FDLP webinars in March

Webinar: Federal Government Databases and Websites: A Surprising Source of State and Local Data March 14, 2018 2:00 pm EDT According to the GPO and FDLP, his webinar will present an "exciting variety of state and local resources" which can be found by searching Federal Government websites. Resources range from health and nutrition to science and education as well as legislative and judicial information. Websites that provide a surprising wealth of state and local resources include usa.gov, the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP), science.gov, ERIC, and PubMed. Participants will learn strategies for searching for state and local resources using Federal Government databases and websites. Register here to attend the live training webinar.

They are offering a second webinar of interest to librarians: "Digital Content Contributors: Increasing Access to Digitized Content." This one will be held on March 13 at 2 pm. The description: Digitizing parts of your depository collection or considering starting a digitization project? Join us as members of the GPO Partnership Team share information on how your digitized content can be widely accessible through GPO’s govinfo. During the webinar, learn more about the Digital Content Contributor partnerships, how GPO makes decisions on priorities for ingest of content into govinfo, as well as tips on how to package your content for ingest. Register here.
And if you aren't able to attend a webinar the FDLP has all of their webinars and webcasts archived and available on their website.

Congressional Data Challenge

The Library of Congress has announced it is sponsoring the "legislative data challenge" to advance the discovery, use, and exploration of the collection of legislative information it has available on Congress.gov. From the announcement:

"The Library is inviting submitters to use a variety of Congressional publications and data sets available on Congress.gov to create new meaning or tools to help members of Congress and the public explore it in new ways. This could take the form of interactive visualizations, mobile or desktop applications, a website, or other digital creation. Submissions must be entered at Challenge.gov by April 2, 2018; please see the challenge rules for more information. Per the challenge requirements, submitters must use at least one congressional data set from Congress.gov. Submitters may access the data directly from Congress.gov or though GPO’s govinfo, which, in partnership with the Library of Congress, the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, hosts bulk data from Congress.gov for download."

FDsys to retire

The GPO has announced that in December 2018, GPO plans to retire FDsys, and govinfo will take its place as GPO’s source for official Government information. FDsys has been the GPO's online portal to information since 2009; the more modern and mobile-friendly govinfo debuted in 2016.
 While FDsys will remain available until its "retirement", users are encouraged to transition to govinfo. Immediately before FDsys is retired, redirects from FDsys to govinfo will be enabled, but GPO advises that users should prepare for the FDsys retirement by proactively updating their systems and links to point to govinfo instead of FDsys. govinfo offers many enhancements over FDsys including:
• Optimization for display on mobile devices
• More relevant and precise search results
• Integrated social media sharing
• New Related Documents feature
• Curated content and new ways to browse
• Developer tools and data feeds
• Expanded help and resources
There's more information about the transition on the govinfo website. 

Changes to BloombergBNA Labor & Employment And Benefits News

Bloomberg Law has announced that effective January 16, 2018, your Bloomberg BNA Premier labor, employment, and benefits news products will be available on an improved news delivery portal. This updated news portal comes with a host of new features and functionality, including: delivery of timely and concise news, custom alerts for monitoring developments, a better mobile experience, and more. Several of the news publications will be combined on the updated news services but Bloomberg promises that w "will continue to benefit from the same breadth and depth of coverage that have been the hallmark of all of our labor and employment news services."
A few changes:
• Labor Relations Week™ will be renamed Labor Relations News.
• Construction Labor Report™ will be renamed Construction Labor News.
• Pension & Benefits Daily™ and BNA Pension & Benefits Reporter™ will cease publication as stand-alones and combine to become Benefits & Executive Compensation News.
• BNA’s Employment Discrimination Report™, Workplace Law Report™, and Workplace Immigration Report™ will cease publication as stand-alones and combine to become Employment Law News.

CALI QuizWright

Our friend Elmer Masters from Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has just published an article on CALI Spotlight called Zero to Quiz in 5 Minutes: Getting Started With CALI QuizWright in 5 Quick Steps. QuizWright is CALI's new web-based formative assessment tool and is available now through the CALI website. Anyone with faculty-level access to CALI can use QuizWright. After logging in at www.cali.org go to the dropdown menu called your "CALI Dashboard" in the upper right and select QuizWright from the menu. The site says that "QuizWright is a web app that lets law faculty write individual Multiple Choice, True/False, and Yes/No questions, saves the questions in a personal question bank, allows law faculty to bundle the questions into quizzes, uses CALI AutoPublish to instantly and securely publish the quizzes to the CALI website and lets students take the quizzes as formative assessments, either live in class or as homework, right on the CALI website, where most students already have an account. Faculty can view the basic results or access advanced analytic reporting from an online dashboard. Download of results to Excel for further analysis is available."

Digitized Historical Congressional Record now complete

The Government Publishing Office (GPO) today announced that with the release of the years 1873-1890 they have completed the digitization project of the Historical Congressional Record. These documents are freely available to the public on the GPO's govinfo website. The Library of Congress collaborated with the GPO on this project. The LOC created the digital images of the pages and the GPO devised the metadata for the project, so that the collection is accessible and searchable "across a wide variety of digital platforms."
The first date for which the Congressional Record is available is Tuesday, March 4, 1873, when the Senate held a "special session" for the second inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant as President of the United States.

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.