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.