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".  

Women's Equality around the world

The Law Library of Congress has prepared a resource called "Constitutional Provisions on Women's Equality" (9 page pdf) that provides links to the constitutions of foreign jurisdictions with language stating women's equality and/or states' anti-discrimination policies.

Chrome edges out Internet Explorer

Web analytics firm StatCounter reports that for the first time the Google Chrome browser has edged past Internet Explorer in browser usage. In the same report, it looks like Firefox usage has stayed fairly constant.

Ruling in Georgia State copyright infringement case

Judge Orinda Evans of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has handed down her ruling (350 page pdf) in the case of Cambridge University Press v. Becker. The case is a closely-watched lawsuit in which a group of academic publishers sued Georgia State University over its use of copyrighted material in electronic reserves. The ruling is being hailed as something of a victory for Georgia State, as the ruling cleared most of the copyright claims against the university, although Businessweek reports that Georgia State was held liable for five of the 99 claims. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the publisher-plaintiffs in the case are disappointed with much of the ruling.  

Summer reading...

If it's May, it must be time to catch up on non-law reading for pleasure.  The Christian Science Monitor has an especially interesting list of 15 new novels recommended for summer reading. The plots range from a story about a duck-billed playpus in Adelaide, Australia (Albert of Adelaide), to a book offering an updated version of "Age of Innocence" set in a Jewish suburb of London (The Innocents).  If you prefer non-fiction, they also provide a list of 21 "smart" nonfiction books that are being published just in time for summer reading.

LLSDC provides major update to the online section of the Legislative Source Book

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington D.C., Inc. (LLSDC) has announced a major update to its 21 year old publication entitled, "Internet and Online Sources of U.S. Legislative and Regulatory Information" part of LLSDC's extensive and highly regarded Legislative Source Book. The ten page publication briefly describes and then sets out in a comparison table more than 60 Internet and online sources for U.S. federal and state legislative and regulatory information. It describes both subscription sources and non-subscription source, so that readers can see what kind of legislative and regulatory information is or is not available from each provider, and frequently the dates of coverage and the file name.

ProQuest announces individual access to databases

ProQuest has announced a new service called Udini that is geared towards "the individual researcher".  According to the press release, Udini is geared towards knowledge workers without access to research libraries, providing  individuals with access to "premium" ProQuest content like peer-reviewed and trade journals, dissertations, newswires, and more. It includes content from publishers like Springer, the Economist, Cambridge University Press, and 3800 others. It is easy to sign up for a Udini account, and you get 5 articles for free to keep forever.  After that you can preview articles and decide if you want to pay to get the entire article added to your Udini library.
It certainly marks a new approach to selling proprietary content, and it will be interesting to watch.
Hat tip: Law Librarian Blog

Graphic: gay rights in the US, state by state

The UK Guardian has an interesting "data visualization" on their website that illustrates gay rights in the United States, state by state. The categories in which states are compared include gay marriage, gay adoption, hospital visitation and medical decision-making, and various anti-discrimination areas of law. The states are grouped by region.
Hat tip: Pat Roncevich

National Archives catches inside thief

The Washington Post reports that a sharp-eyed collector of radio ephemera has helped the National Archives bring a thief to justice. The collector was shopping on eBay for additions to his collection when he came upon an item that piqued his interest: the master copy of a broadcast radio interview with baseball legend Babe Ruth as he hunted for quail and pheasants on a crisp morning in 1937. A close look, however, made him realize that the item had been stolen from the National Archives. Working with federal authorities, he helped them track down the seller- who turned out to be a longtime Archives official who has admitted to stealing 955 items from the Archives – including original recordings of the 1948 World Series and a rare recording of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster.

NYC public schools forbid Facebook friending for teachers

The New York Times reports that the New York City Dept. of Education has issued guidelines governing social media interactions between teachers and students. Following numerous inappropriate relationships between students and teachers that began on social networking sites, the rules prohibit teachers from communicating with students using their 'personal' Facebook or Twitter accounts, and requires parental consent before students can participate in social networking for educational purposes. The rules also state that teachers have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other officials will inspect teachers' profiles.

LOC on born digital collections

The Library of Congress's Digital Preservation blog today has a really interesting post about the Rhizome ArtBase online archive of digital art. This is the beginning of a new series that the LOC is trying out that will focus on interesting and valuable "born digital" collections. The series will look at particular collections and include conversations with archivists, curators, librarians and others who work to collect, preserve, and provide access to "our born digital cultural record". Today's article features an interview with the digital conservator of Rhizome ArtBase, who talks about the sort of work that is in the collection including Jellotime.com (2008) and the Endangered GIF Preserve (2012-ongoing) which collects animated GIFs that have been marked for deletion from Wikipedia.

Digital library for all

Technology Review has a terrific article feature titled "The Library of Utopia". The article discusses the utopian ideal of making all knowledge available to everyone in a public library of all books ever published. In particular, the article looks at two projects with these ambitions: the Google Book project and Robert Darnton's Digital Public Library project. The author discusses the problems that have arisen with each, and the prospects for the future.

Dropbox price compared with other online storage

Amit Agarwal's Digital Inspiration blog has a useful post in which he compares the cost of "cloud" storage in the top online storage services. The services he looks at are Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, and SugarSync. He points out that the pricing strategy of Google (for Google Drive) and Microsoft (for SkyDrive)has pressured Dropbox to offer smaller and less expensive plans.