Laptop locks now available in Barco

At the suggestion of students, the Barco Law Library now has laptop locks available for students to borrow. These Kensington laptop locks utilize the security slot found on most laptops, and have a strong cable to secure laptops to a heavy stationary object (most of the study tables and carrels in the library have laptop anchors designed for this purpose). The locks are available only to Pitt Law students and can be borrowed for a 4 hour period.  For more info, ask at the library desk.

New JSTOR beta search

Today JSTOR released a new “Beta Search,” with a redesigned interface and a new search engine. The new search is also accessible from a link on www.jstor.org.While it is in beta testing it is in parallel with the existing search options to avoid disrupting regular research workflows on the site. During the beta period JSTOR wants to gather feedback and make further improvements, focusing development efforts in these areas:
 • Refining the new interface: facets that allow easy narrowing/broadening of searches
• Improving relevance rankings: results that more closely match your search terms
• Incorporating new features, including auto-suggested search terms and spell checking
• Enhancing the search results view to support evaluation of relevance: preview article and book details directly from the search results list
 One  feature of the new Beta Search is the application of “topic modeling” to enhance discovery of content. Unlike standard searching on JSTOR where searches can be focused only within disciplines assigned at the journal level, the Beta Search uses text analysis techniques to automatically assign one or more topics to an article. The goal is to help searchers find relevant content that may be outside of their main disciplinary area.
There's more info about Beta Search on the JSTOR website. 

Livening up presentations in the courtroom

Law Technology News has an interesting article about how lawyers can make their presentations in the courtroom more interesting and "interactive".  The problem is that jurors get bored sitting in their box  "as the day drags on you can see it weighing on the jurors, as more and more of them slouch or stare at the ground or cast repeated glances at the courtroom clock." The author has several tips about techniques lawyers can use to keep the attention of everyone in the room. These include using everything from magnetic boards to ELMOs, barcode readers, and using an iPad in conjunction with AppleTV and trial presentation apps. Even more advanced (and expensive) options include the Magic Wall, a Microsoft screen with a touchscreen and other hightech options.

Legal Work of the War Department, 1 July 1940 - 31 March 1945

The Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress has just posted an interesting new (but historic) document to their website. The document is called "Legal Work of the War Department 1 July 1940 - 31 March 1945: A History of the Judge Advocate General's Department" (382 page pdf) and was prepared and published by the Office of the Judge Advocate General. The report tells of how the Office worked during WWII, with increased duties and responsiblities, reorganization of the office, and the addition of new divisions and branches. It includes chapters on Contracts, Litigation, Patents, Tax Problems and International Law. And it even includes a subchapter on the expansion of the law libraries during the war (see page 27/382). 

LegalShare (beta) lets lawyers buy and sell legal documents online

One of the new legal technology companies that was represented at the recent LegalTech conference is LegalShare  an online legal document marketplace. It is an online repository of legal documents, including pleadings and memos, contributed by other lawyers and available for purchase on a per document basis. Lawyers can both buy and sell documents. This online tool is meant for solo and small firm lawyers who don’t have access to the vast document databases available to large firm lawyers and who can’t afford to pay for the expensive legal database access that includes access to pleadings and legal forms. According to their website, "LegalShare now has a curated collection of real estate, personal injury, criminal law, L&T, civil rights, and general litigation documents from experienced practitioners." The website also has a note to attorneys that they can "Get paid for work you have already done! If you have legal documents you want to sell, please email us with a writing sample and resume. When you upload a document, you will receive 80% of the proceeds from every purchase."

Case Western to offer MOOC in international criminal law

Case Western Reserve University has announced that, in collaboration with Coursera, they will offer 2 MOOCs starting on May 1, one in International Criminal Law. MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, are a recent trend in higher education: free online courses open to anyone. Michael Scharf, associate dean for global legal studies at the CW School of Law, is teaching Introduction to International Criminal Law, is an 8-week course. The course description and syllabus are available on the coursera website.

HeinOnline: Congressional Documents webinar

This week HeinOnline offered an excellent webinar called "The Top 3 Things You Should Know When Researching in HeinOnline's U.S. Congressional Documents". If you were unable to attend the webinar "live", video is now available at Hein's Help and Training Center. The webinar explains how to navigate HeinOnline's U.S. Congressional Documents collection, which includes both historic early Congressional documents as well as the Congressional Record, Vols. 1-155 (1873-2009). Their finding tools include a helpful "Congressional Record Daily to Bound Locator", which is demonstrated in the webinar.

Friday Fun: Courtroom Movies

From the Bloomberg Law video library comes this mashup of scenes from 29 courtroom dramas and comedies called Courtroom Movies: Hollywood's Most Hackneyed Genre. Proving that "every movie trial has the very same tired elements".

New law app by a law librarian

Ruth Bird, who is currently  law librarian at the Bodlein Law Library, Oxford University, has announced the creation of a new law app that she has helped design. "Lawsauce" is a useful resource for law students as well as for lawyers in practice. The app provides quite extensive coverage of many jurisdictions, and includes many free sites, Francophone sites, subscription sites and quite a number of foreign language locations, though most are in English. Ruth says that "It is a work in progress and we will add data on a regular basis... I welcome any feedback." The app is available in the iTunes Store for iPhones and at GooglePlay for android; cost is $4.99.

All the Yellow Books in one online subscription!

The Barco Law Library has purchased a one-year subscription to the Leadership Library database, a powerful employment research tool. The database includes 14 Leadership Directories’ Yellow Books:
 1. Congressional yellow book
 2. Federal yellow book
3. State yellow book
 4. Corporate yellow book
 5. News media yellow book
 6. Municipal yellow book
 7. Federal regional yellow book
 8. Judicial yellow book
 9. Financial yellow book
 10. Associations yellow book
 11. Law firms yellow book
 12. Government affairs yellow book
 13. Foreign representatives in the U.S. yellow book
 14. Nonprofit sector yellow book
 The database allows searching and browsing within individual directories or across all 14 directories using single or multiple criteria, such as name, job title, industry, and geographical location. It contains contact information for federal and state courts, law firms, federal, state and local government, non-profits, and corporations. It's available to all current Pitt Law students, faculty, and staff, at Law building computers or via the wireless network. Bookmark the link and note that it is also available via the Barco Law Library databases page  and through the ULS online catalog PittCAT. You should browse around in it for a while to see how it works since it is an unfamiliar interface and has a bit of a learning curve; but it has tons of great information. 

Scotusblog Supreme Court Challenge

Bloomberg Law and SCOTUSblog have announced the "Supreme Court Challenge", a contest for law students that places teams of law students in a head-to-head competition to test both their collective knowledge of the Supreme Court and their ability to analyze legal decisions. Law student teams will use materials from Bloomberg Law and SCOTUSblog to predict the outcome of 6 merit cases and 6 petitions for certiorari to be heard by the Supreme Court as well as how each Justice will vote on the cases. The student teams compete against each other and also the SCOTUSblog Expert Team.

The prizes? First prize is a minimum of $3,500, with an additional $1,500 awarded if your team also beats the experts at SCOTUSblog. Second prize is $1,500 with an additional $1,000 if they beat the SCOTUSblog team. Third prize is $1,000, with an additional $500 if they beat the SCOTUSblog team.
Competition Rules and Registration information (must register by Feb. 28) are available on the SCOTUScompetition website. 

Presentation on The Future of Govt. Info. and the Digital FDLP

James Jacobs, a gov docs librarian at Stanford, recently gave a talk at the University of Washington titled "Gone Today, Here Tomorrow: The Future of Government Information and the Digital FDLP" (that's Federal Depositories Library Program). In the talk he discusses the historical ideals underlying the FDLP and how those ideals have been under under fire from both within and without the library community (did you know that the National Archives and Records Administration has contracted with the commercial company Ancestry.com to preserve census information?). He argues that applying FDLP's historical ideals to today's new information metaphors is the best chance at access to and long-term preservation and assurance of free government information. He also talks about some of the digital collection strategies that he has found to be successful and provides ideas for future successful preservation.
The talk and slides are available on the Free Government Information website. 

HeinOnline Webinars

HeinOnline has announced the first in their 2013 webinar series will take place on Wednesday, February 27 at 2:00 p.m. EST. The topic of the first webinar is "Top 3 Things You Should Know When Researching in HeinOnline's U.S. Congressional Documents" which will cover: 1. Using the Daily to Bound Locator Tool to quickly pull up a page from the Daily edition in the Bound edition and vice versa. 2. Using the Congressional Hearings Quick Finder to locate a hearing from Covington & Burling's prestigious collection. 3. Searching for a bill in the History of Bills and Resolutions in the Daily and Bound Volumes. The webinar will be lead by their excellent presenter Marcie Baranich. The webinar is free but you need to register online to participate.

Barco joins the PALMPrint project

The Barco Law Library has joined Preserving America's Legal Materials in Print (PALMPrint), a collaborative pilot project aimed at developing a shared, circulating collection of primary, U.S. legal materials in print. Librarians across the country are working on the issue of the retention of and persistent access to print materials in an increasingly digital world. A number of different print archiving projects are currently underway, and include both centralized and distributed models. The PALMPrint project is led by 2 library organizations: NELLCO (New England Law Library Consortium, of which we are a member) and LIPA (the Legal Information Preservation Alliance. They hope it will serve as a model for a collaborative solution to print retention, allowing libraries to make different decisions about library space at the local level. In this way, libraries can continue to be responsive to the changing needs of their users secure in the knowledge that primary print materials are within reach, and under the stewardship of the collaborative. More information is available in the PALMPrint online overview.

WS Hein is moving... but not far.

The Wm. S. Hein Co., provider of HeinOnline and many legal publications, has announced that they are moving. They have been located on Main St. in downtown Buffalo for many years, and are staying in the Buffalo area but moving to the leafy suburbs - Getzville, NY, specifically. They explain that "With the company's strong shift to digital media over the past decade, our need for more advanced support has led us to a facility that allows for a stronger technological infrastructure to support our ever-growing database, HeinOnline."

WS Hein before and after move.

Updated PA Courts website

The Supreme Court has just launched a redesigned the PA Courts website with greater functionality and even a Twitter account link.
Hat tip: Joel Fishman

Google maps North Korea

Yesterday Google revised its Google Maps app to add information on North Korea. Using crowdsourcing -the assistance of "citizen cartographers" with knowledge of North Korean geography - Google was able to fill in some of North Korea's streets... and prison camps. No Street View is available, however.

New, revised American FactFinder

The new online version of American FactFinder was released this week with some big improvements. There are two new search tools designed to make searching easy: 1) Community Facts, which lets you find data about a single geography (city, town, county, etc.), and 2) Guided Search, which lets you choose, in this order a) topics, and/or b) geographies, and/or c) race/ethnic group for People, Housing, and Business/Industry. For users who've had experience using the previous Factfinder it also has the options of d) search by dataset and e) search by table number or table title. Users who've had experience using the previous Factfinder will recognize Advanced Search as the previous Factfinder; and advanced users who download data have the option of using Download Options. The information and help links are very informative.

Thomson Reuters Legal Solutions

Law Librarian Jason Wilson and the Law Librarian Blog have both pointed out that Thomson Reuters appears to be rebranding Westlaw as "Legal Solutions".  The tipoff came from a url redirect from http://west.thomson.com that now goes to http://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/; watch the rather anxiety-producing video to learn more about how they provide a "better way forward" in dealing with "the new reality".  

LexisNexis Academic webinars

LexisNexis Academic has been redesigned with students in mind, and is providing the following upcoming webinars in February and March:
1. LexisNexis Academic: general training

•  Tuesday, February 5; 2 to 3 p.m. (EST) 
•  Tuesday, February 19; 3 to 4 p.m. (EST)  
•  Friday, March 8; noon to 1 p.m. (EST) 
•  Tuesday, March 26; 2 to 3 p.m. (EST) 

2.  LexisNexis Academic - Business:  This seminar focuses on business resources and Company Dossier.  

• Tuesday, February 5; noon to 1 p.m. (EST) 
• Tuesday, March 5; 1 to 2 p.m. (EST) 

3. LexisNexis Academic - Legal Research: This session will concentrate specifically on conducting legal research.

•  Tuesday, February 26; 2 to 3 p.m. (EST) 
•  Tuesday, March 19; 2 to 3 p.m. (EST) 

 LexisNexis Academic - News This webinar will show how to search current hot topics in the news, as well as archival news information and tailor search results to fit your needs.

• Monday, February 11; 3 to 4 p.m. (EST)

Bookscanner updated

The library's Zeutschel Zeta bookscanner has been updated with new software so that it provides even better scans and an easier interface. The Zeta is available for any Pitt Law student or faculty to use at no charge; all you need is a flash drive for saving your scans. Chris Todd has provided updated instructions with screenshots. But - if you want to scan flat documents - the flatbed scanners, located near the ref desk, are probably a better option. These scanners are connected to the internet so you don't need a flash drive, you can email the scans to yourself. If you need help with the scanners any of the library staff can assist you.

New article asks: should law profs have a CPE requirement?

A new article available on SSRN poses the question "Should Law Professors Have a Continuing Practice Experience (CPE) Requirement?". The article, by Emily Zimmerman of Drexel University, points out that lawyers in most jurisdictions have CLE requirements. She says that perhaps, in the face of recent criticism of legal education and the esoteric research done by legal scholars, law profs should be required to have Continuing Practice Experience. She also considers what types of activity would count towards CPE requirements and how much should be required.

Library catalogs and fiction

The U. Chicago Magazine recently had an article called "The Problem With Metadata" - a topic close to every librarian's heart. The author talks about the inadequacies of the Library of Congress Classification System in finding subject terms to describe fictional works. These terms are meant to distill the "aboutness" of a book; not easy to do elegantly when you are trying to describe a novel in a few words. But the author also points out that the more expansive brave new world of using keywords as metadata to help locate fictional works has its problems as well. He's been following how the New Yorker attaches keywords to its articles to make them findable: "On a weekly basis, I’m amused and baffled by the metadata attached to the short stories on the New Yorker’s website... The task of trying to reduce the ineffable qualities of fiction to streams of keywords feels at once charming and childish, like trying to capture moonlight in a jar." As an example, he says, "The three keywords for Alice Munro’s “A Wilderness Station” (Canada; Letters; Murder) are comically insufficient at summarizing a story about guilt, accusation, and suppres-sion that stretches across decades."

Lexis to shutter MB plant in Albany

The Albany Times Union reports that LexisNexis plans to close its Matthew Bender publishing plant in Albany by the end of 2014. The Matthew Bender company was founded in Albany in 1887 and "has long been a centerpiece of the Capital Region's business and philanthropic community." The article says that Matthew Bender publications will continue to be offered to customers.

Pitt to begin password change requirement

Attention Pitt readers: the University Times reports that beginning soon all Pitt account holders will be required to change their passwords every 180 days. That is twice a year if you do the math. Also, passwords will now be required to contain 8-14 characters, and must include one number and one special character. Pitt's computer people recommend using of KeePass Password Safe, a tool that allows you to keep a database of all your passwords guarded by one master password.

Help with New Year's resolutions

TechCrunch offers an article on the best health and fitness gadgets and apps for helping with New Year's resolutions. These range from fancy watchlike devices that track your heartrate etc. to apps that motivate you to diet and exercise. These run from the Beekeeper app makes you pay $ if you don't reach goals you set for yourself to Zombies, Run, an app that has zombies chase you while you are jogging or using a treadmill. Unfortunately they haven't figured out a way around the need to eat less, exercise more yet.

2012 Year End Report on Federal Judiciary

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has issued his "2012 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary," focusing on efforts by the federal courts to contain costs. Justice Roberts says "The Judiciary has been doing its part to carefully manage its tiny portion of the federal budget. Because the Judiciary has already pursued cost-containment so aggressively, it will become increasingly difficult to economize further without reducing the quality of judicial services. Virtually all of the Judiciary’s core functions are constitutionally and statutorily required. Unlike executive branch agencies, the courts do not have discretionary programs they can eliminate or projects they can postpone. The courts must resolve all criminal and civil cases that fall within their jurisdiction, often under tight time constraints. A significant and prolonged shortfall in judicial funding would inevitably result in the delay or denial of justice for the people the courts serve."

Improved site for History, Art & Archives of the U.S. House of Representatives

The (U.S. House of Representatives) House Historian and the House Clerk's Office of Art and Archives have a redesigned website. Together, the offices serve as the House’s institutional memory, a resource for Members, staff, and the general public. The site contains a wealth of information about the House of Representatives. For example, there is a page dedicated to the famous Bean Soup served in the House restaurant, including its history, the recipe from 1955, a video in which a former House page talks about his first encounter with the soup, and images of the entire 1955 House menu. Images, videos, oral histories, as well as plenty of pdf fact sheets about Congress are all available. There is an interactive map of the U.S. where you can find out facts about state representation. An information specialist at the CRS points out that it is "a great source for lists such as "Saturday and Sunday Sessions" and "Presidential Vetoes"."
The site has a basic search box and excellent finding aids and options allowing the user to recommend, share, print, and cite the content.

HeinOnline App

A HeinOnline is now available in the itunes store for accessing HeinOnline on iPad or iPhone. View the image-based PDFs, access content by citation, browse by volume, navigate a volume with the electronic table of contents, and use full advanced searching techniques. Note that HeinOnline account/authentication is required.

Federal Court opinions indexed by Google

Courtney Minick over at Justia reports that Google is now indexing the federal court opinions that have been made available via the FDSys database. This is good news if the courts you are interested in are available on FDSys; unfortunately, not all federal courts are available and the number of cases uploaded is very limited.

Legal Education in hard times

Tax Prof Blog has an interesting post called "Stealth Restructuring in Legal Education". The author points out the parallels between recent downsizing in law firms and what is happening now in law school admissions and enrollment. He also points out that the "decline of roughly 8000 in first-year enrollment (across the country, as reported by the ABA) means law schools probably are missing roughly $200 million in first-year revenue for the 2012-2013 academic year as compared to the 2010-2011 academic year. He goes on to look more closely at which law schools lost most enrollment and how they are restructuring; and says that this isn't being reported - hence the title of "Stealth Restructuring". The post says that "almost no one is reporting on what is actually happening at the dozens of law schools trying to deal with significant budgetary distress. In the coming months or in the next year or two, law schools will be leaner – with fewer staff and possibly fewer faculty (if early retirement options are put on the table or if untenured faculty are released). And quite possibly, some law schools may close. While a law school being forced to close likely will be news, it appears that law school restructuring generally is less newsworthy than law firm restructuring."

The Manhattan Project

This is a little off-topic, but there is an interesting new website called "Voices of the Manhattan Project" that is the result of a collaboration between the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Los Alamos Historical Society. The Manhattan Project, of course, was the top secret program that produced the first atomic bomb during WWII. The Project was a major human collaboration, with 130,000 people around the country working on it. There are about 26 interviews currently on the site. There is a long list of subjects; some of them do not yet have content but it does give an idea of the types of interviews that will be added. They plan to add add over 100 interviews.

Redesign of American FactFinder

American FactFinder, the U.S. Census Bureau website, is undergoing a redesign that should be available early in 2013. Some of the proposed improvements include:

• "Community Facts" - the easy tools on the Census homepage and AFF homepage of "Quick Facts" and "Population Finder" will be merged and replaced by a new tool called "Community Facts". Just enter the name of a state, county, city, town, or zip code in the search box to get summary data about that geography.
• "Guided Search" will be the /new /second choice, and consists of easy-to-work through prompted searches for these choices: "I'm looking for information about people" "I'm looking for information about housing" "I'm looking for information about businesses or industries" "I'm looking for information from a specific dataset" "I want to search for a table number or a table title" The user clicks their choice, then follows prompts to their data. The order is from the most general to the most specific, and can be used by the entire range of Census data users, novices to experts.

"Guided Search" is the topic approach to AFF that the Census Bureau has been promising to develop since the redesign of AFF began in 2010. According to librarians who have been beta testing the new site, "You're going to like it."

Statutes at Large now on WLNext

Westlaw recently added the United States Statutes at Large to WestlawNext. In order to access the content, click on the link from the Browse All Content tab for Statutes & Court Rules. Then click on the link to United States Code Annotated (USCA). Once you link into the USCA, you will see a link to United States Statutes at Large under Tools & Resources on the right hand side of the screen. When you click on the link to United States Statutes at Large, you will be brought to a template where you can enter your search criteria.

LLMC Digital Collection now in Pittcat

The LLMC (Law Library Microform Consortium) Digital collection is now cataloged and available via catalog search:  just do a Pittcat search for "LLMC Digital".  As you can see from its name, LLMC used to be a source of microfilm for law libraries. But for a number of years now they have been digitizing their holdings to make them available for subscribers online.  Barco Law Library has been a member of the consortium for a long time and we have had access to their databases, but until recently you had to know what was in the collection in order to access it.   LLMC has a wide-ranging assortment of legal resources, from a large collection of Blackstone and Blackstone spinoffs to the old laws of third world countries.  Since the hurricane that damaged Haiti a few years ago, LLMC has had a project to put all their Haitian materials online.  But they also have plenty of US federal and state materials, it's worth a browse just to see what all is available. Every month they post a Newsletter that tells what they've been up to, and a Recent Online Update that lists the most recently digitized materials. 

New database: ProQuest Statistical Datasets

We have subscribed to a new database from ProQuest called Statistical Datasets. This is a very rich and complex database containing vast stores of empirical information (more than 14 billion data points) that can be used, combined, and manipulated by researchers. The datasets contained in this resource include both public domain information and licensed information, all of which can be used dynamically, compared and combined. Intrinsic to the database are visualization tools that allow users present data visually in easy-to-comprehend graphs, charts and maps. You can access ProQuest Statistical Datasets at all campus computers, via the Pitt wireless network, and remotely via EZ Proxy. Please note that you must have the latest version of Java installed on your computer to use this resource; if you don’t, you may get a message telling you to download Java (it’s a free download). The default first page displays the “In the News” category of “Crude Oil Price” as a table and as a graph. However, in the lefthand menu you will see folders, all of which can be opened to display their dataset content. Because the resource is so complex, it is a good idea, before you start, to use two helpful links that you will see in the upper right of the page: Video Tutorial and LibGuide. The video tutorials are short, helpful and highly recommended. The libguides contain additional guidance on finding, selecting, and manipulating data as well as how to create maps, charts and graphs that you can use in presentations or print.
Please contact the Barco eResearch & Technology Services Librarian for more information. 

New database: KluwerArbitration

The Barco Law Library has a new database subscription to KluwerArbitration from Wolters Kluwer publishers. This database is a resource for legal research in the area of international arbitration and is maintained by Wolters Kluwer in conjunction with the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) and the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA).  It contains primary source materials as well as secondary materials and includes exclusive materials including ICC cases and awards. Commentary and materials are from the (ICCA) which has has compiled, translated into English and edited case law, legislation, national reports and congress proceedings on international arbitration. ICCA's principal publications, prepared with the assistance of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, are included in the database: the Yearbook Commercial Arbitration (edited by A.J. van den Berg), the International Handbook on Commercial Arbitration  and the ICCA Congress Series. The database contains materials from the ITA including the ITA Monthly Report which covers the latest developments in international arbitration.
KluwerArbitration also includes a useful set of practice tools that can help the practitioner draft arbitration documents, developed in conjunction with the International Arbitration Institute. A page of  weblinks and the Kluwer Arbitration Blog are also linked from the database. 

CQ Today and Roll Call combined into CQ News

CQ publications has introduced a new publication which incorporates the stories that have traditionally been found in CQ Today about the development of legislation with the key pieces of Roll Call — stories on  members of Congress, the politics that drive them, and the people and industries that influence them. So now  you can get  political and Hill coverage as well as  legislative news and schedules information in one place: CQ News. All CQ Today and Roll Call stories have been combined into a single database on CQ.com - CQ News. Stories are updated throughout the day at the NEWS tab. The CQ Today archive goes back to the 104th Congress (1995-1996), while Roll Call stories go back to the beginning of the 112th Congress (January 2011). If you have any e-mail alerts searching CQ Today, no changes are required and you’ll continue to receive your e-mail updates.
PS:  They also have a useful publication available on the website called "Guide to the New Congress: Profiles of new members, the legislative agenda, preview of committee activity".  

GlobaLex guides updated

News from GlobaLex, the electronic legal publication about international & foreign law research from the NYU law school. There is a new legal research guide titled "Research Guide of the Legal System of Kingdom of Nepal" by Ershadul Karim and Sirjana Sharma Pokhrel. The Guide includes information about the legal and political history of Nepal as well as a thorough guide to the legal system, online law, and legal education.
In addition, several of the GlobaLex Guides have been updated:

• An Overview of the Egyptian Legal System and Legal Research by Dr. Mohamed S. E. Abdel Wahab. 
• A Guide on the Harmonization of International Commercial Law by Duncan Alford. 
• Basic Primary and Secondary Information Online Sources for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the United States Central American Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) Research by Francisco A. Avalos and Maureen Garmon; Update by Francisco A. Avalos. 
• Researching the United Nations: Finding the Organization's Internal Resource Trails by Linda Tashbook. 
• The Austrian Legal System and Laws: a Brief Overview by Johannes Oehlboeck and Immanuel Gerstner; Update by Johannes Öhlböck.

hat tip: Joe Hodnicki, at the Law Librarian Blog

Libraries and privacy

Librarians know that we must maintain the privacy of library patrons.  There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of  Education today titled "As Libraries Go Digital, Sharing of Data Is at Odds With Tradition of Privacy". It reports that Harvard University libraries had to stop tweeting about what books their patrons were checking out. . According to the story, "It seemed harmless enough—a typical tweet read, 'Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman,' with a link to the book's library catalog entry". Nonetheless, privacy concerns were raised and they had to stop the tweeting; the worry was that someone might somehow use other details to identify the borrowers.

free 2013 Federal Rules for iPad etc.

Cornell's Legal Information Institute has made available free ebook editions (for iPad and all non-Kindle devices and software) of the 2013 Federal Rules of Evidence, Rules of Civil Procedure and Rules of Criminal Procedure. You will find them on the CALI eLangdell website. eLangdell has other ebooks for law students available as well.

Free books for ebook readers

The Digital Inspiration blog provides useful instructions on fairly painless ways to find free books for your Kindle and other ebook readers. The information includes websites that provide free copyright-expired books as well as tips on finding free Kindle books on Amazon by using search functionality on the Amazon website or using the Hundred Zeros website, a "frequently updated catalog of best-sellers that are free on Amazon". You can also see what books are currently free on the UK's Amazon site... but sadly, you can't "buy" them if you are in the U.S.

Take the numbers out of your FB page

Benjamin Grosser has created a web browser extention called the Demetricator that removes all the numbers on your Facebook page. The Facebook interface is filled with metrics that measure and display your social value and activity by enumerating friends, likes, comments, etc. Benjamin explains: "No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said. Friend counts disappear. ’16 people like this’ becomes ‘people like this’. Through changes like these, Demetricator invites Facebook’s users to try the system without the numbers, to see how their experience is changed by their absence."

Updated Statute Compilations Available in House Legislative Counsel's site

Obtaining an up to date Federal statute in its section-by-section statutory form rather than its codified form in the U.S. Code can be a daunting task. Recently, however, the Office of the House Legislative Counsel has made available, on a site called Statute Compilations, selected compilations of public laws that are frequently requested. On the site, in PDF format, are some three hundred, recently updated public laws, which are either not in the U.S. Code or are part of a U.S. Code title that has not been enacted into positive law. In the site's alphabetical list of public laws are many of general interest including the very large Social Security Act broken up by title. The site cautions that these documents are not official and should not be cited as legal evidence of the law.
hat tip: Rich McKinney, Federal Reserve Board Law Library

LawLifeline: online resource for struggling law students

It's that time of year - mid-semester - when stress levels in law students start to get really high. There is a new online resource called LawLifeline, launched by the Dave Nee Foundation and the Jed Foundation, organizations serving law and undergraduate students with mental health issues.  LawLifeline is full of information tailored to a law school student’s emotional health needs. The web site features articles about topics ranging from what makes law school so stressful to how to manage a mental health condition. Users can find information about diseases and disorders including depression, suicide, anxiety and substance abuse. The site also offers an anonymous diagnostic screening tool created with Duke University to help users gauge whether they or their friends have symptoms of a mental health disease or disorder. 

UVA celebrates 100 years as FDL

The library at the University of Virginia has an exhibit online that celebrates 100 years as a Federal Depository Library. It showcases some of the first documents it received as a federal depository: since WWI broke out soon after, the Government Printing Office (GPO) printed and distributed posters, thrift flyers, educational materials, ads for Liberty Bonds, and other materials to encourage the “Army of 100,000,000” that would eventually win the war. Posters and publications promoted and supported women’s and workers’ roles in the war effort, Liberty and Victory Loan drives, and food and fuel conservation, and can be seen on this interesting exhibit. 

HathiTrust case decided: "near-complete victory"

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the opinion handed down yesterday in the HathiTrust case: Judge Hands HathiTrust Digital Repository a Win in Fair-Use Case.  In the case, The Authors Guild and other author associations challenged the legality of the HathiTrust digitization program and sued the schools participating in the program, including the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin and Indiana University.  According to NYU Law professor James Grimmelmann says that the HathiTrust won on every substantive copyright issue:

•  Section 108 (17 USC 108) on library privileges doesn’t limit the scope of fair use. 
• A search index and access for the print-disabled are both fair uses. 
• Search indexing is a transformative use. 
• The libraries aren’t making commercial uses, even though they partnered with Google to get the scans. 
• The plaintiffs haven’t proven that HahiTrust is creating any security risks. 
• There is no market for scanning and print-disabled access, nor is one likely to develop. 
• UM is required under the ADA to provide equal access to the print-disabled, and is allowed to under Section 121 (17 USC 121) of the Copyright Act. 

Prof. Grimmelmann also comments that "this opinion together with the Georgia State e-reserve opinion and the UCLA streaming-video opinion strike me as a real trend—universities making internal technological uses of copyrighted works are doing quite well in court of late. Something significant in judicial attitudes towards copyright, computers, and education has clicked into place".

US Code: Classifications

Table of Classifications for Pub. L. 112-181 to 112-183, 112-186, and 112-188 to 112-195 are now available on the website of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (uscode.house.gov). When you visit the website you will also see a link to the beta version of the new and improved (and long overdue!) website. The beta version includes not only the same content with an updated look, but additional pages that explain both the US Code and the codification process. Worth a look.

Beta new website for the Office of the Law Revision Counsel

What's New in HeinOnline

The folks at Hein presented a "What's New in HeinOnline" update session at the July AALL conference. If you missed it (or if you want to see it again) they have recorded and posted an encore video presentation of the session available to everyone online. The one-hour presentation is designed to allow you to work through  at your own pace. Links are embedded throughout the presentation to allow you to focus in on areas that are of most importance to you; or you can  watch the whole presentation. Hein will also conduct a live "question forum" on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday October 16th from 2:00-3:00 p.m. EDT when you can ask about the new content on HeinOnline.

PA Superior Court to Begin Posting Unpublished Morandums

The Pennsylvania state Superior Court will begin posting all unpublished memorandum decisions on its website in the "very near future," according to President Judge Correale F. Stevens in an interview with Law Weekly. He said that the court's technology department is working on the matter and the goal is to start posting opinions "definitely by the end of the year, but it may even be sooner than that." The announcement comes a little more than a year after the court began identifying the authors of its memorandum decisions. Eventually, the demand from Pennsylvania lawyers and members of the public to post the decisions led to a consensus to post them. "We're trying to be as open and responsive to the bar and public as we can be," Stevens said. "I just hope the bar understands there are going to be a lot of memorandums." In 2011, about 95% of the decisions were unpublished: according to statistics on the Superior Court's website, the court issued 4,879 unpublished memorandum decisions versus only 278 published opinions.

Bloomberg Report on federal government transparency

Bloomberg has published a report online called "Untangling FOIA: An Analysis of Obama's Open Government Pledge."  The article states that "On his first full day in the White House, Barack Obama promised to 'usher in a new era of open government' and ordered officials to be more transparent with the public they serve. An investigation to test that pledge shows that many of the president’s own appointees haven’t met those goals. In June, Washington-based reporters at Bloomberg News filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the out-of-town travel records for fiscal year 2011 for Cabinet secretaries and top officials at 57 major federal agencies subject to the law. Only about half of those contacted provided the records and costs."  The article includes helpful interactive graphics, including a video that explains what the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is.
hat tip: bespacific

Fake peer reviews

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a troubling story today titled "Fake Peer Reviews, the Latest Form of Scientific Fraud, Fool Journals."  The article reports on a number of incidents in which authors got to critique their own work by suggesting reviewers with contact email addresses that belonged to the article author, and then writing "peer reviews" of their own work using another name. Apparently there have been about 30 papers to date that have been retracted because of peer review fraud. The Chronicle also reports that "What's worse, said Ivan Oransky, co-publisher of the blog Retraction Watch, which first uncovered this pattern, is that some editors saw red flags but published the papers anyway. Later retractions don't undo the harm created by introducing falsehoods into the scientific literature, he said, noting that some of these papers were published years ago and have been cited by several other researchers."

Gov Doc wins the 2012 Ig Noble Prize for Literature

The Ig Noble Prizes are awarded each year by Improbable Research Inc. The winners are announced at a gala ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre and prizes are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates. This year's Ig Noble Prize for Literature was awarded to: the US Government General Accountability Office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports. The winning title: "Actions Needed to Evaluate the Impact of Efforts to Estimate Costs of Reports and Studies," (32 page pdf, including a helpful link where you can report fraud, waste and abuse in federal programs)  US Government General Accountability Office report GAO-12-480R, May 10, 2012.

New Congress.gov site in beta

Last week, the Library of Congress (LC) announced that the LC, the U.S. Congress and the Government Printing Office (GPO) launched the new beta Congress.gov, which combines Congress's internal LIS system with THOMAS. The Congress.gov site includes bill status and summary, bill text and member profiles and some new features:

• Effective display on mobile devices; 
• Ability to narrow and refine search results; 
• Ability to simultaneously search all content across all available years, with some files dating from the 93rd congress; 
• Easier identification of current bill status; 
• Members’ legislative history and biographical profiles; 
• Maintenance of existing features such as links to video of the House and Senate floor, top searched bills and the save/share feature. 

 While the site is in beta, it’s important that the Library of Congress hear feedback from legal researchers. The Library is releasing Congress.gov as a beta site to enable a period of time for collecting user feedback and refining functionality while other content is incorporated. The Library anticipates Congress.gov will operate as a beta site for approximately one year as this work is completed. During that time, both THOMAS and LIS will continue to operate as usual.

JSTOR goes (more) mobile

JSTOR has announced improvements to using JSTOR on a mobile device. Rather than a device-specific app or a separate mobile site, they have used responsive design to implement an under-the-hood overhaul that enables the JSTOR interface to adapt to the screen size of a device automatically. This means that areas of the pages on the site are "reflowed", moved, or hidden to present a simpler but fully functional experience for researchers.  The new mobile design works well on a wide variety of mobile phones and tablets. Via mobile devices, researchers may now use the Institution Finder to log in from remote locations, complete advanced searches, save and manage citations and alerts, and access full-text content. There's a video explaining Institution Finder on the JSTOR video tutorial page. They are also offering a free webinar, called "Learn How to Get the Most from the JSTOR Platform", on October 19, 2012. 

Blue Book comparison

Law librarian Mary Whishner, at the University of Washington, has written a comparison of the 3 formats of the Blue Book: print, online, and iPad/Phone/Pod app. Her article is on LLRX.  The cost of the print Bluebook is now $34 from the publisher, and it weighs 1 lb, 6 oz. A subscription to the online version, available at www.legalbluebook.com, is $32 for one year, $42 for two years, and $50 for three years. The app is a very recent option.  Users need to download the app Rulebook and then purchase the Bluebook content for $39.99.  

PA Supreme Court one judge short

The Legal Intelligencer published an editorial this week, titled "Absence of Seventh Justice Impairs Court's Ability to Act," commenting on the current situation of the PA Supreme Court since Justice Joan Orie Melvin was suspended earlier this year. This leaves the Court with 6 justices, which is a concern because it is very possible that there will be 3-3 split decisions and default affirmation of appellate court rulings.  The editorial points out that the result of this is that the PA appellate courts - Superior Court and Commonwealth Court - may be the last stop in the state judicial process. Says the Intelligencer: "This is madness. Members of the appellate bar and law professors agree that the votes will effectively neutralize the Supreme Court in many cases and leave in place rulings that litigants believe are dubious at best."

hat tip:  Joel Fishman

State Employee Labor Laws

The teachers' strike in Chicago has prompted a post on the The Thicket blog called "Education Labor Laws in Light of Chicago Teachers' Strike".  The Thicket is a blog that is maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), and the post talks about differences in state labor laws that affect teachers.  The author also links to a database maintained by the NCSL called the Collective Bargaining and Labor Union Database that tracks state legislation on unions and collective bargaining. 

Mobile Apps for Law Students

A law librarian at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has put together a great research guide called "Mobile Apps for Law Students". Many are free; others range in price from a few dollars to as much as $499.99 for a bar prep app.  The apps are categorized as:

• Study Aids
• Reference
• Productivity 
• News
• Career
• Bar Exam
• Practice
• Ohio
• Federal

Thanks to Karen Schneiderman at CSU for creating the resource. 

New and Improved Legislative Source Book

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington D.C. (LLSDC) has provided the terrific online resource "Legislative Source Book" since 2000.  Now the site has been restructured and updated to make it even better; the content has been divided into more manageable general categories: Research Guides and Explanations, Resource Lists & Links, Tables of Information, and Other. It's a thorough guide for any sort of legislative research.      

Online Academy of Teaching and Learning Law

Vickie Eggers, a librarian who is the Director of Faculty Support & Distance Education at Cooley Law School in Michigan, has developed an excellent website called the ONLINE ACADEMY of Teaching & Learning Law. This valuable resource collects videos and articles about legal education in the categories teaching, learning, thinking, outcomes, assessment, skills, law practice, and technology.  The site focuses on law school pedagogy and curriculum, with a focus on educational methodology.  

sundown for Ref Works

A note from the University of Pittsburgh's library system has reminded us that they are not renewing their RefWorks subscription. Here's what they say: "After much consideration, the University Library System (ULS) has decided to not renew its subscription to the RefWorks citation management tool. The ULS subscription to RefWorks will end on September 30, 2012. Citation managers have evolved, and there are new, powerful tools available. The University Library System (ULS) looked at what citation management tools were used by the University of Pittsburgh faculty and students, and tested several other tools to see which might help our patrons make the most out of our resources for their research. The ULS will be offering training for two of these tools, Endnote and Mendeley, beginning in September 2012. The ULS will be reaching out to RefWorks account holders in several ways. The ULS will contact account holders via email to let them know of the subscription deadline. If you have already exported your citations or completed your research, please disregard this message. If you are still using RefWorks, the ULS is prepared to provide support during this time of transition in the form of online guides and one-on-one support." The ULS has created an online guide with instructions helping users to save and move their RefWorks collections to other citation management tools. The online guide Transitioning from RefWorks @ Pitt is available at http://pitt.libguides.com/refworkstransition."

If you digitize books can you throw them away?

The Baylor University Libraries Digital Collections Blog has an interesting post that discusses the question of whether it is responsible to discard the print copies of books etc. after you have digitized them and saved them in digital format. The discussion brings up Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, the Nicholson Baker book that is a must-read for every library & info science student. Some librarians do not agree with Baker's opinion that it was shortsighted for libraries to discard newspapers after they had been converted to microfilm, but the post's author agrees. As he explains, "what about the things we can’t predict? What if the next generation of computers is so different from what we’re used to today that the very idea of digital files changes completely? What if a specialized virus destroys every TIFF file in creation?...The best answer is to do what people have done since 200 BC: go back to the paper versions. That’s why we counsel our partners to use the process of digitizing materials to serve as a catalyst for rehousing materials in archival storage if they’re not stored that way already. That’s why we urge conservation of fragile materials before they arrive at our center. That’s why we never tell them it’s safe to throw something away just because it’s been scanned, cataloged and placed in a digital collection."
This opinion is shared by a British Library study that says "In summary, digital is not generally viewed as a suitable long-term preservation archival surrogate for print. It is currently regarded more as an access medium. As a preservation medium, digital was generally seen as unstable, experimental, immature, unproven on a mass scale and unreliable in the long term."

Is it ok to cite to websites in court documents?

There's an interesting post over at the West Reference Attorney Blog that addresses this question. We know that lawyers and law librarians, law students and faculty, frequently use Wikipedia and other non-legal websites for leads or ideas on research, but how accepting are courts of documents or materials from these types of websites? The author conducted a WestlawNext search (and includes the search phrase she used) to find this information. She concludes that courts are not very accepting of these cites, but despite the fact that many courts view this practice negatively, it is still frequently done.

Mind your online presence

It's a good idea to monitor the information that's available about you by following this infographic's advice: the Google Yourself Challenge. As it says, too many people don't take the necessary steps to protect the information they've shared online. The infographic provides a lot of statistics that really bring the point home.

New Congressional (ProQuest) interface launched

Just in time for the start of school .... the new interface for the popular ProQuest Congressional database has been launched.  It has a completely new look. The link from the law library databases list has been updated, though you can still use the "old" interface if you go to the old link (I don't know how long that will last).
ProQuest has provided a LibGuide with information on search syntax and other information.

Hotmail accounts banned from CALI website

Due to a near-site killing influx of spammers and other internet ne'er-do-wells using Hotmail, CALI had to ban all CALI.org accounts that are affiliated with a Hotmail email address. Unfortunately, this will cause a number of legitimate registered CALI.org users to be banned from the CALI system. This is a small percentage of total users, but still a decent amount of people. If a student or faculty member complains of being unable to log onto the CALI.org website, add "ask them if they use Hotmail" to your trouble-shooting checklist.

Mendeley

The Pitt University Library System has ended its subscription to RefWorks and is promoting the use of Mendeley, a free and open source  research management tool. Tech Crunch has an excellent post today that explains what Mendeley is and how it is affecting academic research.  Mendeley's open source, free software differs from other research platforms. The post says that "most academic online networks remain locked up by academic publishers (such as Elsevier) with expensive licensing agreements for universities... (T)he difference between the way it (Mendeley) and Elsevier approaches the academic world is thrown into sharp relief today with the news that Mendeley’s third-party app eco-system is fast approaching three times the size of Elseviers’. This amounts to the difference between an open and closed approach to apps." The story goes on the provide the statistics that Mendeley now covers 65 million documents, compared to Thomson Reuters' 49 million and Elsevier's 47 million.

BIALL Legal Information Literacy Statement

The British and Irish Association of Law Libraries has published a "Legal Information Literacy Statement", which aims to help law students develop a comprehensive legal research skill set following a five stage model. The five stages are: 

• Research skill 1 - Demonstrate an understanding of the need for the thorough investigation of all relevant factual and legal issues involved in a research task. 
• Research skill 2 - Demonstrate the ability to undertake systematic and comprehensive legal research. 
•  Research skill 3 - Demonstrate the ability to analyse research findings effectively. 
• Research skill 4 - Demonstrate the ability to present the results of research in an appropriate and effective manner. 
• Research skill 5 – Continuing Professional Development – refreshing the legal research skills required of a modern lawyer.

The Statement describes each of these stages and then develops a set of subskills that are required for each stage.

New Stanford Law site helps students navigate curriculum

The Sacramento Bee reports that Stanford Law School has launched an online tool to help students navigate curriculum and career choices to better prepare them to practice in specific areas of the law. The school spent three years developing the SLSNavigator, which is available for anyone anywhere to use. The content in SLSNavigator is based on extensive interviews with faculty, alumni, practicing attorneys, and other legal professionals about the substantive knowledge and skills they use in their careers. It includes not only law school courses but also courses from across the university that are pertinent to different areas of the law, furthering law school's goal of fostering interdisciplinary education.

Feeling Lucky? Or Hungry? Or Doodly?

After 15 years, Google has made a change to the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button that has been on the Google homepage since its inception. If you hover your mouse over the Feeling Lucky button for a second or two, it now shows a rotating list of Google’s other products like Hot Trends, The Arts Project, Image Search, Google Doodles, Google Earth and Local Search. So the wording on the button changes from "I'm Feeling Lucky" to other words like "I'm feeling Hungry", or "I'm Feeling Playful". Depending on which set of words is visible on the button when you hit enter, the results will be affected; you can't be sure where the search will take you.

ReDigi hopes to sell used ebooks

Publishers Weekly reports that internet company ReDigi, which currently sells pre-owned digital music, hopes to do the same with pre-owned ebooks. The question that arises, of course, is whether we consumers actually own the apps, music, ebooks, and other content we have paid for, and whether we can legally resell them. ReDigi is currently involved in a copyright infringement case filed by Capitol Records in the US District Court in Manhattan involving their resale of digital music and whether the first-sale doctrine applies to digital content. ReDigi claims that it is just the cyber-version of a used record store and everything it does is lawful because its technology first validates, then transfers your music to its servers without copying. If ReDigi prevails, it will "upend the way e-books and other digital products are sold, since such products would get a second life on the resale market and provide a new revenue stream for publishers and authors."

Judge issues order in precedent-setting GSU case

Publishers Weekly reports on the final order filed by Judge Orinda Evans in the Georgia State University copyright case in a story titled "Final Order in GSU E-Reserves Case Is a Rebuke to Publishers." The case, Cambridge University Press et al v. Patton et al, featured three academic publishers (Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage Publications) alleging that GSU administrators systematically encouraged faculty to commit copyright infringement via GSU’s e-reserve systems as a no-cost alternative to traditional coursepacks. The judge had found for the publishers on just five of ninety-nine counts of copyright infringement claims. Now with her order she not only rejected the publishers request for relief on the five counts but also (in what PW terms a "stunning development") ordered the publishers to pay the defendants' attorney costs. Georgia State University has prevailed in what is seen as a precedent-setting lawsuit that will help determine the future of copyright law in the digital age.

Google tweaks algorithms to include copyright removal requests

Information Week has an article,  "Google Joins Copyright Police Force", about Google's announcement last week that it will start demoting sites in search results that receive large numbers of valid copyright-infringement notices. A Google official is quoted as saying "Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily — whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify." The Information Week article, however, see this as a bad idea, saying that "Google Search should not participate in copyright enforcement any more than a hardware store should restrict the sale of hammers to prevent a potential crime. It should not circumvent the judicial process by passing judgment on websites just because someone complains. The legal system presumes innocence until guilt is proven; Google should make the same presumption."

Digital legal resources: India

The Foreign, International and Comparative Law (FCIL) SIS of the AALL has posted an interesting and useful PowerPoint presentation given by Priya Rai at the recent AALL Conference in Boston. Ms. Rai is is the Deputy Librarian In-Charge at the Justice T.P.S. Chawla Library, National Law University Delhi, India. Her presentation,  Access to Legal Information in the Digital Age: A Comparative Study of Electronic Commercial Databases and Public Domain Resources in Law, was made possible by a grant from FCIL. The presentation contains information about the use of digital legal information resources in India, the commercial and public domain resources that are available for Indian law and an evaluation of the competing commercial and public resources.

St. Louis Law dean resigns in protest

The Wall Street Journal law blog has a post about the abrupt resignation of Annette Clark as Dean of St. Louis University School of Law. Her scathing letter of resignation was posted to the Above the Law Blog and has pretty much gone viral.  In her letter she accused the president of St. Louis University, Rev. Lawrence Biondi of taking law school money and using it for general university purposes, contrary to agreements made with the law school. She also complained about being left out of key decisions and said that she has no confidence the university's president or vice president for academic affairs.
She remains a tenured faculty member of the law school.

Online training in the new ProQuest Congressional

ProQuest Congressional is rolling out a new user interface, and they are offering free online sessions with ProQuest trainers "for a first look at the new interface and to discover what is NEW, BETTER, and DIFFERENT. We will also answer any questions about contacting technical support, accessing online help, and more."  The list of scheduled trainings is available on the ProQuest website; the webinars are free but they do ask that you register ahead of time. 

OR judge says inmate can choose to be executed

The ABA Journal reports that An inmate in Oregon who was sentenced to death after his second murder conviction,  and who has asked to be executed, has won a round in court.  The governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, had vetoed the death penalty for inmate Gary Haugen. Marion County Civil Court judge Timothy P. Alexander said in handing down his opinion that " "clemency is an act of grace, and the recipient is not obliged to accept it."  The state is expected to appeal the ruling. 

Digital Preservation made easier

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance Outreach working group (an initiative of the Library of Congress)  has created a helpful website called "Digital Preservation in a Box", a "gentle" introduction to the concepts of preserving digital information. It provides a set of resources to support introductory-level information and education for those who may have little to no knowledge of digital preservation and digital curation issues, to help them with stewarding their digital information. It provides resources for preserving digital info in a variety of formats:  Photos, Audio, Video, Email, Personal documents, and Websites. There are links to other useful  digital preservation websites as well.  

Survey looks at smartphones and perceived/real privacy

A fascinating article in Technology Review looks at a recent study done by researchers at the University of California -Berkeley law school and published on SSRN. The paper is titled "Mobile Phones and Privacy" and the researchers report that there is a disconnect between user perception of the security and privacy of cellphones and the reality. For example, over 75% of people surveyed for the study believed that law enforcement needs special permission to access cellphone information; in fact, In fact, law enforcement can guess a password to unlock a confiscated device, and can impersonate the phone's owner by sending texts if the phone is unlocked. Neither activity has been struck down by the courts.

Storing files in the cloud

In his Personal Technology column this week, Walter Mossberg compares four of the leading online file storage repositories: Dropbox, SugarSync, Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive. As he says, "this type of service is useful for anyone with many computers and devices, either for personal or group use".  

Summer reading?

Are you all caught up on your reading and looking for something new?  There are still a few weeks to go in the summer. Publishers Weekly has some challenging reading suggestions for you: The Top 10 Most Difficult Books. 

Mind Mapping Software demonstrated

Are you interested in mindmapping software but you're not sure what it is? Does the word "mindmapping" make you a little leery?  Here's a clever little demo from Lucidchart, a mindmapping software company, that demonstrates how you can use mindmapping to diagram ... Hey Jude. 

We're not pushing this particular product but props to whoever thought up this video.

West eLearning webinars cover TWEN and WL Next

FYI, West is holding a series of free online webinars about TWEN (as well as WestlawNext) starting this week and continuing through July. The info is on their website. They make it quick and easy to register for one of the webinars and add it to your calendar. Note that there is also a pdf Quick Start guide that tells how to register, log in, and participate in a webinar. It also explains that if you register for the webinar but are unable to attend you will be able to access the recording of the webinar after the fact.
The webinar topics are:

• TWEN 101
• Transitioning from Westlaw Class to WestlawNext in 20 minutes
• TWEN: don't recreate the wheel
• The Key Number System on WL Next
• Top Ten WLNext features
• TWEN: how to add video and other cool stuff
• How TWEN makes information sharing easy

Comparing congressional bill versions

A query on the LLSDC listserv asked if anyone knew a good resource that would allow you to compare side by side amendments to a bill passed by Congress. One answer said that that while THOMAS does not yet have this feature, but CQ Roll Call's "Bill Compare" shows the version changes (unfortunately we don't have this resource because it is expensive). Then someone at Lexis chimed in with this helpful hint: "You can find bill text version on Lexis from 1989 forward (these are from CIS and are also in ProQuest Congressional, but only government, public, non-profit and law school libraries can access them on that platform), and then you can use a redlining program or even Word to highlight differences or changes in the versions from introduced through enrolled- you just get plain html text though, no interlineations or italics. The file is BLTEXT for current Congress, or the archives are BTX111, or BTXxxx back to 101. PQ Congressional is digitizing bills & resolutions back to 1789 as a new PDF collection."

Legal Information Institute releases first US Code ebook

Our friends at the Legal Information Institute at Cornell (LII) have announced that they have released their first title in eBook form: United States Code Title 17 – Copyrights. It's available for download from the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook stores for $5.99. The LII plans to offer full-featured primary legal materials in these two popular eBook formats. All LII titles will feature livelink cross-references with fully-functional navigation between references within each title. Out-of-title cross-references and references to supporting notes and documents link directly to the LII web site. Each eBook title is updated annually, but links to the LII web site put the most recent official version and an array of updating and research tools at your disposal. The text of LII eBook editions is beautifully formatted and indented, making it far easier to read than other e-book editions.

Hat tip: Katie Nye

Social Media simplified

This says it all.  Thanks to Pat Roncevich for passing it along. She got it from her friend Lisa Santucci, librarian at Miami University of Ohio. Before that, we're not sure.  

Changes to Google Scholar search interface

The Internet for Lawyers website reports that Google is testing a new interface design for their Google Scholar service. And according to the report, the redesign reduces the user's ability to do successful case law research because it's more difficult to find what you need. Fortunately, they point out, you can still access the "old" (better) interface either via the direct url or by clicking the link in the lower lefthand corner that says "revert to old venerable look".  

"Dr. Livingstone I Presume"'s field diary

The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that a group of scholars and archivists have been working to make legible an 1871 field diary kept by Dr. David Livingstone in Africa. Apparently Dr. Livingstone ran out of writing equipment and wrote some of his diary on old newspaper sheets with ink he made from berries. It has taken more than two years but with fancy scanners they have succeeded in making 99 percent of the diary legible. The article includes before-and-after images of one of the pages, and has a link to the entire Livingstone Spectral Image Archive which includes TIFF images, XML transcriptions, and metadata for the diary.

Supreme Court affirmative action case amici briefs

Inside Higher Education has an interesting article about an upcoming affirmative action case before the Supreme Court.  The case, Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, challenges the right of the University to consider race and ethnicity in admissions when it has been able to achieve diversity through the race-neutral "10 percent" rule (assuring all graduates in the top 10 percent of high schools in Texas admission into any public university in Texas).  Now amici briefs have been or will be filed by Asian-American groups for both the plaintiff and the defendant. A brief supporting Ms. Fisher and arguing against race-based admissions was filed by a group including the 80-20 National Asian-American Educational Foundation and the National Federation of Indian American Associations. Four other groups including the Asian American Justice Center plan to file an appeal backing the University of Texas; they filed a joint brief when the case was considered by the Fifth Circuit. The Inside Higher Education article discusses more fully the Asian-American perspective on race-based admissions. 

Most cited law reviews

The Michigan Law review has published a new study (36 page pdf) of the most-cited law review articles of all times. The article (the abstract is also available) is an update by Yale law librarian Fred Shapiro, who first published such a survey in 1985,  and Harvard law librarian Michelle Pearse. The study compiles law review citation information in a variety of ways, and the authors say that "New research tools from the HeinOnline and Web of Science databases now allow lists to be compiled that are more thorough and more accurate than anything previously possible." The authors give a detailed and thoughtful analysis of trends in the data over the years. For example, they note that articles about law and economics have "been plentiful among the citation elite", continuing a trend seen in previous surveys, while articles about critical race theory and critical legal studies have "faded in acceptance" over the last decade.  The subject of intellectual property has also been increasingly the focus of scholarship, but the authors say that "this field's ascendance is more attributable to technological developments than to personal ones".