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.