Palsgraf cited in 9/11 case

A federal judge in the Southern District of New York has dismissed negligence claims by electric utility Con Edison over the destruction of 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.  A Con Edison substation was destroyed when 7 World Trade Center collapsed, and Con Edison claimed that the builder and developer of the building had been negligent.  In his opinion in the case In re September 11 Litigation, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein cites the famous ruling of Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (N.Y. 1928), where the New York Court of Appeals dismissed a negligence claim based on a sequence of event in which train guards allegedly pushed a man carrying a package of fireworks onto a train, he dropped the package, and the fireworks exploded, causing a set of scales at the other end of the platform to fall over, strike and allegedly injure a passenger. The Palsgraf Court said the "risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed, and risk imports relation; it is risk to another or to others within the range of apprehension."
Judge Hellerstein said, "It was not within 7WTCo.'s, or Citigroup's, 'range of apprehension' that terrorists would slip through airport security, hijack an airplane, crash it suicidally into one of the two tallest skyscrapers in New York City, set off falling debris that would ignite a building several hundred feet away, cause structural damage to it, destroy water mains causing an internal sprinkler system to become inoperable, kill 343 firemen and paralyze the rest so that a fire within a building would not be put out and the building would be allowed to burn an entire day before it consumed itself and collapsed." He said that said the chain of events that led to the destruction of 7 World Trade Center was "much too improbable to be consistent with any duty" toward Con Edison by builder and developer Larry Silverstein and Citigroup, the successor-in-interest to the building's primary tenant, Salomon Brothers.

PACER training site

The Administrative Office of U.S. Courts has announced the availability of a training site for the federal judiciary’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER). The site is free of charge and has been populated with real case data from New York Western District Court from cases filed between 1/1/2007 and 7/1/2007. You can use your PACER account or the following credentials to login:
Login: tr1234    Password: pass123
Once you have logged in, you will see a page that walks you through some simple searches on PACER and provides tips on constructing a search.

Bluebook videos

The law library at Elon University School of Law in Greensboro, N.C. has created a series of online YouTube videos that show how to construct citations in accordance with the 19th edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.  The project is still underway; currently there are 18 videos available.  

GPO publications touching on the paranormal

The Government Book Talk blog has a post today about a couple of government publications with a hint of SciFi..  The first is a diplomatic memo instructing yeti-hunters in Nepal.  The memo says that "there are, at present, three regulations applicable only to expeditions searching for the YETI in Nepal", and goes on to list the regulations, including the adjuration that "In case 'Yeti' is traced it can be photographed or caught alive but it must not be killed or shot at except in an emergency arising out of self defense".
The second publication is the 231 page book "The Roswell Report: Case Closed", a well-documented study that "was to determine if the U.S. Air Force, or any otherU.S. government agency, possessed information on the alleged crash and recovery of an extraterrestrial vehicle and its alien occupants near Roswell,N.M. in July 1947.” There are pictures. 

New BNA features

A few bits of news from BNA that might be useful to Barco users:
- The new "My Folders" tool allows you to create  folders in BNA where you can store and annotate BNA articles, analysis, and source documents. "My folders" is on the upper menu of BNA pages, and there is a "Quick Tour" available where you can learn more.
- BNA has a new  page called "Fast answers: Federal Tax", with answers to 3,000 common tax questions.
- BNA has developed some Mobile Apps for Blackberry and iPhone; they include 'Mobile Highlights" and the "Directory of State and Federal Courts, Judges and Clerks, 2011". 

Consolidating library & IT

Inside Higher Education has an article today about plans at Southwestern University to integrate information technology and the library into one administrative unit in order to improve information services while saving money.  The article discusses how such integration has been tried and accomplished at a variety of colleges and universities, and closes by saying that "In the long run there has got to be close collaboration" between the library and the information technology office. 

HeinOnline One Box Search

Hein online has released a new One Box Search in BETA. This new enhancement is found at the top of the subscribed libraries page once you get into HeinOnline.  It will allow you to search all collections you are subscribed to. This search box will function as an advanced search, so that you can use Boolean operators, quotes, wildcard, and proximity searching. You will also be able to narrow your search results by facets, such as collection/library, date, section type, and etc. They are looking for feedback; you can email your feedback to marketing@wshein.com. 

Carolina library school provides lifetime data storage for students

The Wired Campus blog reports that the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina has provided this year's new library students with a special new perq: the LifeTime Library, with free data storage for their lifetimes. The idea is to create a personal digital archive maintained by the university that will last as long as the student does: a collection of coursework, transcripts, photos, music, videos, medical records and anything else people might want to preserve. The Dean of the School, Prof. Gary Marchionini, says "We're really developing digital lives that are paralleling our real, or analog, lives. What if we actually helped students when they're here at UNC think about this more seriously by giving them more storage space where they could manage their own digital lives and keep that available to them after they graduate?" Server space is a precious resource at universities, and most universities delete the data files of students once they graduate or leave to make room for their successors. Many students preserve their college experience, from class notes to photos, on laptops or social networking sites, but hard-drive crashes are routine, and data backup habits are not widespread. Ultimately, Prof. Marchionini hopes the LifeTime Library will be available to all UNC students, but a number of logistical hurdles, cost foremost among them, stand in the way. "The issue is, how do we support it?" he said. "If you think of it over 20 or 30 years, it's an enormous undertaking."

Lexis sites Martindale, Lawyers.com have new editor in chief

Law Technology News, an American Lawyers Media website, reports that Larry Bodine, a former law firm marketing consultant known for his LawMarketing Blog, has been named the new editor-in-chief of the LexisNexis websites Lawyers.com and Martindale.com. Mr. Bodine has 15 years of experience as a journalist, serving as editor and publisher of the American Bar Association Journal, associate editor at The National Law Journal and as a reporter for the New York Daily News and New Jersey's Star Ledger. Bodine also practiced law in Madison, Wisconsin. He said that he will first work on improving the Lawyers.com site, which currently aggregates news from other websites; he wants the site to generate its own material. He then hopes to work on the Martindale site, which is a resource that provides information about lawyers and law firms. He is quoted as saying "We need to weave in and reach out to the legal marketing community ... We need to do it in a way so it's their sandbox to play in."

Website for foreign students from Dept. of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a new website called Study in the States designed to provide information for international students who are interested in studying in the United States. The site is intended to be a "one-stop shop" for questions about visas, visa renewals and qualification requirements for foreign students and for academic officials. According to the site, "The Study in the States Initiative will examine the existing student visa and exchange visitor programs, as well as related programs for students after they have completed their course of study, to identify problem areas, and to consider possible improvements."
The site is attractive and user-friendly. Each page of the site has a background photo of a US university, and clicking on the upper right of the photo "What's this background?" link reveals the entire photo and information about the subject of the photo as well as the university where the photo was taken.

Bing Maps improved imagery

Bing Maps (from Microsoft) has updated its aerial imagery for many locations, resulting in higher quality and more recent images. Their aim is to have coverage of (initially) the continental U.S. and Western Europe completed by June 2012. Bing Maps has added new user interface and text labels. For browsers with geolocation, a Locate Me button takes searchers directly to their current locations in Bing Maps. The new street-side view enables easier panning along streets.
Compare the Bing Maps improved aerial view of the Barco Law Building with the Google Maps satellite image version.

report on the migration of the Congressional database to ProQuest

ProQuest has sent out an email update on the progress of moving the Congressional database from Lexis to ProQuest.They tell us that "For the last 8 months, engineers and content matter experts have been busy planning for the migration of the Congressional suite of products to the ProQuest platform. This is a gargantuan task, encompassing a myriad of entitlements, separate products, and different "flavors" of many different document types, from the US Code to Hearings, to the publications and maps published within the U.S. Congressional Serial Set... As of now, ProQuest has loaded roughly 9 million (out of approximately 12 million) documents."
The email goes on to announce that they are planning to launch the new ProQuest Congressional in June 2012, to give librarians a chance to look it over before the next academic year. And they say that "there will be great improvements!", including faceted searching. 

US Courts announce changes

The Judicial Conference of the United States has announced some changes:
 First, they have adopted a national policy to encourage federal courts to limit the sealing of civil case documents and files.  The policy emphasizes that a case should only be sealed in "extraordinary circumstances and the absence of narrower feasible and effective alternatives".  An order sealing an entire case should contain findings justifying the sealing.
Secondly, they approved raising the fees for federal courts, including raising the electronic public access fee for PACER document views from $.08 to $.10 per page. PACER users who do not accrue more than $15 a quarter will not be charged (the current exemption is $10).

Adobe Flash support for iPad, iPhone from Adobe

CNet reports that Adobe has announced the introduction of Flash Media Server 4.5, a platform that allows publishers to deliver Flash content to Apple i Operating System (iOS) devices, including the iPod, iPad and iPhone. However, this only enables Flash video streaming to iPhones and iPads. Flash-based games, animations and advertisements still won't work on such devices.

International look at antitrust issues: Competition Law Institute

The Competition Institute is an international think tank, based in Paris and New York, that cultivates scholarship and discussion about antitrust issues through publications and conferences. According to the webiste, "The Institute focuses government, business and academic attention on a broad range of subjects which concern competition laws, regulations and related economics. This dedication to the antitrust field allows the Institute to match legal expertise with political acumen."
Some information on the site is free, with registration; other is through subscription. Free access includes the Glossary of Competition Terms with some links to caselaw; a list of antitrust law websites by country; and the Antitrust Encyclopedia, which compare the national competition policies in European countries, with an interactive map. The Encyclopedia also has a list of questions about competition law, with answers for each country in Europe. For example, one important question it asks and answers (for each of 32 European countries) is “What is the relevant legislation dealing with anticompetitive practices? What is the main wording?”

hat tip: Jean Pajerek, Cornell Law Library

Amazon sales tax deal in CA

Amazon seems to be changing tactics in its battle against collecting sales tax on purchases by Californians. Amazon  has been supporting a ballot initiative in California to reverse a new state law requiring online retailers to collect taxes on Amazon sales. But the Los Angeles Times reports that there is a tentative deal between Amazon and the California legislature in which Amazon will back down from the initiative to repeal an online sales tax in exchange for a one-year moratorium on collecting the tax.

Let me Google that for you.

There's a website called "let me Google that for you" (lmgtfy.com), which explains "This is for all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves." When someone asks you a question you type it into the lmgtfy box and it creates a link that you can send - the link goes  to the lmgtfy website, types in the question, and gets the Google results of the question, if that makes sense.  It might be easier to see it work; for example check out the lmgtfy for:  What does res ipsa loquitur mean? 

Google buys Zagat

Surprising news today: Google has purchased Zagat, the restaurant guide company. The price has not been disclosed

UK will allow cameras in courts

British Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has announced that bills will be introduced in Parliament to overturn prohibitions on cameras in UK courtroom in order to to improve transparency and public understanding of the courts. The media will only be allowed to film judges’ summary remarks; victims, witnesses, offenders and jurors cannot be filmed.  In addition to allowing broadcasting,  more information about the performance of courts will be published in future to allow everyone to see how their local courts are working.

CALI & LII make Federal Rules books available for free

CALI and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School have partnered to publish three widely-used Federal Rules collections as eLangdell ebooks online: the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Evidence. The books are in .epub format, compatible with iPads and other devices that accept .epub files (a Kindle version is in the works).
You can find more details and download the books for free on the CALI eLangdell website.
These federal rules ebooks include:
The complete rules as of December 1, 2010.
All notes of the Advisory Committee immediately following each rule.
Internal links to rules referenced within the rules.
External links to the LII website's version of the US Code.

Tracking Hurricane Irene

As the east coast of the United States battens down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Irene, you can follow the progress of the hurricane on a Google map app called crisislanding that lets you add layers to a US map and provides links to information. 

Bloomberg buying BNA

The ABA Journal reports that  Bloomberg has announced a deal to acquire BNA (Bureau of National Affairs), the  legal, tax and regulatory research firm for $39.50 per share in a cash offer for a total purchase price of approximately $990 million. The transaction is expected to bevcompleted in 2011.  The acquisition is expected to strengthen Bloomberg’s offerings in the legal information market by complementing the relatively young Bloomberg Law research system with BNA’s trusted legal, tax and regulatory content.  In addition, the combination will enhance Bloomberg’s news coverage and analysis of tax and accounting, labor and employment, health care, intellectual property and telecommunications issues.
The acquisition is also going to significantly expand Bloomberg’s presence in the Washington, D.C. area, where BNA is located,  to provide coverage and analysis of U.S. policy and regulatory issues for its customers.

Statistical Abstract

The Statistical Abstract of the United States isn't dead...yet; though the Census Bureau says that the 2012 edition will be the last, because of budgetary considerations.  For what it's worth, the American Association of Law Librarians, Special Libraries Assocation, and Medical Library Association have sent letters to the House and Senate about this issue. And this weekend, the Washington Post published a lengthy editorial by Robert J. Samuelson titled "Don't kill America's databook" in which he says "Without the Stat Abstract, statistics will become more hidden, and our collective knowledge will suffer."  And yesterday on his New York Times blog Paul Krugman agreed, saying "The Statistical Abstract is a hugely important resource; experts in a particular field may not need it, but it’s invaluable to non-experts in need of basic information."  

Speaking of Google...maps

Google Maps has added a new Weather feature; you can now add information about the weather to any Google map you are looking at, according to their blog. Google Maps now displays current temps and conditions around the globe, and will hopefully make travel and activity planning easier. To add the weather "layer" to any map, hover over the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options. When zoomed out, you’ll see a map with current weather conditions from weather.com.

A Google a Day

AGoogleADay.comis a Google campaign aimed at improving your ability to retrieve information with a search engine. Each day you answer a reference question posed by Google, and you can time yourself or not for how long it takes you to find the answer.
The Atlantic online magazine mentions AGoogleADay in a recent article titled "Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don't Know How to Use CTRL+F", in which the author bemoans the lack of what he calls "electronic literacy" in the population. He says that the Ctrl+F factoid "blew my mind"; though no librarian would be surprised; keyboard shortcuts are something that you have to discover on your own, for the most part.

LLMC Digital recent updates

The Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC) Digital has announced the most recent additions to their digital collection, available on their website.  They've added 147 titles in the last month. As always, many of the additions are historic primary law, both domestic and foreign. Much of it is pretty obscure,  like the Italian penal code from 1890 and the Barbados Law Reports from 1903. There are also a few treatises; several from the 1800's about Blue Laws and Prohibition, and a sort of early Nolo book called "Wells' Every Man His Own Lawyer, 1860, Being a complete guide in all matters of law and business negotiations, for every state in the union; Containing legal forms".  (note that LLMC is only available on computers in the Barco Law building and the Sennott Square clinics.)

Friday Fun: The Batmobile does the 'Burgh

They've been filming a Batman movie in Pittsburgh for the past couple of weeks, which is fun except for the traffic gridlock when they shut down half the streets in the Golden Triangle. Anyway, here's some amateur footage of the Batmobile trundling around down by Kaufman's and Cherry Way (we think) in the snow, no less. We hope that in the movie it will be zipping along a bit faster than that; and also that Pittsburgh's notorious snow removal (or lack thereof) won't inconvenience the Caped Crusader.
You can also see Anne Hataway's stunt double riding a snazzy cat motorcycle around Liberty Avenue here.

WestlawNext webinars

West has scheduled a series of 6 webinars that offer an introduction to WestlawNext for law faculty and law librarians.  

Weds. Aug. 24, 2011  1 p.m. ET  Faculty and Librarians #1: WestlawNext Introduction: This introductory session will provide you with an overview of WestlawNext.
Weds. Aug. 31  2:30 p.m. ET  Faculty and Librarians #2: Adding WestlawNext into your Curriculum for Students:  Join guest speaker, Tim Kelly, Head of Public Services at Williamette College of Law as he discusses how you can integrate WestlawNext into your curriculum.
Fri. Sept. 9, 1 p.m. ET Faculty and Librarians #3: WestlawNext and KeyCite:  How KeyCite works on WestlawNext including Graphical KeyCite for Cases and Statutes.
Weds. Sept. 14,  1 p.m. ET  Faculty and Librarians #4: Folders and Productivity Tools on WestlawNext
Learn about folders and all you can do with them, as well as other productivity and efficiency tools including Highlighting and Annotations, Copy with Reference and much more.
Tues. Sept. 20, 1 p.m. ET, Faculty and Librarians #5: WestlawNext Cost Effective Tips:  Learn how WestlawNext makes research more cost effective and how you can prepare your students to research on WestlawNext in the most cost effective ways.
Mon. October 3,  3 p.m. ET  Faculty and Librarians #6: Integrating WestlawNext into your TWEN courses
Join guest speaker, Tim Kelly, Head of Public Services at Williamette College of Law as he discusses how you can easily integrate WestlawNext into your TWEN courses.
To register for any of these webinars go to the Faculty Webinar page on Westlaw. 

free Supreme Court apps

Prof. Jerry Goldman from Chicago-Kent law school and the Oyez Project has created two great free apps for anyone researching and monitoring what’s happening at the US Supreme Court. They are available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices; you can find them at the App Store and Android Market, just search for them by name.
OyezToday tracks the current business of the U.S. Supreme Court in the form of abstracts in all cases granted review. It shares SCOTUS audio in a searchable format linked to transcripts. It is possible to identify and create clips of segments or turns to share and repurpose. The app also makes written opinions available shortly after release. This means that you needn't besitting at a computer to read the latest decisions. The Oyez Project will transcribe and add opinion announcements from the 2010 Term shortly after the Court releases them to the National Archives in October. The iPad version of this app offers additional features for note-taking and highlighting.
PocketJustice focuses on the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence. The free version provides abstracts, voting data, searchable arguments& transcripts, and opinions in the top 100 most frequently employed cases found in con law casebooks. The FULL version of the app costs $4.99 for iPhone & Android, $8.99 for the HD iPad version (All income supports the Oyez Project.).  It covers the entire corpus of 600+ cases  identified through a survey of major constitutional  law casebooks. Here's a screenshot of the Pocket Justice app for iPad :

Freedom of Information Act contact information

The Department of Justice has a link to "FOIA Contacts"  on the FOIA.gov website that allows you to find FOIA contact information for all the federal agencies. You can also download the entire FOIA contacts list, by agency,  in Excel spreadsheet format here (784 rows; has name, title, address, phone, email, and website information). The FOIA website also has an easy interface that allows you to create data reports by federal agency, year, and type of report.

Same-sex couple Census data

The Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law has partnered with the federal Census bureau to present the most detailed information to date on gay and lesbian households.  According to the Williams Institute's Census 2010 website, the Institute will be releasing Census Snapshot: 2010 reports throughout the summer. These Snapshots will provide demographic and geographic information about same-sex couples and same-sex couples raising children for all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The site has an interactive map of the United States; when you click on a state, such as Pennsylvania, you pull up a detailed report (2 page pdf) of  same-sex couple data for that state. 

Rocket Lawyer attracts Google $$

The ABA Journal reports that Google Ventures  is part of a group that infused $18.5 million into Rocket Lawyer, a website that calls itself the “fastest growing online legal service.”  Founder Charley Moore is quoted as saying that Rocket Lawyer has 70,000 users a day and has doubled revenue for four years straight, to more than $10 million this year.
Rocket Lawyer provides online legal forms, such as  wills, Powers of Attorney, leases and rental agreements, etc. that non-lawyers can fill out and store and share on the internet. For $19.95 a month, consumers can  have their documents reviewed by a real lawyer and  get legal advice at no additional cost.

ABA recommended apps for iPad

Simon Fodden at Slaw reports on a dozen iPad apps for lawyers that were recommended at a session at the recent ABA conference.  Prices range from free to $89.99.  Briefly, here are the apps:
Dropbox, for storing and synching files (free).
GoodReader for reading and annotating most types of documents ($4.99).
Documents to Go for creating and editing various types of documents, including MS Word (9.99).
NoteTakerHD lets you write on your iPad with your finger or a stylus.($4.99).
SignMyPad lets you have someone look at a pdf doc and sign it right on the tablet ($3.99).
MindMeister is the tablet version of this popular mindmapping tool (free)
Atomic Web Browser offers an alternative to Safari on the iPad, with tabbed browsing ($0.99).
Deponent App is a deposition question and exhibit app for lawyers ($9.99).
idocumentREVIEW lets you tag, annotate and redact docs for discovery ($29.99).
iJuror lets you make notes about jurors as a trial progresses ($9.99).
TrialPad is a useful and powerful trial presentation app ($89.99).
AppAdvice keeps you informed about what's new in iPadd app releases ($1.99).

Information on the FDLP

There is a new document available from the GPO that is both concise and clear, titled the "Legal Requirements and Program Regulations of the Federal Depository Library Program".(16 page pdf)  This booklet has all the basic information about the program presented in a readable, user-friendly format.  It is one of the first efforts by our new Superintendent of Documents, Mary Alice Baish, who had worked at AALL for a number of years.  Kudos to Mary Alice and the GPO. 

Magical law librarians

For a more upbeat read, check out this blogpost by "A UK Law Firm Librarian" on the "magical" law library staff. It points out that law librarians are magicians, quietly working behind the scenes to make sure that the books, databases, legal news, and legal research needs of the lawyers (and law faculty) are accessible and everyone is happy.
Of course everybody knows that.

Dispriting New York Times article on law school economics

You can pretty much tell from the title of the article in the Sunday NYT, "Law School Economics: Ka Ching!" that this isn't going to be encouraging for potential law students. Sure enough, the report focuses on the broken incentives that lead law schools to constantly raise class sizes and tuition costs despite a massive recession in the legal market. The article uses New York Law School, the stand-alone law school in lower Manhattan, as an example of what's wrong with law school economics.
Today Dean Matasar, who is mentioned frequently in the Times article, posted his response on the New York Law School website.  In his reply he refutes or explains a number of the points made by the NYT reporter. His argument is that:
"The article is misleading because it fails to acknowledge that:
1. Costs are outside of the control of any one school.
2. A legal education provides lifelong value.
3. Students can and do make informed decisions.
4. NYLS provides one of the most student-centric and innovative programs in the country."

Microsoft announces project to assist scholarly empirical research

Microsoft has announced a new project, Daytona, that is designed to give scholars better tools for manipulating and analyzing empirical data. According to a post in the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog, the announcement was made during Microsoft's annual Faculty Research Summit, which focused this year on research around natural user interface technology, cloud computing, and machine learning. More information is available on the Microsoft Research website.

Libraries opting out of subscription "packages"

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about academic libraries deciding to opt out of "packages" (termed "Big Deals") of journal subscriptions that publishers/vendors customarily offer.  Instead, libraries are going through and making individual decisions about keeping or cancelling journal subscriptions, resulting in overall cost savings.   The article says: "As publishers point out, Big Deals put an abundance of information at researchers' fingertips. More and more, though, librarians respond that a lot of that material doesn't get used. "'We were getting a lot of titles, but a large number of them were getting little or no usage.'" And, according to the article, "the consequences many libraries have feared—loud objections from faculty members and financial penalties from publishers—have not come to pass."

Nauru launches comprehensive legal database

Nauru, the world's smallest island nation, located in the South Pacific, has just recently launched a comprehensive legal database containing the country's legislation and court opinions, according to a report from Radio New Zealand International. The database is called RONLAW (www.ronlaw.org), and is the result of an eighteen month effort by the Legal Information Access Project, funded by New Zealand and overseen by the Nauru Office of Parliamentary Counsel.  Over the course of the project Nauru's legislation was consolidated - a huge task, given that the last consolidation was in 1937.  RONLAW, which stands for Republic of Nauru Law,  contains the Constitution, Nauruan legislation, court decisions, gazettes and other relevant documents; over time, according to the website, "RONLAW will grow to house historical versions of legislation, all subordinate legislation and court decisions. As new legislation is passed in Nauru RONLAW will be updated to include that material, and amendments will be incorporated into consolidated versions of legislation within 24 hours of of being made. Superseded versions of legislation will progressively be added to the collection of historical legislation."

Digital Preservation Courses and Workshops

The Library of Congress has created a national calendar of digital preservation courses and workshops as part of its Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) initiative, an effort  "to foster national outreach and education to encourage individuals and organizations to actively preserve their digital content."  LOC is keeping the calendar current by scanning the web daily for new class postings. They also ask providers to submit information about their courses. Many of these courses are online and some are free.

Hat tip: Margie Maes at the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA)

Universal Citation meeting during AALL

A group of law librarians and legal educators interested in pursuing the goal of a uniform legal citation format  is convening for the first time during the AALL annual conference. The group has a website, UniversalCitation.org, that explains the purpose of the meeting and has a link where you can register to attend (at no cost). The meeting will be held on Monday, July 25, from 9am to 12 noon, at the Rutgers-Camden School of Law, Room E112. Yes, it's in another city in another state, but it is an easy and very short subway ride from the convention location in Philly, just across the Delaware River, so the location shouldn't be a barrier to attendance.
From the webpage: "As legal research shifts to a digital environment, there is a growing need for a new way to refer to court decisions and other documents on which the law depends. With the potential for great increases in the availability of legal information, there needs to be a citation style that does not depend on the increasingly outdated print editions that form the basis for legal reference. As of this date, several American jurisdictions have adopted a Universal Citation format, but most have not. There are a variety of reasons why courts have hesitated to adopt Universal Citation, but given its success as a citation form in the jurisdictions that have adopted it, and the ease with which it has been adopted in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere, its value and utility are hard to deny.  Given this continued reliance on print citations, and the restrictions that this places on open access to the law.... Universalcitation.Org is being organized to fill the gap."

West Publishing history featured in the Green Bag

The latest edition of  The Green Bag has an entertaining look at a 1901promotional pamphlet published by West publishing called "Law Books by the Millions: An account of the largest law-book house in the world, the home establishment of the National Reporter System and the American Digest System".  An introductory essay by Ross E. Davies discusses this historic artifact and how it illustrates that the more things change, the more things remain the same. For example, the pamphlet describes the lawyers working on theditorial staff : "as a body there is not another to match it. The tests given applicants make it certain that only lawyers of West Publishing Co.
more than average ability, and with special mental aptitude for this class of work, are engaged in this very important position. A lawyer of scholarly tastes and abilities finds a more attractive field in legal literary work than in the competitive struggle which awaits him if he enters the practice, and the rewards, if less dazzling, are more assured."

Monroeville restaurant makes the news by banning young children

Many news outlets are carrying the story of a Monroeville restaurant that has announced it will no longer allow children under age 6 to dine at the establishment. McDains Restaurant, located at 4440 Broadway Boulevard in Monroeville, started as the "19th hole" for the McDain's Golf Club and proved so popular that it developed into an "upscale, quiet and casual" restaurant with outdoor dining. Owner Mike Vuick announced the ban on children under 6 after he'd received noise complaints from customers about crying kids at neighboring tables. In an email to customers, Vuick explained: "We feel that McDain's is not a place for young children. Their volume can't be controlled and many, many times, they have disturbed other customers." The Reuters story asks if this is legal, and answers Yes; while restaurants can't discriminate against race, color, religion or national origin, "Nowhere in that list is there a category for "kids."

World Statistics visualization project

The World of 100 is an interesting visualization project that looks at world statistics.  Artist Toby Ng looks at various statistics asking the question:  "If the world were a village of 100 people, how would the composition be?" He has built a set of 20 posters visualizing various world statistics.  For example, the "Languages" poster shows that  if the world were a village of  100 people, 17 would speak Chinese, 9 would speak English, 8 would speak Hindi, 6 would speak Russian, 6 would speak Spanish, 4 would speak Arabic, and 50 would speak "other languages".

Law Technology News: web tools

A recent article in Law Technology News by Louis Abramovitz, a Washington D.C.-based law librarian, provides a list of free and low-cost online resources now available to lawyers, including websites for Pubic Records searches.

Database: Gender Law Library

The Gender Law Library is a collection of national legal provisions impacting women's economic status in 183 economies (it is hosted by the World Bank, and supported by the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan and the Norwegian Trust Fund). The database can be used for comparative analysis of legislation affecting women. It serves as a resource for research, and contributes to reforms that can enhance women’s full economic participation. The materials are generally organized into categories including geographic region, income level grouping, legal topic, and type of law. The collection is updated regularly.

hat tip: InSITE

TRAC vs. SSA

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse recently published a report titled Social Security Awards Depend More on Judge than Facts: Disparities Within SSA Disability Hearing Offices Grow. Embedded in the report is a special interactive table giving the public access to extensive counts and rates that further document the degree of the disparities among individual judges in a Social Security hearing office as well as disparity measures for each office as a whole.
In response, the Social Security Administration published a statement sharply criticizing TRAC's study on several different grounds. TRAC has now issued a point-by-point refutation of the SSA's sweeping statement regarding TRAC's original report.
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a non-partisan research organization associated with Syracuse University.  Using Freedom of Information Act requests, the organization gathers highly detailed but easy-to-access information on selected federal enforcement agencies, special topical reports, and "bulletins" about federal enforcement, staffing and expenditures.  .

2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism released by White House

The White House recently released its new counterterrorism strategy, the National Strategy for Counterterrorism (19 page pdf). They also released a Fact Sheet that summarize the strategy, saying that "this strategy builds upon the progress we have made in the decade since 9/11, in partnership with Congress, to build our counterterrorism and homeland security capacity as a nation. It neither represents a wholesale overhaul-nor a wholesale retention-of previous policies and strategies... This Strategy stands to testify to our friends, our partners, and to our terrorist enemies: Here is our plan of action to achieve the defeat of al-Qa‘ida and its affiliates and adherents . It is this outcome we seek, and indeed it is the only one we will accept ."
Contents include:

• The Threat We Face
• Principles That Guide our Counterterrorism Efforts
• Overarching Goals
• Area of Focus
• Other Terrorist Concerns Requiring Focus and Attention
• Conclusion

Wikipedia Higher Education Summit

Inside Higher Education reports that Wikipedia, in its efforts to improve and expand its relationship with academia, held the first Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit last week. Attendees were professors who have actively incorporated Wikipedia into their teaching, as well as faculty who are interested in doing so. According to the report, over two dozen universities now have courses where students are working on Wikipedia as part of their formal coursework, and many of these campuses have “Wikipedia ambassadors” tasked with helping professors weave writing and editing Wikipedia entries into the syllabus. David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, was the speaker who gave the opening address, saying that his office at the National Archives and Records Administration now employs a “Wikipedian in residence” in charge of fostering relationships with galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
At the Summit, Carnegie Mellon University researcher Rosta Farzan demoed a set of new course software tools aimed at making it easier for professors to assign and evaluate Wikipedia-related assignments. The free software includes a dashboard for instructors to track student work and provide private feedback on edits, as well as a new course page builder to help instructors create useful and well-structured course pages.

Chief Justice John Roberts on relevance (or irrelevance) of legal academia

A recent post on the Legal Skills Prof Blog points to an interview with U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' 77th annual judicial conference. A video of the 47 minute interview is available on C-Span.
The blogpost specifically talks about Justice Roberts' comments on the relevance of legal scholarship to the practice of  law,  as evidenced by law review publications. You can watch this part of the interview by forwarding the video to minute 28:50. Dean Raymond C. Pierce of the North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham, N.C., poses this question to Chief Justice Roberts:

“Your comments earlier about the use of your law clerks caused me to think about a comment by Judge Harry Edwards of the D.C. Court of Appeals where Judge Edwards strongly suggests that our judiciary on all levels, and the practicing bar, are unfortunately too disconnected from our academies, from our law schools. I want to know your thoughts on that as to whether or not you agree with that or whether you think the relationship between the practicing bar and the bench, and our legal academy, our lawschools is fine, or whether or not there is some impact on instruction as it relates to the good future of our profession.”

Chief Justice Roberts replies:

"Judge Edwards and I are on the same page on that point. There IS a great disconnect between the academy and the profession. Pick up a copy of any law review… and the first article is likely to be (on an abstract topic) that I’m sure is of great interest to the academic who wrote it, but isn’t of much help to the bar. Now I hasten to add, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. If the Academy wants to deal with the legal issues at a particularly abstract and philosophical level that’s great, that’s their business, but they shouldn’t expect that it would be of any particular help or even interest to members of the practicing bar or judges. At the same time we’re not looking for vocational guidance like “this is how you fill out the form for an entry of appearance”. At the same time, I do think that if the academy is interested in having an influence on the practice of law, on the development of law, they would be wise to stop and think, “Is this area of research going to be of help to anyone other than other academics?”. It’s their business, but people ask me what the last law review article I read was, and I have to think very hard before coming up with one."

CALI News

News from the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, aka CALI:. Starting this school year, CALI lessons will have a very new look. The educational content remains the same, but the new-look versions include a number of new features  including  iPad and iPhone compatibility, auto scoresave, and easy copy & paste.
You can  register for an upcoming live webcast about the new CALI lesson on July 12, 3PM Eastern, 2PM Central. The webcast will cover what's changing in CALI Lessons, the expected time line for implementation, and provide time for answering questions. Faculty can preview of the new viewer on each lesson description page. Click the lesson title - not the play button - from the listings, and then click on the link that says "Try the new lesson viewer (alpha)".

LexisAdvance & WestlawNext, two views

Two interesting discussions of the two big new legal research products have been published online and provide a lot of food for thought for law librarians and legal researchers.  Ron Wheeler, from Univ. of San Francisco School of  Law & Director of the law library has a paper on SSRN titled "Does Westlaw Next Really Change Everything: the Implications of WestlawNext on Legal Research".  And Dan Baker of the University of Houston O'Quinn Law Library has published Part 1 and Part 2 of his First Thoughts on Lexis Advance for Law Schools on the library's blog.  

EBSCO, H.W. Wilson merge

Publishers and database vendors EBSCO and H.W. Wilson have announced that the two companies have merged as Ipswich, MA-based EBSCO acquiring the staff and product lines of H.W. Wilson Co. According to the announcement,   the “vast majority of Wilson databases will continue to be maintained, and there are many planned enhancements. Some Wilson databases will be merged together with closely related EBSCO databases to create more robust versions.”

Chart of forthcoming changes and enhancements due to merger provided by EBSCO.

ABA moves to improve law school employment data accuracy

The National Law Journal reports that the ABA's section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has approved changes to the annual law school questionnaire that require more detailed information on the employment status and salaries of law school graduates. Law schools will be required to report in much greater detail on the types of jobs in which their graduates have found employment.  They will also have to provide information on graduates who are unemployed or whose employment status is unknown. 

Project will digitize older Technical Reports

The Technical Report Archive & Image Library (TRAIL) is an initiative led by the University of Arizona in collaboration with the Center for Research Libraries  to identify, digitize, archive, and provide access to federal technical reports issued before 1975. These technical reports communicate research progress in technology and science and deliver information for technical development to industry and research institutions contributing to the continued growth of science and technology. While availability to more recent (1994–current) technical report literature has greatly improved with Internet access, legacy technical report documents remain elusive, and this initiative aims to close that gap. Some of the report series digitized include divisions of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; U.S. National Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Bureau of Mines and more.

NTIS Technical Reports

The June 2011 NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter (from the US Dept. of Commerce National Technical Information Service) is now available online. This  issue has been designated as a Special SLA Edition to correspond with NTIS’ participation at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference, and the issue highlights the topic The Virtual World. It features enhanced graphics and design, and includes selected information from the NTIS Subject Categories:

• Communication (45)
• Computers, Control & Information Theory (62)
• Library & Information Sciences (88)

If you are attending this year’s SLA Conference, the NTIS will be previewing the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) Repository Beta Version 2.0.

Libguides for (ProQuest) Congressional databases

The editorial team at ProQuest, the company that recently bought the Congressional databases from Lexis, has created a collection of useful bibliographies that provide links to documents in the Congressional databases on current topics. The bibliographies are on the following topics; when you click on the link, click on the blue tabs at the top of the page that say "Committee Prints and CRS Reports", "Hearings", and/or "Congressional Record" for live links into the Barco databases. You need to be on campus or accessing via the Pitt remote server to use these.

Al Qaeda http://proquest.libguides.com/al_qaeda
Egyptian Revolution http://proquest.libguides.com/egyptian_revolution
Gas Prices http://proquest.libguides.com/gas_prices
Haitian Earthquake (updated) http://proquest.libguides.com/haitian_earthquake
Health Care Reform http://proquest.libguides.com/health_care_reform
Immigration and Naturalization http://proquest.libguides.com/immigration_and_naturalization
Libyan Unrest http://proquest.libguides.com/libyan_unrest
Natural Disasters http://proquest.libguides.com/natural_disasters
North Korea (updated) http://proquest.libguides.com/north_korea
Nuclear Crisis in Japan http://proquest.libguides.com/nuclear_crisis_in_japan
Osama bin Laden http://proquest.libguides.com/osama_bin_laden
Same Sex Marriage (updated) http://proquest.libguides.com/same_sex_marriage
U.S. Natural Disasters http://proquest.libguides.com/natural_disasters

Newspaper Map

The Newspaper Map website is a visual map where you can identify newspapers from all over the world, translatable to and from many languages with one click. In many cases you will also find links to the newspapers sites on social media like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. You can search for specific cities or newspapers, filter by language, or look for historical newspapers that are available online.

A Mullet view of law school?

The Chronicle of Higher Education this afternoon has a brief article titled "Overcoming a "Mullet" View of Faculty". The author defines a "mullet" view : a university president told him that when new faculty attended their first faculty meeting, the "serious" ones sat in front, with the malcontents and disengaged at the back.  Hence the mullet: professional in front, party behind. The author said professors tend to view the way students choose classroom seats in the same way: A’s in the front, C’s in the back.  Is this true in law schools too? 

Electronic course packs

The Wired Campus blog reports on a couple of University of Chicago graduate students who have launched an online version of coursepacks called Sibylus "the syllabus, reimagined". The students realized that the photocopied materials they were buying from the bookstore in coursepacks are available online to students via the databases licensed by the university; or even on free websites.The students—who are both studying business and law—started a pilot program this spring in several classes at Chicago’s business school . The online coursepacks aren't free, but they are cheaper than the photocopied versions sold  by the bookstore. 

Public Libraries

The New York Review of Books blog has a post titled "A Country Without Libraries".  It is a pretty wonderful essay on the value of public libraries, and the disheartening news of how many public libraries are being closed or having their hours curtailed.
Here's some of the essay:
Over the years I thoroughly explored many libraries, big and small, discovering numerous writers and individual books I never knew existed, a number of them completely unknown, forgotten, and still very much worth reading. No class I attended at the university could ever match that. Even libraries in overseas army bases and in small, impoverished factory towns in New England had their treasures, like long-out of print works of avant-garde literature and hard-boiled detective stories of near-genius. Wherever I found a library, I immediately felt at home."

The main branch of the Scranton public library, where this blogger spent many happy hours. 

Judgmental website: UK case law made usable

Judgmental is a new UK website that aims to make UK case law "available, searchable and usable". The case law is browsable by jurisdiction and court, and then by date. The entire set of data can be searched by Google.
As for the spelling of the website's name, the website says "Why doesn't it have an 'e" in it?
"Judgment" is the usual spelling for an act of legal adjudication, and is similarly used in the Bible, eg Day of Judgment. "Judgement" is used in the wider sense, for instance when referring to someone as having "sound judgement".  Who knew?

This year's outstanding govt. information resources announced

Each year, the Notable Documents Panel of the American Library Association Government Documents Round Table (GODORT)  recognizes outstanding government information resources issued by state and local governments, national governments, and intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Bank and the UN.  This year's report from the panel is titled "Digital Diamonds and Budget Cuts," has been published in Library Journal.  The report points out that the strides made by GPO during that past year are "tempered by the prospect of massive federal budget cuts that will likely slow down progress."  Among GPO's successes this year are the successful migration of millions of documents from GPO Access to FDSys, which has implemented archival standards for long-term preservation of important documents.
The subject matter of this year’s Notable Documents list reflects an essential characteristic of these releases: their diversity. Nearly half of these titles focus on animal and plant life, climate change, and the environment. Half of the remaining titles deal with social topics, such as crime, human rights violations, economic development, the global economic crisis, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. City planning, construction, history, food and gardening, geospatial data, and engineering are among other themes addressed. The number of works available only in print, only online, and in both analog and digital media is roughly equal.
The list of this year's Notable Documents available online includes:

• The Crime of Family Abduction: A Child's and Parent's Perspective (57 page pdf) distributed by the national Criminal Justice Reference Service
• Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Role in the Secondary Mortgage Market (55 page pdf) published by the Congressional Budget Office
• The State of the Hudson website published by the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (online only). 
• Gender and Governance in Rural Services: Insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia (332 page pdf) published by the World Bank & International Food Policy Research Inst. 
• Latin America and the Caribbean: Atlas of Our Changing Environment website published by the UN Environment Programme, includes satellite images, thematic maps and statistics as well as environmental profiels of 65 countries. 

LLMs face increased scrutiny

The National Law Journal has a story (note: you must register for a free 90day trial to NLJ to access the online article)  today titled "Increased scrutiny for LL.M.s: New hurdles, options for foreign-trained attorneys". LL.M. programs offer the master of laws degree for foreign lawyers who want to be eligible to take the bar exam in the US.  The article notes two shifts affecting LL.M. students: first, the New York Court of Appeals has adopted stricter requirements for the curricular content of LL.M. programs.  Secondly, the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed specific curriculum requirements for LL.M. programs geared toward foreign-trained lawyers. Individual states adopting the proposed model would then allow LL.M. program graduates to take their bar exams. 

Netflix is the top bandwidth use in North America

Techradar  reports that the Netflix video streaming service is not the biggest user of bandwidth in North America, accounting for 22% of total internet use. These figures come from the recent Global Internet Phenomena Report (18 page pdf) by Sandvine Broadband Network Solutions. At peak periods, Netflix accounted for 29.7% of bandwidth use.  If you add in other forms of "real-time entertainment" - sites providing on-demand streaming - they account for almost half of bandwidth use. The report includes data on bandwidth use in Europe and Latin America, as well as an analysis of how the Royal Wedding on April 29, 2011, affected internet use worldwide.

West Virginia closes regional law libraries

The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register reports that regional W. Va. law libraries are being closed "because of a lack of use".  In the article, the administrative director of the W. Va. Supreme Court of appeals said they have been considering the closure for several years, and a a study conducted in the Huntington law library found that in a 3 month period nobody used the library. He also said that judges in the 1st Judicial Circuit have first pick of the books, and a community college is interested in using the books for its paralegal training program. 

Turnitin study on student plagiarism using the internet

Turnitin, the online plagiarism resource used by Pitt,  recently conducted a study that examined which Internet sites students use in their written work. They looked at 40 million student papers submitted to Turnitin over a ten-month period. Some of their findings:
• One third of "matched content" (content that has been copied) is from social networks, content sharing or question-and-answer sites where users contribute and share content.
• 15 % of content matches come from cheat sites.
• One fourth of matched content is from legitimate educational web sites, almost double the number that comes from paper mills or cheat sites.
• Wikipedia is the most popular site for matched content (7%).  The other most popular sites, in order, are answers.yahoo.com, answers.com, slideshare.net, oppapers.com, scribd.com, coursehero.com, and medlibrary.org.
• Institutions with widespread adoption of Turnitin see a reduction in unoriginal content of 30-35 % in the first year. By the fourth year, many institutions see levels of "unoriginality" fall by up to 70 %.
You can request a free download the White Paper, "Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities," from the Turnitin website.

AP Stylebooks addresses digital terminology

The new edition of the AP Stylebook, a style and usage guide used by journalists (it calls itself "the journalists' Bible), clarifies the spelling of some digital terminology and has also added commonly used acronyms.  For example, "email" is now spelled without a hyphen or capitalization, and both "cellphone" and "smartphone" are one word. The acronym "ROFL" (rolling on the floor laughing) has been added. 

New à la carte libraries from Hein coming in June

HeinOnline is introducing two new à la carte libraries on June 1, 2011. The first is the History of International Law Collection, which will contain more than 500 titles and 550,000 pages dating back to 1690 on subjects such as War & Peace, the Nuremberg Trials, Law of the Sea and International Arbitration. It will include classic books and serials such as the International Law Studies Series [U.S. Naval War College], International Conciliation, and Studies in Transnational Legal Policy.The second is the Hague Academy of Collected Courses which will include the complete archive of collected courses dating back to their inception in 1923, twelve periodic indexes, plus the official publications from the Workshops organized by the Academy.

NTIS offers new service for getting federal technical reports

The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) has announced the availability of a new information dissemination service known as NTIS Selected Research Service (SRS). NTIS serves as the largest central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information; federal agencies are required to make copies of their scientific and technical reports available to NTIS.   The SRS is a tailored information service that delivers complete electronic copies of government technical publications from agencies such as the Department of Defense (DOD), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The program offers:

• Full Text PDF format of Federal technical reports
• Comprehensive coverage of Federal technical content
• Ability to select from 378 subject categories
• E-mail notification when new documents in subject areas of interest are available. 

The cost of each document you request from this NTIS program is $3.00.  The 378 subject areas are detailed in the SRS Catalog (pdf).

E-reserves trial to begin Monday

Ars Technica reports that on Monday May 16 the e-reserves lawsuit pitting several academic publishers (Cambridge, Oxford and Sage) against Georgia State University will begin in the Northern District Court of Georgia. E-reserves are electronic compilations of course material that faculty gather for students in circumstances where they would not be using enough material to make it worthwhile for students to buy entire books. According to Ars Technica the issue is "notoriously murky", and in this case the publishers approached Georgia State before embarking on the lawsuit, but the university claimed the e-reserves were legal. The publishers are suing Georgia State on the claims of contributory infringement and indirect infringement.

CIA declassifies oldest documents

The CIA's Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room provides public access to CIA information that has been released through the FOIA and other disclosure statutes. Recently they added the US government's 6 oldest classified documents, which have finally been declassified. The documents date from 1917 and 1918, and were the only documents remaining classified from the World War I era.  These documents all describe methods of "secret writing" that spies might use to sneak information past the enemy.   Document 4, for example, has several methods - tedious and involving chemicals and hot irons - for exposing hidden writing. Document 4 also describes "how to open sealed letters without detection" which involves copper acetyl arsenite, acetone and amyl alcohol (though there is a notation in the margin saying "Tried - not successful").  Document 6 warns to "Suspect fresly-painted metal walls on ships, etc. - Often... they cover communications scratched on the underlying metal surface". It also gives instructions on "how to make microscopic writing on a 2-cent red U.S. postage stamp", and warns that "spies and smugglers" sometimes engrave messages on toe-nails. 

National Jukebox from LOC

The Library of Congress recently launched the "National Jukebox: Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress."Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the collections of the LOC Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted LOC a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings. Currently, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. According to the LOC, Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels.
You can browse the contents in a variety of ways, including by language, place, label, date, composer, lyricist, performer and genre. The collection includes recordings of vocal music, instrumental music, as well as spoken recordings.
According to the LOC site, "The goal of the Jukebox is to present to the widest audience possible early commercial sound recordings, offering a broad range of historical and cultural documents as a contribution to education and lifelong learning.  These selections are presented as part of the record of the past. They are historical documents which reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in these recordings, which may contain content offensive to users."
Here's an example of a 1906 recording of "Home Sweet Home."

US District Court for the Western District of PA: PDF/A filing requirement begins phasein June 1

The Federal Judiciary is planning to change the technical standard for filing court documents in PACER from PDF to PDF/A. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts this change will improve the archiving and preservation of case-related documents. Each federal court is to set its own deadline date for setting the requirement in place, and the US District Court for the Western District of PA has announced that it will begin posting documents in PDF/A format on June 1, 2011 and that all uploaded court filings must be in PDF/A format beginning on Jan 1, 2012.
The PIT IP Tech Blog (from the Pittsburgh law firm of Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton) has a post explaining what PDF/A means, and pointing to online  resources that can help with the transition. According to their post, "In theory, by moving to the PDF/A format, electronically-filed documents will be more accessible in the future and less dependent on technologies or features that may become unsupported."

hat tip: Law.com legal blog watch

Forum on the future of the CRS

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a nonpartisan government agency located within the Library of Congress that provides policy and legal analysis to members of Congress on a wide range of issues.
On Monday, the Sunlight Foundation hosted a forum to discuss the current state of the CRS as well as its future.  A panel of speakers talked about the expertise of CRS analysts, the relevance of CRS Reports, and the possibilities for improving public access to CRS Reports that are not considered confidential.  A video of the forum is available on C-SPAN (90 minutes). During the discussion, it was reported that a Transparency Bill, that would make CRS reports already in existence public,  will  be reintroduced this session of Congress as well as a separate, stand-alone CRS bill mandating public access (possibly through Clerk of House/Senate)

The Economist on the business of law

The May 5 edition of The Economist online has a story titled Law firms: A less gilded future discussing changes in the "legal business" over the past few years. The article describes how the recession hit the lawyering profession hard- even American firm Howrey, one of the top 100 firms in the world, went bust because of dismal profits. The article says that "(u)ltimately, lawyering is becoming more of a business than a profession. Some lawyers decry this. Others welcome it. Few deny it. Because the American market cannot grow as it used to, firms will have to find new strategies and make use of sophisticated branding to stand out."

hat tip: Mike Madison

Cost Effective research training

Everyone (ok, everyone who is a law librarian and tweets)  is tweeting about a blogpost by DC lawyer Jean O'Grady titled "The Myth and the Madness of Cost Effective Lexis and Westlaw Research Training". It is well worth reading, if somewhat depressing. The basic premise is that focusing on "cost effectiveness" distracts summer associates from the real goal of legal research, which is finding the right answer for the client. The big database vendors could do a lot to gear their databases towards focusing on finding the right answer, rather than worrying about lots of tangential pricing factors - but they don't. Instead they offer highly complex, opaque and expensive research tool that in some ways defeats the real purpose of legal research.

College bookstores asks BBB to investigate Amazon claims

Inside Higher Education has a story today reporting that the National Association of College
Stores (NACS)  has asked the Better Business Bureau to investigate advertising claims made by Amazon on the Amazon textbook page.  The page claims that one can "Save up to 90% on used textbooks and up to 30% on new textbooks, then get up to 60% back when you sell textbooks back at Amazon".  Then on Tues May 3, Amazon filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgement (15 page pdf) in the US District Court, Western District of Washington, asking the court to "grant relief against NACS" by declaring that the Amazon pricing claims are NOT misleading, and asking that Amazon be awarded its costs and expensives of litigation as well as "such other and further relief as the Court deems just and equitable".
Stay tuned. 

FBI warning: bin Laden links may contain malware

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned computer users Tuesday to be cautious about opening emails claiming to include photos or videos of Osama bin Laden's death. Such emails may contain viruses that could steal personal information and spread throughout your email Contacts list.  

Nolo Publishing sold to new media company

Publishers Weekly reports that Nolo Inc. has been sold to Internet Brands, a "new media" Internet company. Nolo was founded in Berkeley, CA in the late 1960's by two legal aid lawyers who assembled a group of radical lawyers, editors, and writers frustrated by a legal system too complicated and pricey for much of the US middle class. They began publishing plain-English books with information about dealing with a variety of everyday legal situations. Internet Brands was founded in 1998 as CarsDirect.com and has diversified its interests into many including legal, careers and shopping. Internet Brands will keep Nolo in Berkeley where Nolo's operations will be combined with those of ExpertHub (www.experthub.com), Internet Brands' existing legal-focused division, with domains including Nolo.com, LawFirms.com and CriminalDefenseLawyer.com. PW says that Nolo's print operations will continue under Interrnet Brands.

Nolo publishers in 1971

Legal Information Preservation Alliance celebrates Preservation Week

Last week LIPA, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, highlighted true stories of recent preservation projects undertaken by LIPA member libraries. Every day LIPA published one story about a digital law library project, with details about the planning and executing of the project. Today they published all of the stories on the LIPA website (LIPA is a committee of AALL).  The projects include an Indian Law portal developed by the state law library of Montana, digitized legislative histories of the Indiana General Assembly from 1858 to 1887 by the Indiana U. law library, and the digitization of Nebraska Supreme Court briefs by the Creighton University School of Law library. 

A movement to allow erasure of internet information

MIT's Technology Review has an article on further developments in the "Right to be Forgotten" movement in Europe. The article says that a "growing group of privacy advocates in the U.S. and abroad want the Internet to be written in pencil" (allowing for erasure).  They want internet users to have to opt IN before anyone could track their data in the first place. Spain is just the latest country that has become involved in the movement, when its Data Protection Agency ordered Google to remove hyperlinks to articles about 90 people. The article reports that in the U.S. an online-safety organization called Common Sense Media argued that "Web companies should develop tools that make it easier for young people—or their parents—to completely opt out and delete this information." They wanted, they said, an "Internet Erase Button."
There are 2 sides to the "internet erase button" or Right to be forgotten" argument though. There are sticky questions about freedom of the press and freedom of speech; when does the right to privacy outweigh the right to information?  And the information that is available on the internet can also make all sorts of academic research much easier and less expensive. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently published an article  on how women and men behave differently in looking at sexual content on the web - research that was accomplished by analyzing a billion web searches by men and women. The research was done by computational neuroscientist Ogi Ogas who has published the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts. 

Book statistics

The University of Dayton Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop for humor writers has a list of statistics on the reading and publishing of books that bibliophiles might find depressing. The statistics come from various sources; one can only hope that some of them may be questionable. For example: 

• 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 
• Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.  (hat tip: Library and Information Science News blog)
  

And if you find this interesting, you might also be interested to learn that Inside Higher Ed reports the University of Denver's library plans to move 4/5 of the collection to off-site storage, in order to add more seating and group space during a major renovation. The library's 1.1 million books, gov docs, journals, microfiche and CDs will all be moved to an off-site storage facility 10 miles from campus during the renovation; only 20% of the material will return to the library when the renovation is completed.