for himself based on ineffective assistance of counsel, and then got help from the University of Chicago law school's exoneration project. He was acquitted of the crime and is now suing the Chicago Heights police department. 

.These shoes were made for walking...

The Wall Street Journal reports that Ducere, a company in India, has come up with a new entry in the "wearable technology" field: the Lechal smart shoe, aka "interactive haptic footwear".  The shoes are bluetooth-enabled so that they can communicate with Google maps and guide your feet on their way to where you want to go. When you are at a crossroads the left or right shoe will buzz to indicate which way to turn. Insoles for shoes will also be available if you don't want to wear their shoes.  I can't find an estimated date of when they will be on sale, but the story does say that the shoes should cost between $100 and $150 which admittedly isn't super cheap but is a lot less than some shoes cost.  

New additions to Historical Newspapers database

The University Library System reports new additions to their ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. They have completed the collection of Black Newspapers (9 titles total) and added the 4 titles of the American Jewish Newspaper collection. The new titles added are:
Atlanta Daily World
Baltimore Afro-American
Cleveland Call / Post
LA Sentinel
Norfolk Journal and Guide
NY Amsterdam News
Philadelphia Tribune
American Hebrew and Jewish Messenger
American Israelite
Jewish Advocate
Jewish Exponent

New school year, new stapler

The library's new stapler for student use arrived yesterday. It's a Rapid Duax stapler and can handle from 2 to 170 pages at a time.  There's a demonstration video on YouTube.  

Research: reusing bad passwords not necessarily a bad idea

Slashdot has a post that links to a recent Microsoft research paper titled "Password Portfolios and the Finite-Effect User: Sustainably Managing Large Numbers of Accounts" (16 page pdf).  From the abstract: 

We explore how to manage a portfolio of passwords. We review why mandating exclusively strong passwords with no re-use gives users an impossible task as portfolio size grows... Our findings directly challenge accepted wisdom and conventional advice.

Or, as Slashdot explains it, not only do they recommend reusing passwords, but reusing bad passwords for low risks sites to minimize recall difficulty.

Georgetown Law symposium

The Georgetown Law Library is hosting a day-long symposium on Oct. 24 titled "404/File Not Found:Link Rot, Legal Citation and Projects to Preserve Precedent".  The symposium is "live" at Georgetown but you can also register to attend the symposium via webcast.  Registration is free.
From the description:

The Web is fluid and mutable, and this is a "feature" rather than a "bug". But it also creates challenges in the legal environment (and elsewhere) when fixed content is necessary for legal writers to support their conclusions. Judges, attorneys, academics, and others using citations need systems and practices to preserve web content as it exists in a particular moment in time, and make it reliably available.

 BTW the keynote speaker is Pittsburgh's own Jonathan Zittrain.  

Clever way to create illustrated characters in PowerPoint

Here is a tutorial that shows how to create illustrated characters in Power Point. Clever. Move over Photoshop.

working group: Statistical Resources on the Web Guide

A working group of the Assn. of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is looking into the possibility of "resurrecting" the Statistical Resources on the Web Guide originally compiled by Grace York at the University of Michigan and last updated in 2008. This feasibility project will:
1. Explore feasibility of  ALA/ACRL units adopting and maintaining the site.
 a. Consider possible platforms for site.
 b. Consider how content would be approved, added, and updated.
 c. Explore potential grant funding for project.
 d. Explore overlap with other similar projects and existing sites.
 e. Potentially create a timeline for implementation and maintenance.
 2. Timeline a. Initial meeting by end of July 2014.
 b. Progress check-in by October 2014.
 c. A final report by Midwinter 2015.
Anyone interested in helping with the project should contact Chad Kahl at Illinois State University, stating why you are interested in working on the project and what skills you could bring to the process, by July 11. 

Minnesota state documents digitized

The Minnesota Legislative Reference Library reports that it, along with the MN Office of Secretary of State, has completed a digitization project in which 40,000 official state documents were digitized and made available online. Titlted "Secretary of State Documents - 1900 - 1990", the collection includes a wide variety of documents spanning much of the 20th century. The index cards that had been used as finding aids were digitized and can be searched in the database. 

Phone-charging trousers

Microsoft has partnered with Nokia and British fashion designer Adrien Sauvage to create trousers with wireless cellphone charging capability. Woven into the front pocket is the new Nokia DC-50 wireless charging plate, which grants the wearer the ability to charge a phone by simply placing it into the pocket without the worry of having to plug it in. The Nokia wireless charging trousers will be available on Amazon 'soon'. You can read more on IT Pro.
No word on a phone-charging skirt.  Yet.  

New CALI website launched

The Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) website has been completely revamped (upgraded to Drupal 7) and was relaunched yesterday.  You can check it out at www.cali.org.  Kudos to Elmer Masters and Dan Nagy for a job well done.  

Westlaw webinars on transitioning from Westlaw Classic to WestlawNext

Westlaw has provided links to two recorded webinars that teach about  transitioning to WestlawNext from Westlaw Classic. The recordings will be available until May, 2015.
From Classic to Next: Basic
From Classic to Next: Advanced 

LOC recommends digitial formats for library collections

The Library of Congress has announced a set of recommended formats for a broad spectrum of creative works, ranging from books to digital music, to inform the Library’s acquisition practices. The format recommendations will help ensure the LOC's collections processes are considering and maximizing the long-term preservation potential of its large and varied collections.  The document describes the hierarchies of physical and technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital, which will best maximize the chances for preservation and continued accessibility of creative content.
The Library was able to identify six basic categories of creative output, which represent significant parts of the publishing, information, and media industries, especially those that are rapidly adopting digital production and are central to building the Library’s collections: Textual Works and Musical Compositions; Still Image Works; Audio Works; Moving Image Works; Software and Electronic Gaming and Learning; and Datasets/Databases. Expert technical teams brought specialized knowledge in technical aspects of preservation, ongoing access needs and developments in the marketplace and publishing world. Standards were established to identify recommended formats for each of these categories and to establish hierarchies of preference among the formats within them.
 The Recommended Format Specifications are available here.

hat tip: Margie Maes, LIPA

Lexis Academic training in July

LexisNexis Academic is offering several free webinar training sessions in the month of July.  The links will take you to the registration page for each webinar.
1. LexisNexis Academic : Learn how to use this general reference tool provides access to the most news, business, and legal information available from one interface. Newly redesigned with a simplified, single-search box and improved search options.
• Wednesday, July 9, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
• Tuesday, July 15, 2014 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register (TELEPHONE ONLY)
2. LexisNexis Academic - Business  This seminar focuses on business resources and Company Dossier.
• Tuesday, July 15, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
3. LexisNexis Academic – Legal Research  This webinar will focus on legal and criminal justice resources within LN Academic.
• Check back for dates/times
4. LexisNexis Academic - News
• Tuesday, July 8, 2014 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (EDT) - Register
5. LexisNexis Academic - Shepard's® -  The webinar will cover the features and benefits of using Shepard's® on-line.
• Tuesday, July 8, 2014 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. (EDT) - Register 

HathiTrust digitization ruled fair use

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion upholding the lower court's ruling in the  HathiTrust case, in which the Author's Guild was suing HathiTrust for copyright infringement for its book digitization project. The court ruled that HathiTrust’s book digitization and accessibility efforts are be fair uses of copyrighted works. The Conclusion of the opinion reads:

"The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED, in part, insofar as the district court concluded that certain plaintiffs appellants lack associational standing; that the doctrine of “fair use” allows defendants‐appellees to create a full text searchable database of copyrighted works and to provide those works in formats accessible to those with disabilities; and that claims predicated upon the Orphan Works Project are not ripe for adjudication. We VACATE the judgment, in part, insofar as it rests on the district court’s holding related to the claim of infringement predicated upon defendants appellees' preservation of copyrighted works,and we REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

Metadata in Twitter tweets

The Wall Street Journal Digits blog reports that there is more metadata in a Twitter tweet than there are characters.  Twitter is famous for its 140-character limit on tweet length; but in order to facilitate data-mining for companies that gather information from social media there are 150 separate points of metadata (information about the tweet) for each tweet, so each tweet can yield a wealth of information: "For a tweet, metadata includes a unique numerical ID attached to each tweet, as well as IDs for all the replies, favorites and retweets that it gets. It also includes a timestamp, a location stamp, the language, the date the account was created, the URL of the author if a website is referenced, the number of followers, and many other technical specifications that engineers can analyze." The blogpost includes a link to a map of all the metadata contained in a tweet.

hat tip: beSpacific

ABA Journal: Who owns the law?

The ABA Journal this week has an excellent in-depth article titled "Who owns the law? Technology reignites the war over just how public documents should be."  In the article they interview some of the major players in the free access to law movement, including Carl Malamud of Public Resource dot org and Ed Walters of Fastcase, and discuss the issues at stake. They also point to a major case that is currently underway: American Society for Testing and Materials v. PublicResource.org, where the ASTM is suing PublicResource for copyright infringement, asserting that PublicResource.org  committed copyright violations when it published ASTM codes and standards  that government entities had incorporated into law.

Taylor and Francis to host a Twitter party

Taylor and Francis has issued an invitation to take part in qualitative research and engage with other librarians through one of the most popular means of social communication, Twitter. Taylor & Francis is investigating how social media is used in the academic library and how this differs based on the experience level, knowledge, and focus of librarians. They plan to  produce a White Paper on the topic and, as part of the research, they are hosting a Twitter party on Thursday June 5 between 10:00-10:45 AM, EDT, to discover your thoughts on using social media in the library.
Register by June 4th and sign into Twitter on the time and day above, and then search for #tfsocialmedia. You can join in by tweeting @librarylantern, using #tfsocialmedia to share your thoughts on:
• The challenges and opportunities social media presents to the library community
• Social media as a teaching tool - the role social media plays in information literacy
• User engagement & perception of using social media in the library
• Accessibility– how SNS are being promoted in the library
• Measurability - the impact of social media  To register for the event click here.   

Stacks stories

Lovers of library stacks are fighting back in two recent news stories.  In a recent edition of online magazine Slate, Rebecca Schuman has a story titled "Save Our Stacks" in which she reports on a faculty petition at Colby College in Maine protesting a plan to move 170,000 of the library's books to storage. As she points out, many many other academic libraries are engaged in the same process of de-stacking and de-booking library spaces. She goes on to say that "The Bookies are quite right to want to save the stacks but not just for the reasons they give, all of which could be dismissed as the sentimental drowning cries of Luddites. We must also save the stacks for another, more urgent reason altogether: Books, simply as props that happen also to be quite useful if you open them up, are the best—perhaps the only—bastions of contemplative intellectual space in the world."
She also points to a second big and under-reported library stacks news item: the New York Public Library has quietly dropped its controversial plan to remove its famous stacks and send most of its books to storage in New Jersey (and elsewhere). This is probably not the end of the story which continues to unfold. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has suggested that the grand main library building should be renamed for Ada Louise Huxtable, the noted architecture critic who spent her final months researching and writing a scathing commentary on the plan (she died in Jan. 2013 at the age of 91; her article ran in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 4, 2012). The publication of her critique, titled "Undertaking its Destruction", marked a turning point for the library. She had said of the plan, "This is a plan devised out of a profound ignorance of or willful disregard for not only the library's original concept and design, but also the folly of altering its meaning and mission and compromising its historical and architectural integrity. You don't "update" a masterpiece. "Modernization" may be the most dangerously misused word in the English language."
The New York Times broke the story that the plans were dropped; for some reason they neglected to mention Ms. Huxtable's role. 

e-mail like a lawyer

The Thomson Reuters Legal Solutions Blog has a post (authored by Adam Gropper) that gives excellent advice on using good judgment in e-mail communications. The 12 tips are good e-mail practice for lawyers - and everyone else. For example, Tip #4: "Instead of criticizing, finding fault, or complaining, provide solutions (or do not send the e-mail). Treat every e-mail as if the contents could end up on the front page of the New York Times."

PITTCat+ gets a makeover

A message from Sallie Smith, our Cataloging and Systems Librarian:  Monday, June 2, PITTCat+ will have a new look when the University Library System upgrades to Summon 2.0. You can preview the new version by clicking here.    If you try the new interface, here are a few things to remember:
• Use the drop-down arrow at far right of search box to access the advanced search screen.
• Search results can now be filtered by discipline (i.e. Law) – but remember that refinements are “sticky”, meaning that the filters are not cleared until you start a new search.
• The new interface has infinite scrolling – you won’t reach the bottom of the page unless you have a very small number of retrievals.
 It’s not perfect... but it is an improvement over the current version.

New TWEN webinars for faculty, librarians and staff

If you are interested in using TWEN as your course management or project management system, ThomsonReuters Westlaw has created a series of five minute pre-recorded webinars for faculty, librarians and staff.  These will help anyone interested in learning the basics about TWEN. These are all webex webinars that should play on any computer.  

TWEN Set-up:
https://tlr.webex.com/tlr/lsr.php?RCID=cd5f121ac04429d4db7a25e6f0161a3d

TWEN Fine tuning:

https://tlr.webex.com/tlr/lsr.php?RCID=c614ee317753e6976407fddd17842a18

TWEN Security:

https://tlr.webex.com/tlr/lsr.php?RCID=400fc7ca28bdee9aa6695ffcd3eae8fc

TWEN Updating:

https://tlr.webex.com/tlr/lsr.php?RCID=ccf8e5a466145b4c8817dbf44cd78513

Embedding Youtube videos in TWEN courses:

https://tlr.webex.com/tlr/lsr.php?RCID=8d80d48e087be0a90438643903494ff7

New CALI site coming soon!

CALI, the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, is launching an all-new website on June 2 & 3 11-12,  2014.  They have scheduled a downtime for www.cali.org for all day Monday June 2, 2014 and the new design will be available on June 3 12, 2014. There will be no ability to register, run Lessons, login, access LessonLink or anything else all day on Monday June 2 June 11 2014.
The new site will have a number of improved features including better search for finding more of CALI's resources, a responsive design to improve usability for mobile visitors, and improved navigation. Some things won't change like URLs for key resources including Lessons. Account information and data is staying the same so usernames and passwords will still work after the launch and faculty and students will have access to all of their LessonLink and Lesson Run data.
For more info and some screenshots see the CALI blog.

Ranking law schools

There is an interesting article titled Sense and non-sense of a European ranking of law schools and law journals in the latest edition of Legal Studies, the Journal of the Society of Legal Scholars. The article focuses on whether it is possible to rank European law schools, but it also offers a clear-eyed look at law school rankings in the U.S., the good, the bad and the ugly.   The Abstract:

Rankings of law schools and law journals are part of a trend towards more emphasis in academia on transparency and accountability with regard to the quality of research and education. Globalisation increases the need to compare law schools and law journals across borders, but this raises complicated questions due to differences in language, education systems, publishing style and so on. In this contribution, it is argued that ranking of law schools and law reviews runs the risk of driving us away from quality based on substance towards proceduralisation and quality assessment based on proxies favoured by managers of law schools, funding bodies and government agencies, instead of by the forum of legal scholars.

GPO unveils plan for the future of the FDLP

The Government Printing Office just unveiled a new National Plan for the Future of the FDLP at the 2014 Depository Library Council Meeting & Federal Depository Library Conference. This is the result of much work by GPO and the depository library community, based on the FDLP Forecast Study. The National Plan aims for a sustainable FDLP, which is proposed to be renamed the Federal Information Access Library Program and expanded to include more types and sizes of libraries and a new category of Federal Information Access assurance Partners. Although this is a proposal, and much work still needs to be done, it’s a very positive milestone. Law librarians should be pleased with the emphasis on information access, preservation, and program sustainability. Superintendent of Documents Mary Alice Baish will be discussing the plan at the AALL Annual Meeting.

Federal legislation visualization

An interesting new visualization tool called Leg/Ex (short for Legislative Explorer) comes from the University of Washington Center for American Politics and Public Policy. It's an interactive visualization that allows anyone to explore actual patterns of lawmaking in Congress. To use it, go to the website and click the "Launch" button.. Choose any year/Congress  back to 1973. Then hit Play and and watch the tiny points of light (bills introduced) fly to their various committees until the committees start to look like little nuclei (bills are coded blue for Dems, red for Reps, yellow for Inds). You can also choose from 19 major topics and many minor topics and watch the numbers increase like a sports ticker on the bottom of your screen. You can search by individual member, see members ranked on an ideology scale, explore by State, and lots more possibilities.

Visualizing legal research

An article in the ABA Journal discusses a new website called Ravel (still in beta) that is called a legal research alternative. Ravel was developed by 2 law students at Stanford who were interested in data visualization. Ravel does not look like traditional legal research platforms because it gives a visual presentation of search results. Rather than display a list of text results,  Ravel draws a visual map of the results, showing the relationships among cases and their relative importance to each other. Results are displayed in a cluster map, with a timeline shown below. Each dot in the cluster is another case.
Ravel is currently free during beta-testing.  

Crowdsourcing the Statutes at Large

This recent email came from James Jacobs, one of the Government Information librarians at Stanford University library and a founder of the Free Government Information blog :
Hi All, Do you love the Statutes at Large? (note: who doesn't???) then please help... the Congressional Data Coalition (http://congressionaldata.org) with a project to proofread digital SaL for permanent free public access! You can find directions for this project at https://hackpad.com/Statutes-at-Large-TOC-Signup-List-WEXNPB8aSp2. 

WestlawNext webinars for faculty

To help ease the transition for faculty from Westlaw Classic to WestlawNext, which is being phased out over the next couple of months, Westlaw is holding a series of free webinars to help introduce (or refresh) faculty to using WestlawNext.
There are 2 webinars available on a number of dates in May and June:
1.  From Classic to Next Basic
 In this basic webinar, you will learn where to find and how to use your favorite aspects of Westlaw Classic on WestlawNext. Learn about conducting finds and searches, including Boolean searches, and KeyCite and Key Numbers. We will also review how to save your Research Trails so you can have them available in WestlawNext.
2.  From Classic to Next Advanced
 In this advanced webinar, you will learn about Alerts on WestlawNext, how to use Custom Pages (similar to tabs on Westlaw Classic), Folders, and Practical Law. We will also review how to save your Research Trails so you can have them available in WestlawNext.
If interested, go to Westlaw's Faculty Webinar Page, select the date and time you prefer, and register for the webinar. 

William & Mary Law Library launches historic digital project

In honor of Law Day, the College of William & Mary's Wolf Law Library has launched a new digital project, "Wythepedia," an online encyclopedia named for William & Mary's -and the nation's - first law professor: George Wythe. Wythepedia features pages describing the library's George Wythe Collection, aspects of Wythe's life and death by poisoning, his letters and papers, and even some poetry. "Wythe has always been a somewhat forgotten Founding Father," said Linda K. Tesar, Head of Technical Services and Special Collections, and the project's Managing Editor. "Wythepedia was designed to bring some much deserved recognition to a statesmen who was a revolutionary, jurist, and mentor to the likes of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay."

Fargo

Not the movie, not the TV show. Elmer Masters of CALI fame has written a blogpost on Slaw about Fargo the Outliner. Elmer's recommendations are always useful, and Fargo looks like super useful web-based software that helps you easily create outlines on the fly. Not only that but it has some excellent additional features that let you, for example, easily turn your outline into a presentation, or set up a note/link blog to track interesting things on the internet.  Thanks Elmer!
p.s. You need to have a Dropbox account (they're free) to use Fargo. 

Speaking of photocopying...

The ABA Journal  reports on a new feature created by the New York Times called "Verbatim". Verbatim is a performance series that will transform "verbatim legal transcripts into dramatic and often comedic performances". In this dramatization of transcripts from a legal deposition, a lawyer becomes embroiled in an absurd argument about the definition of a photocopier. It is from a real case in Cuyahoga County, Ohio that involved a challenge to a Cuyahoga County Recorder's Office policy.

Photocopying and copyright

Librarians are uncomfortably aware of the potential copyright issues posed by photocopiers. A fascinating article in a recent Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. titled "Modern Technology, Leaky Copyrights, And Claims Of Harm: Insights From The Curious History Of Photocopying " (58 page pdf) by NYU Law Professor Diane Leenheer Zimmerman looks at the law of copyright by way of the history of the xerox machine. She says, "The approach taken by this paper in trying to shed light on this topic is somewhat unusual in that it looks not so much to theory as to experience."

From the abstract: "The core problem this article attempts to address is what should count as “economic harm” in determining whether particular kinds of copying are appropriately treated as copyright infringement....What the paper concludes is that adequate copyright protection does not mean virtually airtight control over works by their owners. Considerable room for compromise between the public’s desire for free access, and the owners’ interest in retaining incentives to produce exists."

Government Relations Office to Host Open House During Federal Depository Library Conference

AALL's Government Relations Office (GRO) will host a special open house during the Government Printing Office's Depository Library Council Meeting and Federal Depository Library (FDL) Conference on May 1 from 5:30-6:30 p.m., followed by the annual law librarian and friends dinner just one block away at Kelly's Irish Times.AALL's GRO is located next door to the Government Printing Office, offering the perfect opportunity to see AALL's D.C. office and network with colleagues attending the FDL Conference. 

Congressional Quarterly database news

CQ.com has announced that "valuable new content and features are being added" to our CQ subscription this week:
 CQ.com will be refreshed with a new look.
 CQ Now, the new, real-time chronicle of the Capitol’s most important developments, will come directly from the intelligence-gathering team embedded in the halls of Congress. You can rely on CQ Now to flag every major floor action and committee markup as the legislative day unfolds.
 The  popular Today at a Glance feature will now be continually updated to reflect changes in the congressional schedule and latest action, with links to news coverage, documents and transcripts of note as they are published.
 Five new blogs will be added featuring expert analysis on key topics: Agriculture & Food, Banking & Finance, Defense, Energy & Climate and Transportation. Morning Take e-newsletters on each topic can be sent to your inbox at dawn at your one-click request. 

Legislative Research webinar series

ProQuest is hosting a series of webinars on "Using Legislative History to Find Legislative Intent" using the Congressional database meant especially for law students. This 90-minute session is designed for the summer associate, judicial, law firm or government agency law clerk, intern, extern or research assistant. You will learn how to use ProQuest Congressional to:
1. Develop an understanding of the legislative process both procedurally  (how did the language read as first proposed, what committees considered the proposal, when were amendments made and where was the proposal when it was amended)  and as an adversarial process (who was lobbying in support of the proposal and what were they trying to accomplish, who was active in opposition what were their objections, who was responsible for amendments to the proposal).
 2. Become familiar with the documents available pertinent to your issue.
3. Identify where in the process the changes you care about occurred – this provides a mechanism to narrow the scope of your search for explanations for why the language was changed;
4. Learn how to identify both direct and circumstantial evidence of intent.
The live webinar will be held on 6 different dates; click the link to register:
Fri. April 25  10 am
Thurs. May 1 1 pm
Fri. May 16 1 pm
Thurs. May 29 1:30 pm
Thurs. June 12 1 pm
Fri. June 20  9 am

New from the GPO: Baseball!

We just got the latest monthly list of New Titles from the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications.  One of this month's new eBooks published by the GPO is Baseball: the national pastime in the National Archives.  It's got a lot of interesting factoids for baseball fans (did you know fan is short for aficionado?).  It also has images of the patents for  the first baseball bats, gloves and balls, filed by John Hillerich of Louisville Ky (his bat company is the maker of the Louisville Slugger); George Rawlings (baseball glove patent from 1885) and Benjamin Shibe, known as the Edison of Baseball (a baseball with a cork center in 1909).  There are also lots of historic photos.  

Heartbleed hints: do you need to change your passwords?

"Heartbleed" is a recently discovered internet security threat that has affected many websites.  Mashable has published a list of popular sites and information about whether you need to change your password for these sites. For example, Facebook: yes. LinkedIn: no.  

End of year hours

Remember that the law school's calendar is longer than the University's calendar. The University's final exam period is April 21-26; the law school's is April 24-May 7. For the university, the week of Sunday April 27 through Sunday May 4 is called "Interim" and the campus computer labs are all closed except the one in Hillman which has limited hours. So student printing can be an issue if you're not careful. The Barco printer will be working throughout our exam period.
On Sunday May 4 at midnight all the student print quotas reset so our students should have plenty of print quota for last-minute papers etc.  And Barco Law Library begins our summer hours on Thursday May 8; closing at 6 pm M-Th, 5 pm on Friday, open Saturday 9-5 and CLOSED on Sunday.  

Digital Preservation at the LOC

The Digital Preservation Blog on the Library of Congress website posted yesterday about a presentation on the National Agenda for Digital Stewardship and on using the Levels of Digital Preservation (1 page pdf) that have been developed by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance. The National Agenda integrates the perspective of dozens of experts and hundreds of institutions to provide funders and executive decision‐makers insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity, and key areas for funding, research and development. The Levels of Digital Preservation is a tiered set of recommendations for how organizations should begin to build or enhance their digital preservation activities. It is intended to be a relatively easy-to-use set of guidelines useful not only for those just beginning to think about preserving their digital assets, but also for institutions planning the next steps in enhancing their existing digital preservation systems and workflows.
The LOC also has a helpful webpage on "Personal Archiving: Preserving Your Digital Memories" with basic information about best practices for saving your digital photos, audio, video, email, and records.

Replacing Windows XP

For anyone who has a computer that still uses the Windows XP operating system: an interesting article in PC World, titled "Don't Waste Your Money trying to upgrade your Windows XP PC". The author says that basically even IF your computer meets the minimum system requirements for Windows 7 or Windows 8, you are still better off just buying a new computer.
And while you're thinking about XP, here's an interesting little newslet about XP's default wallpaper, called "Bliss"...which is an actual, unretouched, unphotoshopped photograph taken by photographer Charles O'Rear in Pittsburgh  Napa Valley.

The Flipped Classroom

Last week there was an interesting post on the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog about flipped learning and the flipped classroom, ideas that are slowly making their way into law school education.  This week Robert Talbert, the educator who wrote the post, has another post  on the topic - because the original post elicited a great deal of commentary.  Most of which made him angry.
It's interesting and points to a divide in faculty attitude towards students.  

April Fool's: funny federal publications

The GPO's Government Book Talk blog had an April Fool's Day post listing the "top ten" funny titles of federal documents. OK, they're only moderately funny.  But still. They're trying.  

NEW database: the Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

The Barco Law Library now has access to "The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926", a dataqbase that provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to critical legal history in ways not previously possible.

New HeinOnline library: Women and the Law

HeinOnline has announced a new library in its collection: Women and the Law (Peggy), a collection that brings together books, biographies and periodicals dedicated to women’s roles in society and the law. This unique collection of materials provides a platform to research the progression of women’s roles and rights in society over the past 200 years. Also included are more than 70 titles from Emory University Law School’s Feminism and Legal Theory Project which provide a platform to view the effect of law and culture on the female gender.

Business Intelligence Resources

The Law Library Resource Exchange (LLRX.com) has published a portal to business resources this week. Titled Business Intelligence Online Resources, it has annotated links to free content and subscription content. The free content includes facts collected by government agencies, news in various forms and categories, consumer opinions, technology guidance, professional standards, biographical information, and much more. The subscription content tends to be specialized directories and people finders.

ProQuest Congressional Webinars: Cross Search

Cross Search is a new feature on ProQuest Congressional. It’s all about context: Cross Search ties existing newspaper and historic newspaper subscriptions with Congressional content. So it puts the government documents in context of what the newspapers were saying about the event at the time. With cross search, users can see newspaper articles about government scandals (such as Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Iran-Contra), wars (the Civil War, the Philippine Insurrection, and Vietnam) and disasters (including the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, or the Titanic sinking).
ProQuest is hosting 4 webinars to show how this feature can be used. Each webinar has a slightly different focus (and you can attend more than one). The first is Monday March 31, 2014, at 1 pm eastern when product manager Andrew Laas will talk about something near and dear to his heart, meat regulations. Description: Introducing Congressional Cross-Search - where we highlight the new ability to search from Congressional to the historic newspaper collections. This session, the Meat Inspection Act of 1906: from The Jungle to Inspection Regulations, will look at the materials in ProQuest Congressional and the Executive Branch Documents and review the materials there, and also look at how the cross-search with the newspaper articles of the day adds context for users.
ProQuest has some Legislative Insight and Executive Branch Documents webinars coming, as well. Beginning in May, we also have the popular series, Legislative Histories for summer interns especially for those law students with summer internships. There is a complete listing on the proquest calendar. 

2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction accepting entries

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird, and to honor former Alabama law student and author Harper Lee, The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal partnered together to create the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2010. The prize, authorized by Ms. Lee, is given annually to a book-length work of fiction, published in the preceding year, that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change. Past winners include The Confession by John Grisham, The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly, and Havana Requiem by Paul Goldstein. The 2014 prize will be awarded in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, in conjunction with the Library of Congress National Book Festival. The winner will receive a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee. The 2014 Harper Lee Prize Selection Committee will choose three finalists, who will be announced in May 2014. The public will be invited to vote on the finalists on the ABA Journal website.  The deadline for entries is April 7, 2014 - the entry form and details are online. 

Interesting librarian job...

Harvard’s rare books library is hiring a Wikipedian-in-Residence. They are looking for someone who can serve as a kind of liaison between Wikipedia and the academic, cultural, and intellectual institutions whose source material its entries rely on. In this case, Harvard. The Wikipedian in Residence will, according to the job announcement, help to "expand coverage on Wikipedia of topics relevant to Houghton collections." He or she will add sources for existing Wikipedia pages and create new pages "on notable topics." The person will also "provide appropriate formatting and metadata (and OCR cleanup in the case of texts) to upload public domain content to Wikimedia and Wikisource, and facilitate the use of such materials by other Wikipedia users."

hat tip: Sallie Smith

Women don't cite themselves as frequently as men

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting report showing that "even as citation rates become a key measure of productivity, 
women don’t refer to their own research nearly as often as men do." An analysis of 60 years of JSTOR articles shows that men are 56% more likely to cite their own scholarly work - and over the past decade, the figure is considerably higher, with men citing themselves 64$ more.

"Type Ahead" on Westlaw

Recently, WestlawNext improved a current tool, type ahead, to assist with finding cases and dockets. type ahead begins to display suggestions after the third character you type in the global search box. Begin typing a party name or citation to find a case. Or, type a party name or docket number to find a docket. Type ahead displays the top five results for content type, case and docket. Type ahead’s suggestions become more refined as additional characters are added. Type ahead also highlights the characters you have entered in the global search box to help you quickly identify your case or docket. 

Is there a "Hysterias R Us" legal lemming movement?

The ABAJournal reports on an article by René Reich-Graefe of Western New England Law School titled "Keep Calm and Carry On" (the link is to SSRN). In the article Prof. Graefe criticizes the panicked reporting about a lack of jobs for law school graduates, which he attributes to “misleading math” and “reckless logic”. Rather, he says, "Over the next two decades, the legal profession market is moving statistically into the direction of almost guaranteed legal employment for all law school graduates".

Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom article

Colleague  Rich McCue of the University of Victoria law library has published a thoughtful and interesting article titled Does a Blended Learning, Flipped Classroom Pedagogy Help Information Literacy Students in the Long Term Adoption of Research Skills?   He takes a comprehensive look at  flipped classroom pedagogy, how it may be used and the need for more studies on how it works in different disciplines. 

New: Qualitative Data Repository

There's an interesting article in the Chronicle about a new data repository called QDR, which stands for Qualitative Data Repository. Headquartered at Syracuse University, QDR) is a dedicated archive for storing and sharing digital data (and accompanying documentation) generated or collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences. QDR provides search tools to facilitate the discovery of data, and also serves as a portal to material beyond its own holdings, with links to U.S. and international archives. QDR offers a range of guidance and resources to facilitate and encourage the storing and sharing of data, and to help scholars who engage in qualitative and multi-method research to effectively use archived qualitative data. The site is currently in Beta mode, and registration is currently free for individuals from educational institutions.

2013 report on the Federal Courts

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts has just released the 2013 Judicial Business of the U.S. Courts, an in-depth look at the federal court caseload for 2013. 2013 saw an increase in the district court caseload and in the number of persons under supervised release.Filings in the courts of appeals and bankruptcy courts fell in FY 2013. The report describes some factors at play in the increase and decrease in caseloads nationwide, and includes statistical tables by type of case, offense, and type of court. Sections address the probation and pretrial services system and other components of the federal Judiciary.  

New book on the Serial Set

Have you ever wondered about what, exactly, is in the US Congressional Serial Set? The United States Congressional Serial Set began in 1817 as the official collection of reports and documents of the United States Congress. Now Andrea Sevetson has edited a new book titled "The Serial Set: Its Make-up and Content", which should answer all your questions. It is published by ProQuest, and all proceeds will be donated to GODORT, the Gov Docs group of the American Library Association. You can view a pdf of the Table of Contents online.

Openlaws EU project

This project comes recommended as "one to watch" from the Legal Information Institute: openlaws.eu aims at opening access to existing legal information systems and proactively involving and integrating our target groups, i.e. communities of individuals and businesses, legal professionals and public bodies. Open innovation, mass customization, big data analysis, social features and social networks are already highly successful in other markets and we want to introduce them in the legal domain on a European scale. Based on open data, open source software and open innovation principles we are adding a “social layer” to the existing “institutional layer” of legal information systems.

Constitute: the World's Constitutions

Constitute: The World’s Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare is a website offering access to the world’s constitutions that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics — using a modern, clean interface. The website, built by the Comparative Constitutions Project, has tagged passages of each constitution with a topic — e.g., “right to privacy” or “duty to pay taxes” — so you can quickly find relevant excerpts on a particular subject, no matter how they are worded. You can browse the 300+ topics in the expandable list on the left of the page, or see suggested topics while typing in the search bar (which also lets you perform free-text queries). You can also limit your results by country or by date.
The Comparative Constitutions Project  is directed by Zachary Elkins (University of Texas, Department of Government), Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago, Law School), and James Melton (University College London), in cooperation with the Cline Center for Democracy at the University of Illinois. The project is supported by the National Science Foundation

Historical Statutes on Westlaw

Legal research often requires us to find prior versions  laws. Westlaw's Legal Solutions Blog recently posted a helpful tip on finding historical statutes in Westlaw. The tip explains several methods for browsing  historical versions of federal or state statutes.  Each  method for browsing will bring you to a Statutes Annotated – Historical page where you will see links to the individual years that are available.