Russian law blog

Bob Ambrogi over at Legal Blog Watch points to a new Russian law blog by Dmitry Medvedev, who besides being a lawyer is also president of the Russian Federation. He has both a Live Journal blog, Dmitry Medvedev's Blog, and a video blog, Dmitry Medvedev's Videoblog. Since I don't read Russian, alas, I am using the imperfect Google Translator to check out the blog which is titled "Блог Дмитрия Медведева Обращения Президента России и комментарии "or, translated to English by Google, "Blog by Dmitry Medvedev President of Russia and commentary". The nice thing about Google translate is that you can suggest improvements to the translation.

Felon teaches CLE

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that local lawyers earned CLE credits for attending a local seminar featuring a convicted felon posing as an expert on criminal sentencing. Howard O. Kieffer was brought in by Federal Defender Services of Wisconsin to talk to local lawyers about the ins and outs of state and federal criminal prison sentences. According to information from the Milwaukee seminar, Kieffer was one of five speakers at a three-hour conference entitled "Sentence Computation Issues: State v. Federal Custody and Service of Multiple Sentences." In the brochure, he was identified as a graduate of Antioch Law School. He wasn't. Apparently Mr. Kieffer had made a living for a number of years going around the country teaching CLEs. "To the extent that Mr. Kieffer hoodwinked Federal Defender Services of Wisconsin, we are one of many," said Daniel Stiller, executive director of the agency.

Federal CIO calls for "context driven" government.

Washington Technology reports that Vivek Kundra, President Obama's federal chief information officer, wants a “context-driven government” with services accessible through people's regular daily activities that involve information technology. He cited the Human Genome Project and the Global Positioning System technologies as examples of how government data has led to innovation.

swine flu resources

The biggest story in today's newspapers is the growing fear that the world may be entering a global pandemic as U.S. officials declared a public health emergency relating to the swine flu that has been detected in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a website with information and links. The World Health Organization also has a website on the international incidence of swine flu. There are maps on Google and MSN tracking confirmed and suspected cases. If you Twitter, you can follow Healthmap's #swineflu to receive swine flu alerts.

ULS database trial: Encyclopedia of China

From ULS: We currently have a trial of Encyclopedia of China Online from Brill available through May 24. Please feel free to test this resource and send any comments to both Haihui Zhang (the East Asian collection librarian) at haihuiz@pitt.edu and Dennis Smith at drs@pitt.edu.
The URL for the Encyclopedia of China: http://www.brillonline.nl/
Username: pittsburw
Password: launqp
Information about using the encyclpedia can be found on the "preliminaries" page.

US News law school rankings

They're out, and you can read all about it in the online ABA Journal.

Does "renting" textbook violate copyright?

Afterdawn News reports that TTVK, a Finnish national copyright lobby, is threatening a book rental service called Bookabooka for allegedly running a 'Pirate Bay for Books'. No, Bookabooka doesn't host any e-books on its site, or provide online access to books. What it does is offer a service where students can "rent" their (traditional) textbooks to their peers. Renting is done through the mail and it is mandatory that the textbooks are originals (not xeroxed copies). Bookabooka acts as an intermediary, connecting the students - it doesn't handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks. Nevertheless, the Finnish book publishers' association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced the service is breaching copyright laws and threatening their business. TTVK has given Bookabooka until Friday to cease operations or face a lawsuit. Bookabooka's founders have vowed to keep the service online and ignore the threat.

hat tip: Slashdot

Law Library of Congress adds articles

The Law Library of Congress has announced that they've added Constitutional Interpretation and War Powers Resolution Sections to their U.S. Constitution Website with two new articles focusing on U.S. constitutional issues. The two articles are available in their entirety in PDF , which includes one book, twenty-four articles, and six statements to Congress.

New online law magazine aggregates best legal scholarship

Robert Ambrogi over at Legal Blog Watch reports that, in what they are calling an unprecedented online collaboration, seven of the most influential U.S. law reviews are collaborating to launch The Legal Workshop, an online magazine featuring plain-English articles based on scholarly counterparts published in traditional law journals. Here is how they describe it:
The Legal Workshop features “op-ed” versions of the articles published by the member journals. These concise and lively pieces are written for a generalist audience, combining the best elements of print and online publication. Each Legal Workshop Editorial undergoes the same rigorous editorial treatment and quality screening as the journals’ print content, but readers are able to offer comments and esteemed academics have the option of submitting response pieces, which are checked for citations and substance.
By aggregating the work of multiple law reviews, The Legal Workshop is able to provide frequently updated content. New article-based content is posted every Monday and most Wednesdays and Fridays. The Legal Workshop provides a one-stop forum for readers wishing to stay abreast of contemporary legal scholarship.
The seven participating law reviews are Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review and University of Chicago Law Review.

Earth Day and Earth Week

Green Patent Blog is hosting blawg review all week. Blawg Review is the oldest established permanent floating rundown of legal blog posts in cyberspace. Green Patent Blog operates at the intersection of IP law and all things green, clean, or renewable. Since it's Earth Week this week and Earth Day today they are putting a special emphasis on "the green and earthy".

Congressional Research Service reports

The Law Librarians' Society of Washington D.C. (llsdc) has announced that its Legislative Source Book site, "Selected Congressional Research Service Reports on Congress and Its Procedures", has been expanded so that it alphabetically lists 250 CRS Reports by title and links each one to its corresponding site on http://OpenCRS.com. The few reports that are not on OpenCRS.com are marked with an asterisk before the title and are generally linked to a previously scanned report that was downloaded to the LLSDC site. The enhanced site listing CRS reports on Congress also provides links to most all other sites on the Internet containing a substantial amount of CRS reports.

TurnItIn archiving of student papers is ruled "fair use"

ZDNet reports that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Northern District Court of Virginia's summary judgement that TurnItIn.com's use of the student papers was fair use and not copyright infringement. TurnItInis a service marketed to high schools and colleges in which student papers are entered into a database and then pattern-checked for signs of plagiarism. Several students in Northern Virginia had filed a lawsuit against them claiming copyright infringement.

Pitt's Westlaw rep provides Write-On Competition tips

You may remember that last May the Write-On Competition created chaos in the computer lab as most of the 250 1L's tried to print 1000 pages of caselaw at the same time. In order to try to prevent a recurrence our Westlaw rep Ryan Vandegrift has scheduled several Write-On training sessions for students and is also providing handouts with Tips for the write-on competition. The main points that his handout makes are:

• On May 8, 2009, the Westlaw printers at Pittsburgh will be pooled into a single "Student Printer Pool". This pool will include both printers on the 4th floor and the printer on the 3rd floor.
• The printers will be pooled for at least one week or until the printer volume returns to normal.
• Print jobs are routed in sequential order ... not volume. So, shorter print jobs may get "stuck" behind longer print jobs.
• E-mail / Download will not be affected.
• Using http://findprint.westlaw.com is the best option to ensure all print jobs are sent together.

Help for law students

An article in the Chronicle of Education today reports that some law schools are trying to find new ways to support graduating students, including offering extended health insurance or new academic programs to ease their bumpy transition into the legal profession. Graduating law students are facing a difficult time as law firms defer the start dates for their new hires because of the economy, leaving some graduating law students with delays of up to a year or more before they can begin their jobs.

free v expensive legal information

Tom Bruce from the Cornell Law Library and the Legal Information Institute has a very thoughtful and interesting blogpost called "What are we about?" in which he discusses the motivation and purpose behind proprietary databases like Westlaw and free legal information sites like LII. He is proud that the LII has contributed substantially to breaking the intellectual and engineering stranglehold that West and Lexis had on legal information twenty years ago. And while admittedly West is "winning the Grand Prix", there is a place for LII and similar sites that are just trying to help a lot of people get to work; because West and the LIIs are thinking about very different kinds of research consumers.West imagines — as most law-school instruction in legal research seems to — that the aim of research is to support argument in high-stakes litigation, or in some other setting where potential hazard justifies the expense of a high-end service. LII, on the other hand, serves a different type of legal research - it provides legal information for everyone, something like a legal version of WebMD.

The future of the FDLP

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published a whitepaper called "Strategic Directions for the Federal Depository Library Program". The paper discusses how to plan for the future of the FDLP in light of both its mission and technological advances. It concludes that "The reframing of the FDLP presents the opportunity to create a new service model that will substantially increase and enhance access to and discovery of government information. The framework for the future will be based on access, discovery, management of the resources and tools, and delivery of these resources to users. Emerging social software, digital technologies, and broadband networks offer GPO, participating depository libraries, and other partners new ways to cooperate as they seek to build, sustain, and provide access to the digital collections of the future while preserving the print resources of historic importance. It will be essential that, in repositioning the FDLP to a sustainable, flexible system that is not geographically defined, the best elements of the traditional print-based approaches to government documents management and access are merged with the capacities of networked services and resources. "

And speaking of audio...

The Federal Courts have announced that their pilot project to make digital audio recordings of courtroom proceedings publicly available online has been expanded from 5 federal courts to 9 through the end of 2009. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims and three bankruptcy courts — in the Middle District of Florida, Eastern District of New York, and Rhode Island — have been added to the project. Rhode Island already is offering the recordings online, and the other three courts are moving toward implementation. They join the 5 original pilot courts — U.S. District Courts in Nebraska and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts in the Eastern District of North Carolina, Northern District of Alabama, and Maine. The audio files are accessible through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. Digital audio recording has been an authorized method of making an official record of court proceedings since 1999, when it was approved by the policy-making Judicial Conference of the United States. Digital audio recording is used in most bankruptcy and district courts (where magistrate judges account for most of the usage). In courts with digital audio recording, CDs of hearings have been available for the authorized fee of $26, but prospective purchasers have had to make the trip to the clerk of court’s office. During the pilot project, Internet access to the same content at the nine pilot courts will cost a minimum of 16 cents — eight cents for accessing the docket sheet and another eight cents for selecting the audio file on PACER.

CD Collections now available for studying

The Law Library recently added to the collection several audio sets from West Group’s Sum & Substance CD series. Each multi-disc set reviews fundamental concepts of a particular area of the law, with lectures from well-recognized law professors. Currently available topics are: Constitutional law, Family law, Contracts, Sale and lease of goods, Criminal procedure, Criminal law, Civil procedure, Property, Torts, Evidence, and Professional responsibility. The sets are available for 3-day loan at the Law Library Circulation Desk. You can also locate them in PITTCat by doing a Call no. search “CD Collection”, or title search “Sum & Substance CD series”.

hat tip: Sallie Smith

GPO summary

There's a nice article in this month's Internet Connection (Westlaw password required) that describes the Government Printing Office, where it is, what it does, and the resources and databases that it provides.

Amazon: giltch?

Slashdot reports that firestorm broke out on the internet yesterday when blogger Mark Probst noted that Amazon instituted an overnight policy that removes books that may be deemed offensive from their search system. He found that Amazon had deleted the sales ranking from two newly-released gay romance books as well as hundreds of other gay and lesbian themed books. Information Week tells how the story quickly became the hottest topic on Twitter and made its way to major online news outlets; by late evening the Associated Press was reporting that an Amazon spokesman said a "glitch" in the Amazon system had caused the problem and was being fixed. However, this does not jibe with the reply that Mr. Probst had received from Amazon: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."