Upcoming ProQuest Congressional webinars

ProQuest has announced a series of Congressional webinars for April and May:
1. Tuesday April 5, 12:00 noon:  Using/searching ProQuest Congressional Hearings for Expert Testimony : Join this 30 minute webinar for how to search Congressional hearings for expert testimony - including companies, scientists, researchers and more. Register here.
2. Tues. April 19, 12:00 noon:  Legislative Insight Overview :  Join this 30 minute webinar for a quick review of ProQuest Legislative Insight. We’ll look at two legislative histories, one more straightforward and the other more complex, to explore the legislative histories and the functionality of Legislative Insight. Register here.
3. Thurs. April 21, 12:00 noon:  101 Uses for the Congressional Research Digital Collection  The Congressional Research Digital Collection, made up of Committee Prints and CRS Reports, is a rich source of varied content – from pro/con discussions to Democratic and Republican staff papers. Join this appr. 45 minute webinar to explore some of the content types and how to find them. Register here.
4. Tues. May 3, 1:00 pm: Using ProQuest Congressional for Historical Research The ProQuest Congressional Collection, with all of the full text modules, creates a rich source of information for those doing historical research. Join this webinar (45-60 minutes) to explore sources available - the Congressional Record, Committee Hearings, the US Congressional Serial Set, the Executive Branch Documents collection and the Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations and how you might use them for research.  Register here. 

Security in libraries

Inside Higher Education recently posted an article titled "Library Access vs. Library Security" in which it discusses security and safety in academic libraries that are open to the public. The article uses the Pitt ULS as an example of how some libraries deal with public access: "The University of Pittsburgh library system, for example, lets everyone in but charges a $100 fee for borrowing privileges for the unaffiliated." Other university libraries have guards and security cameras; Georgia State recently closed the library to the public after a series of armed robberies inside the building - they are upgrading security cameras and improving sign-in procedures during the closure.

AAUP draft report on Title IX enforcement by the Dept. of Education

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has released a draft report, available for comment (56 page pdf), called "The History, Uses and Abuses of Title IX." In the report, the AAUP warns that the manner in which Title IX enforcement dealing with sexual harassment and assault, by the Education Department and campus administrators, is trampling faculty members' rights to academic freedom, due process, and shared governance. It also warns that "colleges’ current focus on eliminating sexual harassment may be contributing to other campus inequities, and may actually be hindering broader efforts to fight sexual discrimination under the gender-equity law known as Title IX." The report concludes that ""The contemporary interpretation, implementation, and enforcement of Title IX threatens academic freedom and shared governance in ways that frustrate the statute’s stated goals," and that by interpreting Title IX "to focus primarily on sexual harassment and assault on campus" the department has been distracted from its duties under that law to protect women from discrimination in other areas, such as access to academic programs and participation in collegiate athletics.

Blue(book)s Wars

Carl Malamud of Public Resource has been on the case of the Bluebook for a couple of years now . The latest salvo came in a recent posting in the Harvard Law Record titled "The Blue Wars: A Report From the Front" written by Mr. Malamud. In the post he refers to a letter he received from attorneys for the Harvard Law Review Association "concerning Mr. Malamud's recent Twitter postings." The post gives the history of the wranglings over the Bluebook that Public Resource has been involved in since 2009.

hat tip: Pat Roncevich

Google Scholar search button

If you like to use Google Scholar to find free cases and scholarly articles (and who doesn't?) you can add a Google Scholar button to your browser, if you use Firefox or Chrome. This lets you launch the Google Scholar search box from your browser bar. The default is set for articles; if you want to change the default to case law, click on the gear icon at the bottom right to for the "Scholar Settings" page. Then you can include patents, or search for caselaw and articles, and set the results to a max of 20 per page.

Webinar on Government Apps and Mobile Sites

"Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian" Webinars from the Government Resources Section of the North Carolina Library Association is a series of free webinars designed to help librarians do better reference work by increasing familiarity with government information resources, and by discovering the best strategies for navigating them. These sessions are recorded and made available after the live sessions from the NCLA GRS web page.
On Friday, March 18 from 12-1 there is a webinar called "Get App(y): Government apps and mobile sites." You can register here.

Transparency for the Congressional Research Service

Recently, bipartisan bills were introduced in both houses of Congress (S 2639 and HR 4702) that authorize the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) to make reports prepared for Congress freely available to the public. Libraries, educators, and groups advocating for transparency in government support the legislation. An agency within the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) employs more than 400 policy analysts, attorneys, and information professionals across a variety of disciplines in five research divisions: American Law; Domestic Social Policy; Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade; Government and Finance; and Resources, Science and Industry.  CRS provides policy and legal analysis to Congress, and its reports remain the province of congressional members and their staff. They are released to the public mainly when referred to during hearings. A new website, CRSReports.com, was launched in December 2015, and purports to be the “largest free and public collection of Congressional Research Service reports.” The earliest report in the repository is from 1989. The "Search" function is, at present, rudimentary. 

We say carNAYgie, you say CARnegie. You're wrong.

Aha! Irrefutable proof that we Pittsburghers (unlike everyone else in the world) pronounce "Carnegie" correctly.

hat tip: CMOA

National Archives website adds new features

The National Archives has announced updates to their website - in particular, to the National Archives Catalog. "You can now:
- Enjoy the updated homepage featuring background images from Catalog records.
- Find what you need with a more intuitive advanced search page.
- Add your comments on digitized records, descriptions, and authority records; and
- Track your "citizen archivist" contributions with updated user account pages.
- Add data from scanned records to your developer toolbox with increased API functionality.”
Also, if you enjoy coloring books, the National Archives recently released the "Coloring Book of Patents 2016," available as a free 17 page PDF and full of "sheer inventive weirdness." 

Psychology & Lawyering symposium

The U. of Nevada - Las Vegas law school recently published a collection of papers that were presented at their symposium on Psychology and Lawyering. These articles discuss how research in psychology can be used to inform legal education and lawyering in general. Among the interesting titles:
- Getting Students Psyched: Using Psychology to Encourage Classroom Participation;
- Hiding the Elephant: How the Psychological Techniques of Magicians Can Be Used to Manipulate Witnesses at Trial;
- Virtuous Billing; and
- Silencing our Elders.

US v. Apple at a glance

The Wall Street Journal Tech Blog has a very concise explanation of the U.S. v. Apple dispute titled U.S. v. Apple: Where They Disagree. For a slightly longer take on the dispute, the MIT Technology Review has an article called The Legal Question At the Core of the Apple Encryption Standoff. 

cellphone battery help

The New York Times Personal Tech blog has a really helpful article today called "Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Life." The bad news is that we're stuck with not very good batteries for "the forseeable future"; but there are some ways to eke out battery life that I didn't know about.

ABA Journal Peeps diorama contest opens

It's that time of the year again: Law in Peepculture, aka the ABA Journal's Peeps Diorama Contest. To quote the ABA Journal article: "The spring awakens, which means it is time for 2016 Peeps in Law: Peep Wars... Create a law-related diorama with Peeps, take a photo of the diorama and send the photo (JPG, GIF or PNG) by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 21 to peeps@abajournal.com. Include a title of the diorama, how you would like to be identified and a description of what the diorama represents. If you’d like to attach additional multimedia, go for it! In the past, some dioramas have had accompanying videos and original songs. Decisions to accept and post dioramas are solely up to ABA Journal staff. Here is a photo gallery of 2015 entries to give you some inspiration."

Finally, Fastcase

We were intrigued and a bit nervous last fall when new-ish legal research company Fastcase announced the acquisition of competing service Loislaw from Wolters Kluwer. We had a subscription to Loislaw but not to Fastcase. So we are pleased that Fastcase invited us to "grandfather" our Loislaw subscription into a Fastcase subscription, now available on the Barco databases page. And Fastcase's "smarter legal research tools" are more intuitive and help users drill down to the information they need more quickly. Features include:
- Interactive Timeline - the first data visualization for results.
- Smartphone apps, for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
- Bad Law Bot, the first big data service to find negative history.
- Integrated citation analysis - know which results are most important with a single click.
- The Loislaw treatise libraries.

Fastcase helpfully links out to other websites for information not (currently) included in the database, like Federal docket filings and HeinOnline. There's a "Search Newspapers" link to NewsLibrary, where you can find stories from newspapers across the US.
Fastcase is available to law school faculty, staff and students inside the Barco Law Building (including via wireless network). Currently it isn't available off-campus.
Fastcase also provides free live training webinars that you can register for throughout the spring.  

New map of academic law libraries

Law Librarian Aaron Kirschenfeld from UNC has put together a list of academic law libraries in the U.S., available as a map and as a downloadable spreadsheet. H collected the library's name, website, and Twitter profile, and plans to add blogs to the mix soon. He is also asking for help in correcting information I've gotten wrong or for suggestions about what else to include - you can email him your comments.

Hall of Justice, new database of criminal justice across the U.S.

A new database called "Hall of Justice" was announced today by the Sunlight Foundation. According to the announcement, "Hall of Justice is a robust, searchable inventory of publicly available criminal justice datasets and research. While not comprehensive, Hall of Justice contains nearly 10,000 datasets and research documents from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and the federal government. The data was collected between September 2014 and October 2015. We have tagged datasets so that users can search across the inventory for broad topics, ranging from death in custody to domestic violence to prison population. The inventory incorporates government as well as academic data."

GPO Launches Beta of govinfo.gov, eventually to replace FDsys

The Government Publishing Office has announced the beta launch of govinfo.gov, a new platform for federal government information that will eventually replace FDsys, GPO’s current digital archive, in 2017. According to the announcement, "govinfo is a user-friendly, modernized site that provides an easy to use navigation system accessible on smartphones, tablets, laptops and personal computers." GPO said other features include an alphabetical list of collections, quick links to popular publications, related documents and search by calendar.

Task Force on Federal Corrections issues sweeping report

The Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections has issued a Report titled "Transforming Prisons, Restoring Lives" (132 p. pdf) that makes a set of recommendations to reform the federal justice system, enhance public safety, and save the government billions of dollars. The report provides both an urgent call to action and a roadmap for reforming the federal prison system. The Task Force was established by Congressional mandate in 2014 as a nine-person, bipartisan, blue ribbon panel charged with developing practical, data-driven recommendations to enhance public safety by creating a more just and efficient federal corrections system. The Task Force found that punitive mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes represent "the primary driver" of prison overcrowding and recommends they be reserved for the most violent offenders. The report also urges more oversight and resources for the Federal Bureau of Prisons — and for programs that return inmates to their communities and foster bonds with their families.

Oyez Project's future up in the air

The Chicago-Kent Law professor who has been building and maintaining the Oyez Project since the early '90s is retiring in May, and the future of Oyez is up in the air. Jerry Goldman has been providing his content free to the public but now he would like to sell the content, according to an article in the WSJ Law Blog. "“There are a lot of buyers out there if the cost is zero,” Mr. Goldman says.
Oyez includes 7,794 hours of argument since Oct. 13, 1955, including such landmark cases as Engel v. Vitale (striking down mandatory prayer in public school, 1962), Loving v. Virginia (invalidating ban on interracial marriage, 1967) and U.S. v. Nixon (requiring president to surrender Watergate tapes, 1974). Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court's own website, Oyez also offers audio of justices reading their opinions as the decisions are announced.

Harvard Law announces a new tool for preserving online info

Jonathan Zittrain, chair of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law has announced the release of Amber, a free software tool that can be used with WordPress and Drupal to preserve content and prevent broken hyperlinks. Zittrain said "Amber harnesses the distributed resources of the Web to safeguard it. By allowing a form of mutual assistance among Web sites, we can together ensure that information placed online can remain there, even amidst denial of service attacks or broad-based attempts at censorship.”