Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978

The Barco Law Library has added a new database to our collection.  Supreme Court Records and Briefs 1832-1978 is part of the Making of Modern Law series.  contains official court filings from the final years of the court’s fourth chief justice, John Marshall, through the first 10 years of the court’s 15th chief justice, Warren Earl Burger. Some cases consist of a few documents, while others may include dozens of documents. The collection does not include the Court’s rulings, opinions or decisions, but focuses on the legal documents and records presented to the court. includes famous briefs written by leading attorneys (many who later became judges and associates of the Court) such as Louis D. Brandeis, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It also contains briefs written by institutions, corporations, and advocacy groups, including NAACP, the ACLU and The New York Times, It covers cases whose landmark decisions have become an essential part of American law, politics and history including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade.

Early help with your digital New Year's resolutions

If your plans/hopes for 2014 include getting some control over your digital stuff,  two articles published today can help. Does this sound familiar: "most people have a growing inventory of storage sitting around their homes. Typically there’s a drawer of 1GB and 2GB USB flash drives—it seemed like a lot of space at the time—camera cards, old CDs and DVDs, and usually a few external drives. What’s on those drives? Can they still be read? Are they safe to throw out?"  Note that the author doesn't even mention the piles of floppy disks stuck on a shelf somewhere.  In "How to Cope with an Expanding Data Closet", from MIT Technology Review, Simson Garfinkel gives extensive advice on how to "create your own personal storage management plan" and organize all that data.  
Meanwhile, ProfHacker, a blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, has a post titled "Lighten Your Inbox in 10 Minutes with Unroll.Me".  I confess I haven't had time to test it out yet, but just the thought of a service that helps cope with the barrage of daily emails makes me feel hopeful.
Here's to a neatly organized 2014.

Vendors of legal research databases: who bought whom in 2013

Greg Lambert at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has an interesting post titled "Review of 2013 Legal Research Vendors' Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships".  Thanks, Greg. 

The legal aspects of drones

There's been a lot about drones in the news lately.  And just in time, CALI has a new lesson titled "Drones: Unmanned Aircraft Systems" which explores the legal aspects of drones in both military and civilian settings. This lesson looks at the following legal issues relating to the use of a UAS:
1. FAA proposed and current regulations;
2. Military uses and the ethics of such use. Military uses include using drones as a decoy, or as a target simulating enemy aircraft, or in reconnaissance providing battlefield intelligence, or in combat attacking or killing people;
3. Law enforcement use and the search and seizure implications; and
4. Other commercial purposes and privacy considerations.
Note: you will need to be registered for a CALI account before taking the lesson. 

25 years of PACER

The US Courts are hailing the 25th anniversary of the PACER electronic filing and docketing system.  "In September 1988, the Judicial Conference of the United States approved a new way of opening information to the public, through a service known as PACER—Public Access to Court Electronic Records." You can read all about the history of PACER and the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) on the US Courts website, complete with photographs. The article concludes: "User surveys in 2009 and 2012 showed strong and growing user satisfaction with PACER and CM/ECF, but efforts continue to build on the first quarter-century’s success. We are in the process of modernizing the CM/ECF system and PACER service, to make it more user-friendly. The biggest challenge—and opportunity—lies in the area of preservation of the electronic dockets and opinions for posterity. Electrons don't age as gracefully as paper. We will need to work closely with the National Archives and the Government Printing Office to ensure that future generations can access this valuable information.”

Printing Questions Answered

It's the time of year when students are doing a lot of printing, and may have questions about campus printing at Pitt.  CSSD has a webpage with all the information they might need. The most common questions about print quota and adding money to your print quota are answered:

Pittsburgh campus students receive 900 print units per semester. Black & white pages are 1 unit each. Color pages are 7 units each. Users can purchase additional units for $0.07 each at the Pay Stations located in any of the Campus Computing Labs. You can check how many pages you have printed at any time. Log in to accounts.pitt.edu, click Manage My Account and click the View quota information link.

Google Scholar amps up features

Google Scholar Blog has announced the launch of Google Scholar Library, a feature that allows a user to "save articles right from the search page, organize them by topic, and use the power of Scholar's full-text search to quickly find just the one you want... with a single click, you can import all the articles in your profile as well as all the articles they cite.". You're able to use "labels" to organize the material you've saved to your library. And Google Scholar's database includes U.S. case law, legal journal articles, and patents, as well as scholarly articles from many other disciplines. You can also save library access links for up to five of your most-used libraries.

Project Management Software

Law Library Tech Talk, a pretty regular online show brought to you by several geekish law profs & librarians, discussed and recommended  some online project management software products yesterday.  These are, in alphabetical order:

1. Asana: "Teamwork without email."
2. Azendoo "We make it easier for people to do their job, to work better, together."
3. Trello "Organize anything, together." 
4. Wrike "Project Management Software that makes your life easier!"

All have free trial options, as well as various levels of pricing.  

Scheduled GPO website maintenance

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) will be performing scheduled maintenance on its Web services this weekend, and many GPO Web services will be unavailable.
Start Time: Saturday, November 23, 2013, 7:00 a.m. EDT * End Time: Sunday, November 24, 2013, 8:00 p.m. EDT
Approximate Duration: 36 hours
 During the maintenance period, Beta.fdlp.gov,  FDLP.gov, FDLP Community, Digitization Projects Registry, Browse Topics, and Ben's Guide will experience downtime. The Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the Federal Depository Library Directory will not be affected. The GPO says:  "Scheduled maintenance is a necessary and vital aspect of Web services. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation during this time."

GPO assembles publications about JFK

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy was one of the most historic—and horrific— events of the 20th century. In commemoration of this important milestone in our Nation's history, the U.S. Government Printing Office has assembled a number of Official Federal publications that help us reflect on the legacy left by “JFK” in his 1,000 days in office.  These include publications containing the text of his speeches as a Senator, the story of the Peace Corps, and publications that tell about US involvement in the Cold War.  

The truth abt legal research vendors, irreverently

This 10 minute video succinctly tells the story of electronic legal research in thrall to big vendors.

hat tip: Joe Hodnicki

The Google Books verdict came down yesterday. Google won.

Wow. The use of the full text of tens of millions of books for its online search function is a transformative use and thus Google's mass digitization of those books without authorization from copyright holders constitutes fair use, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled Nov. 14. The story is all over the news and the full 30-page decision is available in pdf format online. The current citation for the case is Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google Inc., S.D.N.Y., No. 1:05-cv-08136-DC, 1:05-cv-08136, 05-cv-8136, 11/14/13.
PW reports that "After years of fair use legal wrangling, the case wasn’t even close. Chin found Google easily prevailed on three of the four fair use factors, and lost slightly on one."
Libraries are pleased with the decision; the ALA said that "This ruling furthers the purpose of copyright by recognizing that Google’s Book search is a transformative fair use that advances research and learning.”

Considerations before weeding print in favor of digital

Government Documents librarian James Jacobs has posted a reminder on the govdocs website that all libraries should bear in mind as we are pressured to weed our print collections.  He says please take these four things into account:
 1. Do you actually have access to a digital copy? Note, for example, that some documents in the HathiTrust are fully available only to HathiTrust members. http://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#Download
 2. Are the digital copies you expect to rely on complete and accurate? Many are not. See the article in D-Lib: "The Digital-Surrogate Seal ofApproval: a Consumer-oriented Standard." by James A. Jacobs and James R. Jacobs. D-Lib Magazine, 2013, 19(3/4).
 3. Do the digital copies you intend to rely on match the needs of your users? Not all digital copies are created or delivered equally. For example, Have they been OCR'd? Is the OCR text searchable? Can you copy the OCR text? Are numbers in tables preserved in the OCR text? Was the original a large-format or did it contain images, color, fold-outs, maps, etc., and are those as legible and as easy to use as the original? Do your users expect to use digital books in a different way from paper (textual analysis? convert to ebooks? read on tablets? use text-to-voice? etc.) and do the digital copies you intend to rely on meet the needs of your users?
 4. Finally, providing digital copies for enhancing access and use is a good thing, but please do not assume that it is necessarily a good idea to discard paper copies once digital copies are available. Print copies were made to be used in print (size, layout, accessibility, visual context, etc.). Digital copies of those may or may not adequately preserve that same usability and accessibility and few digitization projects take the time to remake the paper into a fully functional digital object designed to be consumed digitally. The preservation of these valuable paper copies will continue to be important unless and until many questions can be adequately addressed (http://freegovinfo.info/node/3961). Discarding paper prematurely, without ensuring the long-term preservation of these historic documents would be contrary to the spirit of the FDLP and would not serve either your constituents or the nation.

Transition to Congress.gov

The Library of Congress has announced that on Nov. 19 the free legislative info website THOMAS.gov will redirect to Congress.gov as Congress.gov transitions into its permanent role as the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies. The site, which launched in beta form last fall and features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation, is replacing the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov.

Redesigned RegulationRoom website launched

RegulationRoom - the website operated by the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) and hosted by the Legal Information Institute (LII) - has just launched a completely redesigned version of their website RegulationRoom.org. They have also opened a new discussion about consumer debt collection practices. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is considering new rules for the debt collection industry, and needs feedback on its questions and ideas. CFPB believes debt collection is an important issue for consumers and are taking the first steps to gather information to determine what rules would be appropriate to protect consumers who are subject to debt collection. They would like input from anyone who:

• had an experience with debt collection (good or bad) 
• counsels consumers with overdue debts
• has a business where you do your own account collection or 
• works in the debt collection industry. 

Practical Law Co. on the future of US-EU Safe Harbor for Data

The US-EU Safe Harbor framework is an important cross-border data transfer mechanism that enables certified organizations to transfer personal data from the EU to the US in compliance with European data protection laws. Recently, however, the Safe Harbor's future has been thrown into doubt. Following widespread concern about the US government's covert surveillance programs, European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding announced in July 2013 a plan to review the Safe Harbor and publish the results before the end of 2013. To learn more about the US-EU Safe Harbor and recent developments affecting its future viability, see the Practical Law Company's assessment on  Privacy & Data Security: The Future of the US-EU Safe Harbor for Data Transfers.

New ULS database: OnePetro

OnePetro is an online library of technical literature for the oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) industry. It contains more than 145,000 documents produced by 18 publishing partners, including the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). It may be useful for our faculty and students who are interested in the law of Marcellus Shale development.
hat tip: Judy Brink, Engineering Library

New free e-resource: Global Health and Human Rights Database

Lawyers Collective and the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington DC have launched the Global Health and Human Rights Database . The Database is a fully searchable online database of more than 1000 judgments, constitutions and international instruments on the intersection between health and human rights. The Database is the first attempt to comprehensively make available health and human rights law from both common and civil law jurisdictions, and features case law and other legal documents from more than 80 countries and in 25 languages. It also provides 500 plain-language summaries and 200 original translations of case law previously unavailable in English. The Database has been created in collaboration with more than 100 partners from civil society, academia, and legal practice worldwide. An official public launch of the Database was held on 24 October 2013, at the Dag Hammarskjold Library Auditorium at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.

hat tip: Lyonette Louis-Jacques

Portico e-journal service reaches historic milestone: More than 25 million articles preserved

Portico has announced that it is preserving 25 million journal articles—and counting—through its E-Journal Preservation Service. The articles represent content from more than 287,000 volumes and more than one million journal issues. This is a significant milestone for Portico and the library and publisher community that supports digital preservation. "It is quite remarkable to see the growth in the Portico archive over the last eight years," commented Marilyn Geller, collection management librarian of Lesley University, an early Portico participant. "When it first started, the Portico system was an untested concept. But in the ensuing years, the system has proven successful and the organization has demonstrated that they can be trusted when unforeseen circumstances happen. We couldn't be more pleased with Portico's growth." Read the complete news  release online.

Students are texting in class!

We already know that students are texting in class. Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent study done by a researcher at the University of Nebraska that looks at just how much they are texting.  The results show that Undergraduates reporting using their devices for non-class purposes 11 times a day, on average, compared to 4 times a day for graduate students. Asked why they were using their devices in class, the top answer was texting (86 percent), followed by checking the time (79 percent). e-mail (68 percent), social networking (66 percent), web surfing (38 percent) and games (8 percent).