Venn diagram showing difference between geek, nerd, dork and dweeb

OCLC 2010 report on the impact of libraries in the US

OCLC has just released "How libraries stack up: 2010" (2 page pdf), a report that examines the economic, social and cultural impact of libraries in the United States. This concise report gives statistical evidence of the importance of libraries and includes eye-catching graphics illustrating these statistics.

EPA's risk assessment database available to public

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced that the Health and Environmental Research Online (HERO) database is now available to the public online. The database contains the scientific studies that EPA uses as a basis for making regulatory decisions. You can browse the database by topic; the options include "Air Pollutants" (ozone,sufur dioxide, etc.), "Chemical & Substances" (asbestos, chlorine, mercury, etc. ), and "Health & Environmental Effects" (such as acid rain, cancer, & climate change). According to the HERO site,"Public participation, transparency and collaboration are key elements to the success of HERO. The Open Government Directive is to break down long-standing barriers between the federal government and you. HERO helps accomplish this by sharing the scientific literature used in risk assessment development."

Law.gov's suggested metadata practices for legislation and regulations

The law dot gov workshop hosted by the Legal Information Institute and held at Cornell last week has already produced some general recommendations for metadata for legislative information, including a general recommendation to use XML for metadata. You can read the specifics on the LII website.

Map of free & low cost legal databases

Greg Lambert over at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has provided a helpful US map that shows which low-cost legal research databases are provided free of charge through state bar associations (currently 48 state bar associations offer members free access to at least one low-cost research service). For example, the New York Bar offers LoisLaw , 28 states offer Casemaker, FastCase is offered in 16 states, InCite is offered in Pennsylvania, and VersusLaw is offered in Arkansas. Currently, only Montana and California offer no legal research databases to state bar members.

State lawmakers challenge Maryland law school clinic

The Baltimore Sun reports that the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Maryland School of Law has come under scrutiny by some Maryland state legislators because of a pollution lawsuit the clinic has filed against a small chicken farmer and Perdue Farms, the "poultry giant". The suit alleges that polluted runoff from the small farm, which raises chickens for Perdue, is fouling the Pocomoke River and could affect the Chesapeake Bay. According to TortsProf Blog, a group of state legislators is trying to stop work on the case by denying funding to the law school until and unless the law school turns over information about the clinic operation, including confidential client information.

Harvard’s Berkman Center and eIFL.net Launch “Copyright for Librarians"

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard has announced the launch of the "Copyright for Librarians" website. "Copyright for Librarians" is an online, open access curriculum on copyright law, developed in conjunction with eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries) and intended to provide librarians with information about copyright law in general, as well as the aspects of copyright law that most affect libraries, especially those in developing and transition countries. The course materials include nine modules organised into five different levels that can be used as the basis for a self-taught course, a traditional classroom-based course, or as a distance-learning course.

Senate committee voices concerns over PACER

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, has sent a letter (6 page pdf) to the Senate Appropriations committee that approves funding for the Judiciary in which he voices concern over the federal court PACER system. He says "I have concerns abour how the Administrative Office of the Courts is interpreting a key provision of the E-Government Act relating to public access to Court records. Given the transparency efforts that have been made a priority across the Federal Government - as well as the recent call in the FCC's Broadband plan for increased online access to court records - I believe more attention needs to be paid to make these records free and easily accessible". He goes on to express concern that the courts are using PACER fees to pay for initiatives unrelated to providing PACER access, against requirements of the E-Government Act.

Google-China censorship

The Associated Press has an interesting article that looks at the specifics of how China's censorship of Google and the internet affects Chinese online users. They tested Google in Beijing, and report that "Recent searches for taboo topics from Beijing generally produced 'page cannot be displayed' errors. The user's browser stops working for about a minute, longer if one tries to access forbidden sites in quick succession. " As an example, they point out that doing a China Google search for "Falun Gong", the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government, causes the browser to become unresponsive; the same search done in Hong Kong results in many links to info about Falun Gong. YouTube is blocked in China but not Hong Kong.
The article concludes that "The Great Firewall isn't an exact science, but it's meant to keep most of the sensitive content from most of the citizens most of the time."

Today is Google Day in Pittsburgh

Do you have any plans for your lunch hour today? If not, you might consider heading downtown to the City-County Building for "Google Day". Our Mayor is calling on yinzers to wear black and gold and form the word Google at 12:30, when a photo will be taken from the roof of the building. The photo-op is he move is the latest in a long series of stunts nationwide as cities vie to serve as a testbed for Google's experimental high-speed Internet service. You can also promote the 'burgh's selection at www.PittsburghGoesGoogle.com.

hat tip: Katie Nye

It's Not too late to enter the Peeps in Law contest

There's still time to enter the Peeps in Law contest sponsored by the ABA Journal. Create a law-inspired diorama starring Peeps and send a photo of the diorama to the ABA Journal. Prizes will be awarded for the best 2 top Peeps in law entries; the prizes will be "Peeps prize packs filled with Peeps treats and treasures worth $150 and $100." I wonder which is first prize?

OCLC free webinar on maximizing value of WorldCat

OCLC is offering a free Webex webinar that provides an introduction to WorldCat.org, OCLC's public-facing discovery tool for library-owned materials worldwide. The webinar illustrates how public services staff, managers and technical services staff can work behind the scenes to help users get the best results from WorldCat.org. The webinar is offered on the following dates:
•Tuesday, March 30, from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.(ET)
•Wednesday, April 14, from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. (ET)
You can register online for the free webinar.

Google stops censoring China searches

Google has stopped censoring its China website and starting today Google China internet traffic traffic will be automatically rerouted to Google Hong Kong, fulfilling a pledge to stop censoring searches as required by China. By relying on Hong Kong, Google is trying to find a way to fight censorship laws while still keeping a presence in mainland China. The approach may not work for long because the government will likely block the Hong Kong site just as it has before with the main Google.com page. Google challenged the Chinese government in January by threatening to allow all search results to be shown on its China Web site, including references to Tibet and the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Google has about 600 employees in China, and Google.cn included the search engine, Google News and Google Images.

Digital Inspiration blog has photos of the Google office in Beijing, with flowers and wreaths.

Cornell's LII hosting law.gov standards workshop

Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute in Ithaca, New York, is hosting a workshop for the Law dot Gov Initiative March 22 and 23. The ambitious goal of the meeting is to develop standards and practices for metadata for legal information online.
The workshop is focusing on four specific activities:

1. the creation of a general standard for caselaw
2. exploration and adaptation of the CEN/Metalex interchange standard for statutes and regulations
3. adaptation and illustration of the URN:lex standard for legal document addresses
4. exploration of the “scaffolding” (such as metadata registries) needed to support authoritative, distributed systems

Participants in the workshop include representatives from the law schools and law libraries at Cornell, Yale, Rutgers, Harvard, and Columbia; the Law Library of Congress; the US Government Printing Office; the Princeton Center for Information Technology and Policy; Lexis-Nexis; the National Center for State Courts; the Sunlight Foundation; and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction. You can follow the proceedings on Twitter at #lawgov.

Updated law school spring schedule

State case law availability in legal databases

3 Geeks and a Law Blog today published a post that discusses the availability of state case law in non-Wexis, lower-cost legal research databases Fastcase, Loislaw, Casemaker and Google Scholar. Law librarian Greg Lambert, who authored the post, reports that the low-cost legal research provider that has the most state case law coverage, based on years of coverage, is Casemaker. He came to this conclusion through research in which he:

• Looked at coverage for all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia
• Established the year that the each state published its first official state court decision (highest court)
• Reviewed the scope of coverage for each research provider
• Graphed who had the best pre-1950, pre-1920 and pre-1899 coverage
• Graphed who had the most states where there was complete coverage of all decisions
• Finally graphed the overall percentage of state case law decisions for all 50 states and the District of Columbia

You can read more and see the graphical representation of state caselaw coverage in Greg's blogpost.

YouTube, Viacom legal battle

AP news reports that Viacom and YouTube began airing each other's dirty laundry yesterday in a legal battle that has been going on since 2007. Previously confidential information came out as part of the evidence in a copyright lawsuit that Viacom filed against YouTube in 2007 for alleged copyright infringement of "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show" and other shows. YouTube's official Blog claims that "For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there." Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal law blog, Viacom, owner of Paramount Pictures, MTV and Comedy Central, cites internal YouTube memos and emails to argue that YouTube actively encouraged the distribution of infringing content, thereby disqualifying it from immunity under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Pitt sponsors debate on the Google Books settlement

Pitt's Computer Science department is sponsoring a debate titled The Google Books Settlement – Access vs. Privacy, on Friday, March 26, from 2-3 p.m. in Room 121, David Lawrence Hall. The debate will be conducted by the William Pitt Debating Union with two expert advocates: Ginger McCall, Staff Counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. and Lateef Mtima, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at the Howard University School of Law. Ms. McCall graduated magna cum laude from Pitt with a BA in English literature, and received her J.D. from Cornell University law school, where she helped to found the Cornell Law School National Security Law Society. Prof. Mtima graduated with honors from Amherst College and received his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School, where he was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Harvard BlackLetter Journal.
A flyer for the event is available online.

hat tip: Sallie Smith

C-Span Launches Video Archives

C-SPAN has announced the official launch of its searchable Video Archives this week, with the inclusion of twenty-three years of C-SPAN video online. The archive offers 160,000 hours of political events covered by the C‑SPAN Networks since 1987. C-SPAN records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses by individuals. Programs are indexed by subject, speaker names, titles, affiliations, sponsors, committees, categories, formats, policy groups, keywords, and location; the congressional sessions and committee hearings are indexed by person with full-text. C-Span founder Brian Lamb said that the archives are an extension of the network’s public service commitment.

WorldCat URLs updated to include titles

WorldCat has announced that a recent enhancement to WorldCat.org allows work titles to be included in the URL. For example, the previous permalink URL for The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/287628. Now, the permalink URL will be http://www.worldcat.org/title/catcher-in-the-rye/oclc/287628 - and, even better, title-only URLs, like http://www.worldcat.org/title/catcher-in-the-rye will resolve correctly. According to WorldCat, this enhancement makes WorldCat.org URLs more intuitive, mashable and search engine-friendly.