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Post Frequency: 11.2/day Last Entry: November 21, 2009 at 09:47:00 Recent Entries: 3619
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The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
Posted on November 21, 2009Cameron Chapman's Six Revisions blog post offers a brief history of the Internet. It identifies key milestones and events related to the growth and evolution of the Internet between 1969 to 2009 with some great screen captures. See also Jacob...
Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs
Posted on November 21, 2009Florida Personal Injury Lawyers Blog http://www.floridapersonalinjurylawyersblog.com http://www.floridapersonalinjurylawyersblog.com/index.xml Reports on injury law news, cases and opinions in Florida. Published by the Law Offices of Jason M. Melton, PA...
More Friday fun - "You kids today have it so easy. Back in my day . . . . "
Posted on November 20, 2009Here's the Gen X version of a generational cliche that's been making the internet rounds. But first, a couple of observations: 1. This will indeed make you feel very old; and 2. it's hard to imagine that some day this...
Friday Fun: Jon Stewart Explains Net Neutrality
Posted on November 20, 2009Hat tip to Public Knowledge. [JH] The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c From Here to Neutrality www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis
Is West Contributing Pricing Information for the Next Edition of the AALL Price Index?
Posted on November 20, 2009According to the November issue of the AALL E-Newsletter, the answer is "yes." I'm happy to report that all four major legal publishers will contribute pricing information for the 7th edition of the AALL Price Index for Legal Publications. The...
ABA Launches Pilot Program: Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals Covers Third, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits
Posted on November 20, 2009The ABA has launched Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals, a pilot program designed to provide reporters, lawyers, educators, and the public with prompt, accurate, unbiased information about newsworthy and legally significant cases pending in and decided by the...
On the Demise of Legislative Instructions from the States to Their Federal Representatives
Posted on November 20, 2009The practice of state legislatures instructing their federal representatives in Congress, notably state-appointed U.S. Senators, was part of the constitutional culture of the early history of the United States. According to Christopher Terranova in his note, The Constitutional Life of...
Opening: Serials & Acquisitions Librarian, Drexel Univ. Legal Research Center
Posted on November 20, 2009The Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University invites applications for the position of Serials & Acquisitions Librarian. As part of the Collection Services department, this position reports to the Head of Collection Services, and works closely with the...
Google's To-Do List To Compete With WEXIS in the Online Legal Research Search Market
Posted on November 19, 2009If Google really wants to compete with Westlaw and LexisNexis, the Company's next steps should be (1) to fill the holes in the primary legal resource collections that it indexes; (2) to build an effective, automated legal citator; and (3)...
AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers
Posted on November 19, 20092009 Competition Winners Open Member Division: Joseph A. Custer, "The Truthiness of Thinkable Thoughts versus the Facts of Empirical Research" and Laura N. Gasaway, "A Defense of the Public Domain: A Scholarly Essay" New Members Division: Mikhail Koulikov, "Indexing and...
Snitching: First Comprehensive Analysis of Criminial Informants Published
Posted on November 19, 2009Loyola Law prof Alexandra Natapoff's Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice (NYU Press, November 16, 2009) is the first comprehensive analysis of the use of informants in the criminal justice system, something TV viewers see every night...
AAUP Lifts Censure of Tulane
Posted on November 19, 2009Inside Higher Ed is reporting that the AAUP "has lifted its censure of Tulane University, following an agreement that Tulane would not cite the move in defending itself in lawsuits from former faculty members. Tulane was censured in 2007 for...
Opening: Head of Information Services, IUPUI Law Library
Posted on November 19, 2009The Head of Information Services, under the supervision of the Associate Director, plans, implements and coordinates circulation and reference services including, document delivery, reserves, collection management, delivery of traditional and electronic reference, a faculty liaison program and training for faculty...
Google Announces Chrome OS Details
Posted on November 19, 2009Lost in the immediate announcement of the Google legal materials added to Scholar is today's announcement of the Google Chrome Operating System details. Different reports about the unveiling, if you can call it that, tell us a few things. One...
At Syracuse, library books aren't ready for the glue factory just yet
Posted on November 19, 2009Facing a shortage of shelf space, administrators at Syracuse University planned to ship 100,000 books per year, for the next 10 years, to an off-site location about 250 miles away from campus. That's until the students and faculty got wind...
Researching Court Opinions Using Google Scholar: What Do You Think?
Posted on November 18, 2009The word is out. Full text federal and state court opinions (to 1990?) can now be searched on Google Scholar. See the Official Google Blog post. If you take a test drive, I would recommend using the "Advanced Scholar Search"...
Discouraging News from ALA's Public Libraries and the Internet Survey
Posted on November 18, 2009Public libraries and the Internet 2008-2009: Issues, Implications, and Challenges by John Carlo Bertot, Paul T. Jaeger, Charles R. McClure, Carla B. Wright and Elise Jensen (First Monday, Nov. 2, 2009) reviews the findings, issues and implications from ALA's 2008...
Will the Restructuring of BigLaw Lead to the Incredibly Shrinking Law School?
Posted on November 18, 2009If the basic business model of the large law firm is failing and needs fundamental restructuring as Illinois law prof Larry Ribstein argues in The Death of Big Law [SSRN], what are the consequences to law schools? In Death of...
2009 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual Now Online
Posted on November 18, 2009The 2009 Federal Sentencing Guidelines Manual (effective Nov. 1, 2009) is now available online. Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH]
Super Lawyers Rates Law Schools
Posted on November 18, 2009You may have seen the Super Lawyers Magazine at one time or another. Their web site maintains a database of the cream of the crop practicing attorneys. They have come up with an alternative ranking for law schools. They rank...
Testing Google Scholar for Legal Research
Posted on November 18, 2009The most amazing thing happened yesterday. Google has added legal research to Google Scholar. The feature is accessible from the main Scholar page as a radio button that limits the search to legal materials. What is even more amazing is...
And the IALL 2009 Website Award Goes To . . .
Posted on November 18, 2009the Audiovisual Library of International Law (ALIL)! The announcement came last month at IALL's annual course on international law librarianship held in Istanbul, Turkey. See my previous LLB posts for more details about the course and award. Congratulations to ALIL!...
Debate Begins on Revised Google Book Settlement
Posted on November 17, 2009Here's just a small handful of links: Berkeley's Samuelson Still Not Satisfied with Google Books Settlement, Will Urge Judge Not to Approve EFF's Google Books Settlement 2.0: Evaluating the Pros and Cons Two cheers for Google Books Antitrust concerns linger...
What If Law.Gov Succeeds
Posted on November 17, 2009Richard Leiter reflects on the November 6, 2009 Law Librarian BlogTalkRadio interview with Carl Malamud in Interview with Carl Malamud; Thoughts on "Free Law," Kerfuffles and Law.Gov (includes links to the audio recording and a transcript of it). Two snips...
A Consumer's Guide to the Attorney-Client Relationship
Posted on November 17, 2009The Supreme Court of Ohio has released a publication that provides practical information about the lawyer-client relationship for Ohioans considering hiring an attorney which may be of interest to parties seeking legal representation elsewhere. The 44-page publication, A Consumers Practical...
Cloud Computing in Plain English
Posted on November 17, 2009A 3 minute introduction to the basics of cloud computing from Common Craft. View the video here. [JH]
Students stage sit-in to keep university library open
Posted on November 17, 2009Inside Higher Ed is reporting that students at UC Santa Cruz have staged a library sit-in to protest reduced hours due to budget cuts. A statement from the students said: 'We realize that this one action will not force the...
This sounds better than the "Wayback Machine"
Posted on November 17, 2009Like the Wayback Machine, here's a brand new website that allows users to travel back in time. Called Memento Web, The Wired Campus blog describes it this way: A new Web site called Memento Web will allow anyone curious about...
Some advice for handling information overload
Posted on November 17, 2009Do you think wistfully about the days when checking email before leaving the house wasn't part of your daily morning routine? When you actually did chores on the weekend rather than sit in front of a computer screen for hours...
Senate Investigates Mystery Charges on Consumer Credit Cards
Posted on November 17, 2009The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation today released an investigative report titled ?Aggressive Sales Tactics on the Internet and Their Impact on American Consumers.? The report covers activities by three online clubs promoting direct marketing that work with...
Library Concerns Over the Amended Google Book Settlement
Posted on November 16, 2009About library concerns over the Amended Google Book Settlement which was filed in federal court last Friday, LJ's Norman Oder writes in Revised Google Settlement Offers Minor Changes on Antitrust Issue, No Response on Library Pricing: The role and response...
World Bank Indicators Now Available in Google's Public Data Search Feature; World Bank Launches Data Finder
Posted on November 16, 2009The Official Google Blog is reporting that the World Bank's numerical data for 17 World Development Indicators (listed below) are now available for use with Google's public data graphing tool. See also the World Bank's blog post, Google, meet the...
Opening: Research and Instructional Services Librarian, Drexel Univ. Legal Research Center
Posted on November 16, 2009The Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University invites applications for the position of Research and Instructional Services Librarian. This is a full-time position in the Legal Research Center, and it reports to the Head of Research Services. Review...
A social media first: Facebook provides alibi for robbery suspect
Posted on November 16, 2009The Washington Post is reporting that a 19 year old Brooklyn man was released 12 days after his arrest in connection with an armed robbery case because an update he made to his Facebook page served as an alibi. Rodney...
Liberian Law Held Hostage
Posted on November 16, 2009Liberia means "land of the free," but apparently, its laws are not. Foreign Policy reports on the current state of publication of law in Liberia. Apparently, neither the Parliament, the court system, nor the lawyers have access to a full...
Is a Law School Education Worth the Cost for the Return?
Posted on November 16, 2009Maybe. It depends on a lot of characteristics including the opportunity costs factored against the quality of student, the quality of the school, the job prospects, and the alternative expected salaries for non-legal careers likely for each type of law...
Libraries and Online Video: Free TechSoup Webinar with Common Craft's Lee LeFever Wednesday
Posted on November 16, 2009Register here for Tech Training Made Simple with Online Videos. Date: Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 Time: 11:00 AM PST Duration: 1 hour Meeting Description: Wouldn?t it be great if complicated technology concepts were explained in a simple way that?s easy...
Blogs for Book Lovers
Posted on November 15, 2009See Cynthia Crossen's Wall Street Journal weekly Dear Book Lover advice column for Nov. 13, 2009 for her recommendations: Some Choice Book Blogs. [JH]
Next-Generation Corporate Libraries and Information Services
Posted on November 15, 2009Next-Generation Corporate Libraries and Information Services by Constance Ard, Chair-Elect of Special Libraries Association Legal Division, looks into the issues that library and information services professionals and the organizations they work for face on a daily basis...
Five Years Later, Kelo a Hollow Victory for New London
Posted on November 15, 2009It was about five years ago that the Kelo case decided by the Supreme Court (545 U.S. 469). That's the decision where the Court, by a 5-4 split, decided that the city of New London, Connecticut, could seize private property...
Amended Google Book Settlement Agreement Filed
Posted on November 14, 2009Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers filed their amended version of the Google Book Settlement in federal court Friday. "The agreement narrows the scope to the US, UK, Canada and Australia. It alters how revenue generated...
Web Classification: Any Hope Left for Volunteer Projects Like DMOZ/ODP?
Posted on November 14, 2009In Rise Of The Web Librarian: An Elegant DMOZ Solution, Eric Ward suggests that the way to reinvigorate DMOZ/ODP is to get LIS students involved with institution support coming from ALA and US library and information science schools. "Imagine if...
GAO Comments on NARA's Progress for Electronic Archive
Posted on November 14, 2009The General Accountability Office recently issued a statement updating its review of the National Archive's attempts to implement an electronic record keeping system for the unclassified data of the United States government. To get an idea of the scope of...
Friday Fun: Library Patrons Gone Wild
Posted on November 13, 2009And a library staffer has to deal with them without going postal. [JH]
AO's PACER User Survey Underway
Posted on November 13, 2009Hat tip to Erika Wayne for calling attention to the PACER user survey being conducted by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on Legal Research Plus. The survey is part of the AO's comprehensive assessment of the PACER program....
CRS Report on Congressional Printing
Posted on November 13, 2009Congressional Printing: Background and Issues for Congress (Nov. 5, 2009) provides an overview and analysis of issues related to the processing and distribution of congressional information by the Government Printing Office. [JH]
Opening: Librarian, Connecticut Judicial Branch
Posted on November 13, 2009The Connecticut Judicial Branch is seeking a qualified individual to perform professional library duties which include providing legal reference and research guidance, instruction in database searching, and catalog and collection maintenance. Minimum Qualifications: A Master?s degree in Library Science or...
Massachusetts Governor Supports State's First Public Law School Subject to Fiscal Analysis
Posted on November 13, 2009Massachusetts Gov. Deval L. Patrick supports a plan to create the state's first public law school as long as the University of Massachusetts at Darmouth's acceptance of the donation of the independent Southern New England School of Law's assets meets...
Intel Unveils e-Reader for the Visually Impaired
Posted on November 12, 2009The Intel Reader is intended to assist people who are blind, dyslexic or have weak vision. The paperback-sized, less than 1.5 pounds device combines a 5-megapixel camera with Linux-powered OCR, a 4 GB Intel Solid State Drive and text-to-voice software...
The 2009 NLJ 250: Headcount of BigLaw Firms Declined by 5,000 Lawyers
Posted on November 12, 2009"The United States' largest law firms this year suffered the deepest cuts in their attorney numbers since The National Law Journal began tracking their census figures more than 30 years ago," writes the NLJ's Leigh Jones about the findings of...
Cornell University Library Publishes New Digitization Manual
Posted on November 12, 2009An excerpt from the press release for Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums by Peter B. Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon (Cornell University Library, Oct. 14, 2009): Many [cultural] institutions are...
Which Magazines Are Available in Google Books?
Posted on November 12, 2009A list of the 45 magazines currently available in Google Books has been compiled by Jeffrey Peng, Software Engineer, Google Books. The announcement on Inside Google Books blog and the list here. [JH]
Pending SCOTUS Cases: Focus on Bilski v. Kappos
Posted on November 12, 2009The Supreme Court heard arguments in the Bilski case on Monday. The case involves the patentability of business processes, which is arguably one of the four categories of invention eligible for patent under Section 101 of the patent Act. As...
US News Survey Update
Posted on November 12, 2009As we all must know by know, US News did not follow the ABA lead and drop the volume/title count as a measure of library performance (or justification - not sure what the ultimate goal is for US News). I...
Google Caffeine About to Go Live on Google Search
Posted on November 11, 2009In New Version of Google Search Is Launching Soon, Mashable's Ben Parr reports that Google Caffeine will go live in its first datacenter soon. See the Google Caffeine splash page announcement. "Google Caffeine, wouldn?t change the face or design of...
The Justice Gap, An Updated LSC Report
Posted on November 11, 2009The Legal Services Corporation has updated its 2005 Justice Gap Report. According to Documenting the Justice Gap in America: The Current Unmet Civil Needs of Low-Income Americans (Sept. 2009) there continues to be a major gap between the civil legal....
Twenty Percent of the US Population Deserves Our Thanks This Veterans Day
Posted on November 11, 2009There are over 23 million living veterans (war and peacetime) and about 37 million dependents of living veterans and survivors of deceased veterans. Together they represent approximately 20% of the US population and they all deserve our thanks for the...
Cloud Computing 101
Posted on November 11, 2009Hat tip to Iantha Haight, Research Attorney & Lecturer in Law at Cornell Law Library, for calling attention to CCN's introduction to cloud computing. Check out A trip into the secret, online 'cloud' which includes two videos outlining what cloud...
Two Universities Won't Take Kindles Over Lack of Easy Audio Features for Blind Students
Posted on November 11, 2009The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University in New York will not use the Kindle as part of a mass roll out until Amazon makes the device friendlier to blind individuals. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting this along with...
Kindle for PC App Now Available From Amazon
Posted on November 10, 2009In Amazon Expanding Market for Kindle Books to 1 Billion PC Users (Nov. 1, 2009), we reported that Amazon was expected to release a free software application this month that will allow users to read Kindle editions of books, on...
Extension Granted in Google Book Settlement
Posted on November 10, 2009New York District Court Judge Denny Chin granted an extension from November 9 to ?no later than this Friday, November 13" for submitting revisions to the Google Book Search settlement yesterday. See the New York Times article Google and Authors...
The Recipe for Better Legal Information Services Will Be Concocted by the "Invisible Hand" of Competition
Posted on November 10, 2009In his now famous video, Bob Berring argues that free legal information does not pose a threat to traditional legal publishers, that free access to primary legal resources will not replace the editorial services of West and LexisNexis (well, actually...
Hooked on WEXIS: Cost as Cure When Moving from Law School to Real Life Online Legal Research
Posted on November 10, 2009In Some Thoughts on the Bob Berring Video Comments, LLB co-editor Mark Giangrande notes what all law firm librarians face each time a new class of freshly minted lawyers join their firms, students are addicted to Westlaw and LexisNexis in...
Can the Rule of Law Exist in Virtual Worlds?
Posted on November 10, 2009West Virginia law prof Michael Risch's Virtual Rule of Law, 112 West Virginia Law Review 1 (2009) [SSRN] is the first article to consider whether virtual worlds provide a rule of law that sets expectations for virtual business. From the...
New Developments in the Innocence Project Pushback in Illinois
Posted on November 10, 2009The Circuit Court of Cook County held a hearing today on the state's request for documents from Northwestern's Innocence Project. The state earlier requested copies of interview tapes, transcripts and other witness related materials. It also asked for grades, grading...
LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey: Findings on Reasonableness of Annual Price Increases for Products and Services Offered by BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer
Posted on November 09, 2009This was the "bang for your buck" section of LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey. In view of the current state of library economics, the issue is important to put it mildly. By format for each vendor's products and...
The World Needs More Diversity in Book Digitizing Sources: Forbes Profiles Brewster Kahle
Posted on November 09, 2009Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive founder who recently announced the BookServer project as a vehicle to compete with Amazon's Kindle e-books and Google Editions for vending and lending e-books over the Internet is profiled in Forbes at Lend Ho! Brewster Kahle...
Google Dashboard: Learn What Google Knows About Your Usage of Google Services, Or If You're Not That Paranoid, Here's a Way to Manage Google Services Tied to Your Google Account, Or Do Both
Posted on November 09, 2009The recently launched Google Dashboard is the place to go to learn what Google knows about you and those of your online habits tied to your Google account. It's also a great way to manage your Google account-Google services tie-in....
i-Law Apps, where i = international
Posted on November 09, 2009Each fall I co-teach an international and foreign law research seminar with my friend and collague Jean Davis. Our students' midterm is an oral presentation on a legal issue in a foreign jurisdiction. In the presentation, our students present research...
Reminder: AALL Webinar on Global Law Coming Up
Posted on November 09, 2009AALL is sponsoring a webinar covering research aspects of foreign and international law. The deadline for registration is Friday. From the description: Don't miss the chance to register for AALL's November webinar, Global Legal Research: Routes to Success (November 19,...
IRS Web Site Reflects New Rules for Homebuyer Legislation Signed Nov. 6
Posted on November 09, 2009The Internal Revenue Service web site is updated to include tax information stemming from the President's signing of legislation last Friday that expands the first-time homebuyer credit. The tax details for new homebuyers is here. Updated tax information about other...
House Passes Landmark Health-Care Bill by 5 Vote Margin
Posted on November 08, 2009The Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, passed in the House of Representative by a vote of 220-215 yesterday. The bill seeks to expand health care coverage to the approximately 40 million Americans who are currently uninsured by...
Auletta's Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
Posted on November 08, 2009From the blurb for Ken Auletta's Googled: The End of the World As We Know It (Penguin Press, Nov. 3, 2009): Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google's closed-door meetings and paints portraits...
Round-Up of State Practitioner Blogs
Posted on November 07, 2009California Divorce Lawyer Blog http://www.californiadivorcelawyerblog.com http://www.californiadivorcelawyerblog.com/index.xml Discusses divorce law opinions, matters and news in California. Published by Gary D. Sparks. California Employment Lawyers Blog http://www...
BigLaw Associate Pay Should Return to 1998 Levels According to Altman Weil Expert
Posted on November 07, 2009Altman Weil legal consultant James Cotterman thinks associate pay levels should be set back to 1998 levels. Associate pay at large law firms has dropped from $160,000 to $145,000, but that was only "about half of what was needed," Cotterman...
Putting Out Westlaw OnePass Fires: The West Way to Customer Service -- Better Late Than Never But Not as Good as a Timely Heads-Up
Posted on November 06, 2009So do you think sometime last week West's Lori Hedstrom (Marketing Manager, Librarian Relations) was planning to submit a message about the OnePass rollout to the pll-sis and law-lib listsersv yesterday afternoon? Or did it take Greg Lambert's Nov. 4th...
Friday Fun: League of Librarians Trading Cards
Posted on November 06, 2009Librarians at the University of Rochester River Campus credit Carleton College for giving them the inspiration for their League of Librarians Trading Cards including political science and law librarian Ann Marshall's card, click to enlarge, left. View the Flickr slideshow...
The 2009 Am Law Tech Survey
Posted on November 06, 2009The American Lawyer's Alan Cohen reports that one-third of the 110 Am Law 200 law firms participating in the Am Law Tech Survey for 2009 reported that their capital budgets were down more than 10 percent this year. Staffing levels...
Reminder: Today's Law Librarian Talk Show to Feature Carl Malamud
Posted on November 06, 2009Today's Law Librarian Blog Talk Radio program will feature Carl Malamud, of Public.Resource.org. Malamud will be discussing Law.Gov and other digital preservation and open access issues at 3:00 PM ET. Should be very interesting. See LLB's It's Time for Law...
Some Oldies but Goodies in the Government Domain
Posted on November 06, 2009"Over my six-plus years of tracking the federal web developments for [e-Government and Web Directory: U.S. Federal Government Online] -- through the post-9/11 scrubbing of numerous dotmil sites, the continuing conversion of government's printed publications to online-only, the massive Homeland...
Some Thoughts on the Bob Berring Video Comments
Posted on November 05, 2009Bob Berring?s statement about Lexis and Westlaw being a better alternative to legal research than volunteer Internet sites is pretty accurate. Both databases offer depth of resources, organization, precise search language and tools that simply can?t be matched by the...
The OnePass Rollout Scramble for Westlaw Users: An Ounce of Communication Can Prevent a Pound of Complaints
Posted on November 05, 2009In Westlaw's OnePass Fiasco: A Study In How NOT To Roll Out A Change, Greg Lambert writes that West sent out a mass email last Thursday about rolling out it's new OnePass login system two days later. One librarian, Cindy,...
The Information Age: Finding Needles and Haystacks
Posted on November 05, 2009Created by Jessica Hagy, author of Index, this simple graphic may be a great illustration for legal research instructors when a student asks, "why can't I just use Google?" [JH]
The Five Sacred Cows of Library Technologists
Posted on November 05, 2009According to Cindi Trainor: Our users haven't asked for that. Library technology=Windows or Mac. Cutting-edge is better; bleeding-edge is best. is the only way to go. Technology is the domain of the few. See Trainor's ALA TechSource post for details....
When is a Library not a Library?
Posted on November 05, 2009According to the YouTube description, "this Flashmob was organised as a part of Open House: Irish Architecture 2009. The piece is entitled "When is a Library not a Library?" and was designed to challenge your perceptions of what happens in...
Opening: Harvard Law Library, Web Developer
Posted on November 05, 2009Duties And Responsibilities: The Harvard Law Library is seeking an energetic and creative web developer to join our newly created Digital Lab team. The Digital Lab is the Library's focal point for a wide range of activities including developing internet...
Don't Waste Your Time Trying to Do Better Than WEXIS: Responses to Berring on Open Access Law
Posted on November 04, 2009By now, I expect many law librarians have viewed West's video of Bob Berring's opinion on the open access to legal information movement. If not, see below. In a nutshell, Berring advises legal information consumers that they should not bother...
Now that is a door prize
Posted on November 04, 2009Quiet a few law librarians are also attorneys, and some of that group even keep up their CLE hours like they are required to do for maintaining an active license. That being said I wanted to pass along an email...
AALL Elections Now Underway
Posted on November 04, 2009Check out the candidate biographies and vote online here. The deadline to submit ballots is 11:59 p.m. Central Time, Tuesday, December 1, 2009. Here's the slate of candidates: Candidates for Vice President/President-Elect Darcy Kirk Associate Dean for Library and Technology...
Chech Out FDsys Video Tutorials
Posted on November 04, 2009The GPO has produced the following four FDsys how-to video tutorials: FDsys Overview: a brief overview on the background of FDsys. FDsys Simple Search: how to perform simple searches within the system and filter your results. FDsys Advanced Search: how...
So Many Law Review Articles, So Little Time: Jotwell to the Rescue
Posted on November 04, 2009Edited by Michael Froomkin (Miami) the mission of Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots) is to bring to readers? attention recent legal scholarship by providing short reviews. "Here you will find leading academics and practitioners providing short reviews...
ACTA Copyright Provisions Becoming Clearer
Posted on November 04, 2009The secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty provisions are starting to leak out in spite of the "national security" status granted to it by the Bush and Obama administrations. The government let several groups (including public advocacy groups) see draft text...
Developing Data Transparency Portals at the State Level
Posted on November 03, 2009The National Association of State CIOs has published A Call to Action for State Government: Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data as initial guidance and recommendations to help state governments get started with data transparency portals. From the...
Let the Music Begin! Google Launches New Music Search Feature
Posted on November 03, 2009Google Discover Music is a new search feature for music-related queries. Search results are tied to licensed online music services, MySpace, Lala, Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody, who have partnered with Google to provide this service. See Making Search More Musicial...
Ohio Bar Exam Results: OSU at the Head of the Class
Posted on November 03, 2009Congratulations to all! [JH]
Chicago Tribune to Go AP-less for a Week
Posted on November 03, 2009How bad is it getting for the newspaper industry? The Chicago Tribune is dropping AP content for a week beginning November 8. The experiment is designed to see if news coverage suffers. Content will be drawn from Reuters, CNN, Bloomberg...
Kudos to Sandy Keller
Posted on November 03, 2009In case you missed the law-lib sign-off, Sandy Keller is retiring from the University of Iowa College of Law Library after 28 years of service. Sandy's sig line read "Reference Librarian, soon to be retired." All the best Sandy. No...
New York Law School Building Lights Upset the Neighbors
Posted on November 03, 2009Not everyone is thrilled with the new New York Law School library and classroom building. It's all glass and very well lit, 24 hours a day. The neighbors are not thrilled with the constant glare, assuming the comments in this...
U.S. News Gathering Data for the Next Set of Rankings
Posted on November 03, 2009U.S News & World Report graduate school surveys for the 2011 edition of America's Best Graduate Schools (published in Spring 2010) are in the mai. What's new and continuing in the law survey from the editors: For the first time,...
Canada Report Calls for National Standards for Law Schools
Posted on November 02, 2009In Canada, admission to the bar is regulated by the provinces, just as it is in the United States through the state bar examination process. Unlike the United States however, there are not national standards which govern the core competencies...
LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors Survey: Customer Services Findings for BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer
Posted on November 02, 2009A Quick Note About the Survey. One survey taker asked, "Please tell me this is not a marketing technique for any of the vendors mentioned." The answer is absolutely not. As I explained in the survey announcement, "the questions asked...
Share Your Vendor Relations Wisdom in the CRIV Sheet
Posted on November 02, 2009From Joe Thomas, CRIV Sheet Editor and Head of Technical Services, Notre Dame Law School: "If you have an interesting procedure for dealing with vendors, if you have some insight to share about vendor practices, if you have something to...
The History of the Child Pornography Guidelines
Posted on November 02, 2009The US Sentencing Commission has published The History of the Child Pornography Guidelines. The Report is the first step in an ongoing examination of the child pornography guidelines. Hat tip to Douglas Berman (OSU) who writes on his Sentencing Law...
Another New Player in the E-book Distribution Business
Posted on November 02, 2009I earlier reported here on how inundated I am with e-book choices, but, unlike the little dutch boy with his thumb holding back a nasty leak, the e-book scene continues to evolve before my very eyes. Now, in addition to...
Law Library of Congress Stands by Honduras Report
Posted on November 02, 2009The Law Library of Congress is under fire from Senator John Kerry and Representative Howard Berman for a report issued in August that analyzed the removal of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya from office. The report, Honduras: Constitutional Law Issues, states...
Amazon Expanding Market for Kindle Books to 1 Billion PC Users
Posted on November 01, 2009Amazon is expected to release a free software application this month that will allow users to read Kindle editions of books, etc. on their PCs. The PC version of the Kindle reader is expected to feature the same functions users...
Round-Up of State Practitioner Blogs
Posted on October 31, 2009Boston Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog http://www.bostonbankruptcylawyerblog.com http://www.bostonbankruptcylawyerblog.com/index.xml Provides opinion on bankruptcy law news, matters and reports in Massachusetts. Published by The Law Office of Neil Burns. Illinois Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog http://www...
Arizona Supreme Court Holds Metadata in Public Records is Public
Posted on October 30, 2009The Arizona Supreme Court holds that metadata in an electronic document which is also a public document is part of that document and can be examined by the public. David Lake is a Phoenix police officer who alleged employment discrimination...
Mindless Ageism at Indy Law
Posted on October 30, 2009"[M]indless age discrimination now threatens to force out my dean (who is doing a fine job) despite assurances given when he was hired three years ago that he would not be subject to [Indiana University's] age limit" writes Indy Law...
Supreme Court Sluggers
Posted on October 30, 2009Is your library one of the happy ones who got the first in the "Supreme Court Sluggers" trading card series from the Green Bag? A great addition to the bobbleheads in the Green Bag's bag o' tricks. The first card...
Friday Fun: LLB's PSA for Halloween, Zombies in Plain English
Posted on October 30, 2009From the creative staff at Common Craft. [JH]
FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide
Posted on October 30, 2009The New York Times is reporting that the FBI's interpretation of the Bush Administration's 2008 domestic intelligence-gathering rules was recently made public when the Bureau's 269 page Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide (Dec. 16, 2008) was released in response to...
OASPA's Webinar of Q&A Session With Five Open Access Publishers Now Available
Posted on October 30, 2009The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's Oct. 20, 2009 webinar of a question-and-answer session with five open access publishers is now available. Actually, one participating publisher follows a mixed-access business model. Hat tip to Digital Koans...
A Quick Shout Out for Legal Informatics Blog
Posted on October 30, 2009Contemporary research in legal informatics is way beyond my small brain capacity. I sort of get it generally. Hell, two former physicists drummed the fundamental principles into my head at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School but that was...
In Celebration of the Card Catalog
Posted on October 30, 2009As reported in LJ, the University of South Carlolina celebrates and says goodbye to their card catalog in great style. Although it has not been added to since 1991, the catalog stayed on the floor in the open stacks. This...
What's Driving Up Law School Costs?
Posted on October 29, 2009Not the ABA's Accreditation Standards according to the GAO's Higher Education: Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access (Oct. 2009) report though the GAO reports that "officials at some ABA-accredited schools said that ABA accreditation standards related to libraries...
Google Experiments with Social Search Feature
Posted on October 29, 2009Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find public web content from people in your social circle, when you're signed into your Google Account. Official Google Blog post announcement. Your social circle starts with your Google profile,...
Legal Writing Institute Workshop for Adjuncts and New Legal Writing Professors Set for Dec. 4
Posted on October 29, 2009The Legal Writing Institute is conducting a one-day workshop for adjunct professors and new legal writing professors on Friday, December 4, 2009, at The John Marshall Law School (Chicago) and St. John?s University School of Law. Registration for the one-day...
Brooklyn Law Deals (Badly?) With Illegal Downloading
Posted on October 29, 2009Above The Law is reporting on the Brooklyn Law School's reaction to its ISP informing it that students were (horrors!) illegally downloading copyrighted movies and television shows via its wireless network. Brooklyn was notified by their ISP to that effect...
Grading Google's Acquisitions
Posted on October 28, 2009Like the Cookie Monster, Google has acquired or taken an equity interest in over 50 companies since 2001. See Wikipedia's chronological list. Silicon Alley Insider grades many of Google's acquisitions. High marks for many acquisitions such as "A+" for Applied...
Do Law Schools Still Need Academic Law Librarians to Support Faculty Scholarship in This New Cash-Strapped Digital Age?
Posted on October 28, 2009Ah ... well, yes they do according to Duke's Richard Danner in his forthcoming article Supporting Scholarship: Thoughts on the Role of the Academic Librarian, 39 Journal of Law and Education __ (April 2010) [SSRN]. But even if current faculty...
Can IP Law Accomodate Individual Branding?
Posted on October 28, 2009If our traditional intellectual property system can be explained as being based on individual authors who look to corporate entities to mass produce and distribute their works, then advancement in digital technology means that individual authors can and indeed have...
UVa Law School Launches New Public Service Program
Posted on October 28, 2009UVa Law School will launch a new law and public service program for first- and second-year law students starting with the upcoming spring semester. Talk about just-in-time curricular deployment. From the Cavalier Daily: The program ?is designed to offer a...
APA Style Manual Publisher Will Replace Bad Copies of the Sixth Edition
Posted on October 28, 2009If anyone had not noticed, the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Associationis laden with errors. The first printing goes beyond mere typos and includes errors in style rules and examples. Whoops. This departure from correctness...
Windows 7: "We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded."
Posted on October 27, 2009Philip Elmer-DeWitt is reporting that "college students who took advantage of a 'deal too sweet to pass up' have run into a bit of trouble. The $29 electronic version of Windows 7 Home Edition sold for Microsoft through Digital River...
Callister's Schemata for Thinking Like a Research Expert
Posted on October 27, 2009According to Paul D. Callister, Director of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library at the Univ. of Missouri?Kansas City, "our profession lacks sufficient pedagogy [in legal research instruction], both theory and methodology based on such theory." I beg to differ...
Barriers to Broadband Adoption in the U.S.
Posted on October 27, 2009The Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School is a public policy program that focuses on identifying and analyzing key legal, policy, and regulatory issues facing the advanced communications sector. ACLP co-directors Charles Davidson and...
Spreading the Word About the 2010 Census
Posted on October 27, 2009The Census Bureau's 2010 Census website "is the platform on which we can build a national dialogue about how each person?s participation helps paint a new 'Portrait of America.'" It's one of the more unusual offical federal government websites I've...
If bosses shouldn't "friend" their employees, should profs not "friend" their students?
Posted on October 27, 2009Lawyers tell employers that "friending" their employees on Facebook (or any other social media network) is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen. That's according to this story in the National Law Journal: Managers sending friend requests to staff via...
Social media use at work - what employers do and don't allow
Posted on October 27, 2009Blogmaster Joe Hodnicki had previously posted a story alluding to a recent survey by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics ("SCCE") of approximately 800 compliance and ethics professionals in the private, public and non-profit sectors to find out which...
On Plastic Forks and Paper Cups and Law School Profit Margins
Posted on October 27, 2009Above the Law is reporting that Columbia Law is now charging 15 cents for plasticware in the law school cafeteria. Not to be outdone in the fiercely competitive NYC law school market, NYU Law is charging 25 cents for a...
Private School Replaces 20,000 Volume Collection With 65 Kindles
Posted on October 27, 2009Well, we knew a story like this was coming sooner than later, and here it is. USA Today is reporting on the first school, public or private, to replace its library collection (about 20,000 volumes) with databases and 65 circulating...
The Witches Brew that is Wolters Kluwer's IntelliConnect
Posted on October 26, 2009Back in 1990, I was so burnt out in firm librarianship that I decided to escape from law librarianship for awhile. So I took a look into the publishing side of the library-publisher equation by taking a job as an...
The Windows 7 Whooper!
Posted on October 26, 2009According to Gizmodo, this wacky promotional campaign for Windows 7 in Japan is real. [JH]
How Do You Teach Law Students (and Lawyers) to Search 50 Million Pages of Content in HeinOnline?
Posted on October 26, 2009Well, by starting with Shawn Nevers' post on BYU Law's HWHLL Blog.The post outlines four key techniques researchers need to know to conduct the effective search queries, including understanding Boolean operators in HeinOnline, using a root expander to find alternate...
Class Without Clout Sues University of Illinois Over Admissions Corruption
Posted on October 26, 2009"Politically appointed trustees and lawmakers routinely behave as armchair admissions officers advocating on behalf of relatives and neighbors - even housekeepers' kids and families with whom they share Hawaiian vacations ... They declare their candidates 'no brainers' for admission [to...
HP Does Google One Different with Book Scans, and Microsoft Revives Academic Search
Posted on October 26, 2009HP is working with the University of Michigan to scan rare, out of print, and out of copyright books and make them available as physical paperback copies through print on demand services. When it comes to scanning, Michigan's collection seems...
Kudos to Richard Danner: Taking the Next Step in Open Access at Duke Law
Posted on October 26, 2009You will find Dick Danner's signature on the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship. Now he and Duke's School of Law have taken the next step in providing open access at Duke Law. Duke has launched the Duke...
1Mb Broadband Access Becomes Legal Right in Finland
Posted on October 25, 2009Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a 1Mb broadband connection, says Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications. That will make Finland the world's first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access. As of last...
New York Review of Books Launches Blog
Posted on October 25, 2009Launched early this month, the NYR Blog offers "Roving thoughts and provocations from our writers." [JH]
Univ. of Colorado Law School Class of 2009 Employment Down, Way, Way Down
Posted on October 24, 2009Only some 35 percent of Class of 2009 at the University of Colorado Law School have jobs according to Law Week Colorado, down from 55 percent for '08 grads. "On a totally related note," writes Elie Mystal for Above the...
Round-Up of State Practitioner Blogs
Posted on October 24, 2009Maryland Divorce Attorney Blog http://www.marylanddivorceattorneyblog.com http://www.marylanddivorceattorneyblog.com/index.xml Analyze divorce law reports, legislation and opinions in Maryland. Published by Robert L. Flanagan. Polk County DUI Attorney Blog http://www...
Friday Fun: 20 Greatest Celebrity Courtroom Sketches
Posted on October 23, 2009Hat tip to Karen R. Schneiderman for contributing this link to the 20 Greatest Celebrity Courtroom Sketches from Comedy.com for this week's Friday Fun. Sorry about the 10-month delay in posting Karen. I don't check my Facebook page often. [JH]
Legal Implications of Cloud Computing
Posted on October 23, 2009David Navetta and Tanya Forsheit have teamed up to write a two-part series of articles on the legal implications of cloud computing. Originally published on the Info Law Group site, both have been republished on LLRX: Navetta's Legal Implications of....
University at Buffalo Law School Introduces New Legal Skills Program
Posted on October 23, 2009The aim of UB Law's new Legal Skills Program is to produce "new graduates who are practice-ready on Day One?ready to file a brief, cross-examine a witness or make a special pleading" according to UB Law's press release. The program...
First Multimedia Law Review Article?
Posted on October 23, 2009Hat tip to Eric Muller on The Faculty Lounge for calling attention to the online version of Stephen A. Higginson's Constitutional Advocacy Explains Constitutional Outcomes, 60 Fla. L. Rev. 857 (2008). The essay on the impact of oral advocacy in...
Opening: Catalog/Reference Librarian, UALR William H. Bowen School of Law Library
Posted on October 23, 2009UALR William H. Bowen School of Law Library is seeking talented, motivated candidates for the position of Catalog/Reference Librarian. This is a two-year visiting librarian appointment. The Catalog/Reference Librarians will supervise the cataloging assistant and provide original cataloging, participate in...
The "//" in URLs is Superfluous
Posted on October 23, 2009Ever wonder why Internet addresses have two forward slashes following the colon? Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet, said it seemed like a good idea at the time, but they were a completely unnecessary embellishment to web addresses. A...
European Librarians Like the Idea of Google Books
Posted on October 23, 2009CNET has an interesting article detailing the views of four European librarians on the Google Book Scanning Project. If anything, they are a bit envious that U.S. researchers will eventually have access to this treasure trove and Europe will not....
FCC Publishes Notice of Rulemaking on Net Neutrality
Posted on October 22, 2009The Federal Communications Commission released its Draft Rules to Preserve the Free and Open Internet today, making good on Chair Julius Genachowski's earlier threat or promise, depending on the side one takes on the issue. Senator John McCain introduced The...
If Facebook has eclipsed MySpace, will FourSquare eventually leave Facebook in the dust?
Posted on October 22, 2009Things happen quick in the social media world, n'est ce pas? Last year at this time, had anyone even heard of Twitter? We've already told you that Facebook has made MySpace passe. Now comes this story from the New York...
Kindle and other e-readers - a brief history and review
Posted on October 22, 2009Here is the one of the more thorough reviews of Amazon's Kindle, as well as the development history of that device along with a competing device by Sony. It's an article by Nicholson Baker from the August 3, 2009 edition...
LISNews Wants Your Nominations for 10 Blogs to Read in 2010
Posted on October 22, 2009Details here. Do note that past winners, including LLB which made the 2008 list, are not eligible. Here's the past annual lists of 10 blogs to read: 10 Blogs To Read in 2006 10 Blogs To Read In 2007 10...
RU Ready for Windows 7?
Posted on October 22, 2009Windows 7 officially launches today. If you?re interested in making the switch, the price is $319 for Windows 7 Ultimate, and $299 for the Professional version ($219 and $199 for the upgrade, respectively). Windows 7 Home Premium will set you...
Bibliographic Essay on Electronic Resources for Constitutional History
Posted on October 22, 2009Hat tip to Nolan Wright, Reference Librarian at Tarlton Law Library for calling attention to UT law prof Calvin Johnson's Really Cool Stuff: Digital Searches into the Constitutional Period, 25 Constitutional Commentary 51 (Spring 2008). The note reports on how...
New and Updated Research Guides from GlobaLex
Posted on October 22, 2009Just published by GlobaLex: New Research Guide: The Law and Legal research in Zambia by Alfred S. Magagula Updated Guides: A Guide to the Republic of Azerbaijan Law Research by Ramil Iskandarov Avaz A Guide on the Harmonization of International...
Is State Bar Admission Irrelevant?
Posted on October 22, 2009Yes, according to Robert Ambrogi who argues the case for the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels project. A snip from the post: State-specific savvy is a myth. The rationale for state bar admission is that lawyers know their state's laws. The...
May I Have the Envelope Please: 2010 Edition of The Princeton Review's Best Law Schools
Posted on October 21, 2009The 2010 Edition of The Princeton Review's Best 172 Law Schools ranks the best law schools based on a survey of more than 18,000 law school students plus data collected from school administrators under the following categories: Best Career Prospects....
Domain Name Theft and Where is the Literature?
Posted on October 21, 2009Are domain names property? The answer may help determine if there is a remedy when a domain name is stolen by someone hacking a registrar and stealing it. Daniel Goncalves is charged in New Jersey with stealing the domain P2P.com...
Internet Archive Unveils BookServer to Centralize Distribution of eBooks
Posted on October 21, 2009The Internet Archive recently unveiled its very ambitious project called BookServer. BookServer will allow users to find, buy, or borrow eBooks from sources all across the web. From the BookServer website: The BookServer is a growing open architecture for vending...
Pacifici Updates Competitive Intelligence: A Selective Resource Guide
Posted on October 21, 2009Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. Competitive Intelligence: A Selective Resource Guide (Oct...
Inside the Google News Algorithm
Posted on October 21, 2009While he didn't reveal of the secrets of the algorithm, the creator of Google News, Krishna Bharat, explained why certain articles get higher placement than others to Sharon Machlis. See her Computer World blog post. [JH]
A Quick Look at WhichDraft's Free Form Assembly Service
Posted on October 21, 2009WhichDraft.com is a free self-directed legal form creation site that allows users to assemble contracts and other legal transaction documents. Users build forms by reviewing a series of simple questions. WhichDraft.com then provides sample contractual provisions...
I got e-Books coming out of my ears!
Posted on October 21, 2009It seems like an hour doesn?t go by when I am not hearing something new about digital books ? everything from new digitisations projects to new devices, and I am not even sure how usey e-books are/will be in a...
One View of the Future of Law Practice
Posted on October 20, 2009Law.com has a report on the recent ALI-ABA ACLEA 2009 Summit in Arizona. Two predictions of the many on the future of law practice stand out. One is based on the model that law schools are manufacturers of lawyers. The...
Second Attempt for First Public Law School in Massachusetts
Posted on October 20, 2009The ABA Journal is reporting that the Univ. of Massachusetts is considering Southern New England School of Law's offer to donate its campus and assets. If accepted and approved by the state Board of Higher Education, the University would be...
Cooley Law Library Expanding
Posted on October 20, 2009The Cooley Law Library will be expanding through the renovation of the Town Center Building in downtown Lansing, Michigan. The $6 million project will add classrooms, an all night study lounge, and 25,400 linear feet of stack space. More details...
It's Time for Law.Gov
Posted on October 20, 2009Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.Org have announced that they "are going to be working with a distinguished group of colleagues from across the country to create a solid business plan, technical specs, and enabling legislation for the federal government to create...
Leiter's Best Law School Faculties Poll Results and Top Regional Law Schools for Spotting Faculty Talent
Posted on October 20, 2009Brian Leiter (Chicago) has been conducting "Best Faculties" polls over the last several weeks. He summarizes the results on his Law School Reports. Also on his blog, Leiter has identified the following six regional law schools that over the last...
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life: First Full-Scale Biography in 25 Years
Posted on October 20, 2009Melvin Urofsky's Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon, Sept. 22, 2009) is the first full-scale biography in twenty-five years of one of the most important and distinguished justices to sit on the Supreme Court. "In Louis D. Brandeis: A Life,...
A Quick Look at the 2009 AALL Salary Survey and Organizational Characteristics Findings
Posted on October 19, 2009The 2009 AALL Biennial Salary Survey and Organizational Characteristics is now available online for AALL members. Print copies will be available soon. The overall response rate was 60.2%, slightly lower than in 2007 but substantially higher than in 2003 (34...
A Big Year for Corporate Litigation and Increased Use of Alternative Fees: Fulbright?s 6th Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report
Posted on October 19, 2009"Corporate counsel say they are steeling themselves for a big year of litigation with 42% of U.S. respondents anticipating an increase in legal disputes their companies will face in the next 12 months. That is up from 34% of last...
Wolfram|Alpha Launches Webservice API
Posted on October 19, 2009On October 15th, Wolfram|Alpha announced the launch of its Webservice API. The Wolfram|Alpha API provides access to the Wolfram|Alpha platform at all levels?from individual results to complete Wolfram|Alpha output pages. Sample applications can include integrating Wolfram|Alpha into websites of any...
Digital Repository Bibliography Made Available - Happy OA Week!
Posted on October 19, 2009DigitalKoans released version 1 of the Institutional Repository Bibliography in celebration of Open Access Week! The Bib includes more than 600 entries to scholarly, English-language text sources dating from 2000 to present. The TOC is reproduced below for convenience...
Applications for AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grant Due Nov. 5
Posted on October 19, 2009The AALL/BNA Continuing Education grants program is open to AALL HQ, chapters, SIS's, member institutions, caucuses, and individual AALL members. The grants can assist in providing ongoing quality continuing education programming outside of the AALL annual meeting...
State's Attorney Seeks Multitude of Documents from NU Innocence Project
Posted on October 19, 2009The Innocence Project at Northwestern University helped to uncover evidence that they claim proves the innocence of a Harvey, Illinois, man who is accused of killing a security guard in 1978. The Cook County state's attorney in turn has subpoenaed...
EU Documents Library Now Available Online Back to 1952
Posted on October 19, 2009The European Union announced the availability of all official EU publications since 1952 in digital format. News articles mention 12 million scanned pages and 110,000 publications available free of charge in the EU Bookshop Digital Library. The press release indicates...
USDOJ Medical Marijuana Rules Available
Posted on October 19, 2009Looking for the new Department of Justice Guidelines covering prosecutions for medical marijuana use and distribution? Find them here on the Department of Justice web site. In another note, the site redesign is quite nice. [MG]
Why Employers Should Establish Social Media Publishing Policies
Posted on October 18, 2009Recently LLB asked does your law library have a social media policy because having one would establish clear guidelines for library staff members who are posting on behalf of the law library. On 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg...
Google Wave as a Tool for Getting Work Done in a Corporate Environment
Posted on October 18, 2009In What Problems Does Google Wave Solve, Daniel Tanner writes "I believe that people who don?t see what Google Wave [Wave's About Page] is for are simply looking at it from the wrong angle. ... It's not a geek/hacker tool...
Where Do You Think Social Media is Heading?
Posted on October 17, 2009Before answering the question, it can't hurt to read some materials on the history of social media starting with Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11, by Danah Boyd (Berkeley) and Nicole Ellison...
Dead Bunnies Keep Swedes Warm
Posted on October 17, 2009Utterly off topic but ... Every year, the City of Stockholm kills off thousands of rabbits in an effort to protect trees and shrubbery in Stockholm?s extensive network of parks and green space. What do they do with the remains?...
Round-Up of State Practitioner Blogs
Posted on October 17, 2009Sacramento Birth Injury Lawyer Blog http://www.sacramentobirthinjurylawyer.com http://www.sacramentobirthinjurylawyer.com/index.xml Analyzes birth injury news, matters and opinions in California. Published by Moseley Collins. Mortgage Foreclosure Law Blog http://www...
FTC Blogger Rules Unconstitutional?
Posted on October 16, 2009So says Interactive Advertising Bureau President and CEO Randall Rothenberg. The text of his (lengthy) statement is here. An article with some analysis on the issues raised is in Ars Technica. [MG]
Happy Anniversary Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Posted on October 16, 2009Seven years ago today the Second Great Library in Alexandria, Egypt, opened. This Wired piece suggests that the facility is impressive but the collection is not. There is space for 8 million books but the shelves are mostly empty. Digitization...
The 50 Most Powerful People in D.C
Posted on October 16, 2009According to GQ which somehow neglected to include the current occupant of the White House but did include a former Vice President in its list of the Top 10 DC power brokers: Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff ("He...
Friday Fun: Library Limbo
Posted on October 16, 2009I love the 1920's style animation. Kudos to the student who created it for a film course. [JH]
The Earth Internet is Flat
Posted on October 16, 2009"The Internet is a lot flatter today, more densely connected," said Danny McPherson, VP and CSO of Arbor Networks due to consolidation as fewer networks handle more online traffic according to the findings of Arbor Networks' Internet Observatory Report...
AALL Indexing of Periodical Literature Committee Launches Website
Posted on October 16, 2009Among the features of the Committee's site are links to the Committee?s Guidelines, titles that are indexed by Gale/Cengage?s Legaltrac database, titles indexed by the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, Ulrich?s International Periodical Directory database and titles recently approved by...
California Western Students Blogging About Their Law School Experience in School-Sponsored Program
Posted on October 16, 2009Four 1L students plus three 2Ls and one 3L student are blogging about their law school experience at California Western this year. Check out the launch page for each student's blog. From the press release: California Western recruited these students....
Opening: Law Library Director, Chapman University School of Law
Posted on October 16, 2009Chapman University seeks applications for the position of Law Library Director (Fall 2010). The position will be an administrative and faculty appointment, consistent with the governing rules of the American Bar Association. The Rinker Law Library currently contains over 300,000...
Downloadable e-books change the face of brick & mortar libraries
Posted on October 16, 2009Here's an interesting column from the New York Times describing how e-books, that can be downloaded from the comfort of one's home, bring the traditional public library into the 21st century even though old stereotypes remain: Eager to attract digitally...
Ringtones Are Not Public Performances
Posted on October 15, 2009Customized ringtones are a popular way for people to express their individuality and/or tastes, assuming millions of phones playing Jay-Z's Run This Town is an expression of individuality. Phone companies encourage customers to download ringtones. Record companies have discovered another...
Google's Book Store
Posted on October 15, 2009I'm not really all that surprised. In fact, I was expecting it. According to a New York Times article, Google will launch Google Editions, an electronic book store to rival the Amazon/Kindle duo. Unlike Amazon and Kindle, Google Editions will...
2009 Ranking of Top 40 Law Schools by Student (Numerical) Quality
Posted on October 15, 2009Brian Leiter's 2009 ranking of the top 40 schools in terms of student quality is now available on Leiter's Law School Rankings. The ranking metric used is the average of the 75th and 25th percentile LSAT scores for the class...
Did Lawyers' Claim That "No Effort" Made to Extradite Polanski in Court Filings Lead to His Recent Arrest in Switzerland?
Posted on October 01, 2009"Yes." Two law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times that accusations in court documents filed by Polanski's attorneys led prosecutors to look for a new opportunity to extradite him which in term led to his recent arrest in Switzerland....
Republicans in the Majority: Snapshot Stats of Members of Congress Twitter Use
Posted on October 01, 2009The CRS report, Social Networking and Constituent Communication: Member Use of Twitter During a Two-Week Period in the 111th Congress (Sept. 21, 2009), examines Member of Congress use of Twitter. After providing an overview and background of Twitter, the report...
Driven By Images: How, When and Why Legal Practice Has Moved From a Words-Only Dependency
Posted on October 01, 2009Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel's Law on Display: The Digital Transformation of Legal Persuasion and Judgment (NYU Press, Oct. 1, 2009) offers a comprehensive survey and analysis of how new visual technologies are transforming both the practice and culture of...
New UK Supreme Court Opens for Business Today
Posted on October 01, 2009The new United Kingdom Supreme Court opens for business today, October 1, 2009. The Court assumes the jurisdiction of the current Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and the devolution jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council...
Library of Congress Tests the Federal Cloud with DuraSpace Project
Posted on September 30, 2009Federal News Radio's Francis Rose interviews LC's Bill LeFurgy about DuraSpace, a pilot project to store some LC records in the federal cloud. You can listen to the 14 minute interview here. Hat tip to ResourceShelf. For recent federal cloud...
Copyright as Information Policy: Balancing Creative Works and Technologies Used to Duplicate and Manipulate Them
Posted on September 30, 2009When it comes to issues of online infringement, copyright policy protects the incentives copyright has long served to provide authors, and at the same time facilitates the emergence of innovative Internet services and equipment that might be used to duplicate...
Immersion Therapy for Professional Legal Education
Posted on September 30, 2009If there's one professional education model that produces students with a firm grounding in professional education, it has to be found in the medical school-hospital residency system. Patients will die if freshly-minted MDs don't know what they are doing...
Google Scholar Bad for Scholars, OK for Everyone Else?
Posted on September 30, 2009Peter Jackso has an interesting article in Library Journal, Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems. He cites an even more interesting essay by Geoffrey Nunbeg, Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars, published in the Chronicle of...
An Aha Moment for William Safire
Posted on September 30, 2009William Safire died Sunday. He was 79. Those of us old enough to recall, those of us full of senior moments, will remember that he wrote many President Nixon's speeches on the economy and Vietnam who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning...
C.U.N.Y. Law School Gets a New Home
Posted on September 30, 2009In the news today, the City University of New York announced that it has found a new home for this Queens, N.Y. based law school with a special mission: public interest. As a resident native of N.Y.C., I am particularly...
American Lawyer's The Global 100 Law Firms for 2009 Released
Posted on September 30, 2009A snip from the lead story, The Great Game by Richard Lloyd, "our Global 100 rankings, compiled in conjunction with London's Legal Week, provide a glimpse of the impact of the financial meltdown on the world's largest firms ... The...
Do lawyers still advertise in the Yellow Pages in the age of Web 2.0?
Posted on September 30, 2009That's the question being asked on the Lawyerist Blog. The Yellow Pages has never seemed like a particularly good investment?for me, at least. A colleague in a similar line of business?and therefore a good test case for the kind of...
Amount of time Americans spend on social networking sites up 6% from last year.
Posted on September 30, 2009SiliconValley.com is reporting that according to a recent Nielsen survey, Americans are spending 17% of their internet time on social networking and blogging sites like Facebook and Blogger, respectively. This represents a 6% increase from last year. Further, the report...
Kudos to Jack Borden
Posted on September 29, 2009Texas attorney Jack Borden, 101, has been practicing law for the better part of 70 years and still spends about 40 hours a week at his office handling estate planning, probate and real estate matters. Last month, Experience Works honored...
Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors: BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer
Posted on September 29, 2009The little survey I am about to ask you to take is just an attempt to see where the law library community stands with respect to our relationships with our vendors, the big two, LexisNexis and West, and the not...
What Are "Online-Only Works"? Newspaper Association of America Comments on Copyright Office's Proposed Mandatory Deposit of Published Electronic Works Rule
Posted on September 29, 2009As reported earlier in LLB, the Copyright Office is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online. The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory...
Legal Journalism, Then and Now: ALT's David Law Interviews Steve Brill, His Generation's Lat
Posted on September 29, 2009David Lat, founder of Above the Law, was interviewed as part of the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels series recently. His blog now receives 8-10 million page views a month, with roughly 600,000 unique visitors a month. I never made the...
New and Updated GlobaLex Legal Research Guides
Posted on September 29, 2009The September release of GlobaLex research guides covering international, comparative, and foreign law includes the following: New: The Indonesian Legal System and Legal Research by Alamo D. Laiman, Ronald Lengkong, Sigit Ardiyanto, Dewi Savitri Reni Updated: Researching Cameroonian Law by...
Academic Libraries of the Future: Little More Than Special Collections and Study Areas in 7 to 10 Years?
Posted on September 28, 2009Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning and programs at the University of California System, told a room full of university librarians last week at Baruch College of City University of New York that the university library of the future....
Demolishing PACER's Pay Wall One Brick at a Time
Posted on September 28, 2009In case you missed it (sorry Erika, I did), check out Stanford Law School Library Deputy Director Erika Wayne's National Law Journal Article entitled What Public Access? Law School Libraries Should Not Have To Pay for PACER. Wayne argues that...
CRS Reports: The Long and the Short Takes on Federal Qui Tam Statutes
Posted on September 28, 2009Qui Tam: The False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes presents a "brief discussion" of the constitutional questions raised by qui tam provisions; of the history of such provisions; and of the three existing federal qui tam statutes?the False Claims...
Boston College Law Students Spoof Fitzgibbon's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
Posted on September 28, 2009And here it is: Hat tip to ATL's Elie Mystal who is also reporting that BC law prof Scott Fitzgibbon has not responded to calls for public debate about the matter, has refused to answer questions from the Eagleonline, a...
Response to a Reader Question
Posted on September 28, 2009A reader writes: I don't know if you seen this yet, but the Wall Street Journal just published a great piece making an argument that Google -- considered a proponent of net neutrality -- isn't exactly an innocent bystander in...
The "Long Walk" to Learning Outcomes Standard: Discussion Draft of ABA's Assessment of Learning Outcomes Standard Fundamentally Flawed in External Assessment Metrics
Posted on September 28, 2009The Discussion Draft of the 300 Standards prepared by the Student Learning Outcomes Subcommittee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar's Standard Review Committee was made available at the Legal Education at the Crossroads Version...
Legal Information Institutes in India and New Zealand
Posted on September 27, 2009The India Legal Information Institute's Talwant Singh provides a brief overview of the Institute's origins and services in Introduction to the India Legal Information Institute, International Journal of Legal Information: Vol. 36: Iss. 2, Article 11 (2008)...
Polanski Arrested on Statutory Rape Charge, Victim Now 45 Years Old
Posted on September 27, 2009Filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested on a warrant stemming from a decades-old statutory rape charge, according to this CNN report. The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging...
Library of Congress Launches Read.gov
Posted on September 27, 2009Hat tip to ResourceShelf for calling attention to the launch of LC's Read.gov, a multimedia website intended to promote books, reading, literacy and libraries. See also LC's news release. [JH]
Twitter set to raise $100 million in capital, valuing it at $1 billion
Posted on September 27, 2009The New York Times is reporting that Twitter, a company with a total of 60 employees, has announced plans to seek $100 million in investment capital which will value the company at $1 billion. To date, Twitter has generated "no...
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Random Library News for Sunday
Posted on September 27, 2009An essay by a 10 year, 10 month old Paul McCartney was found in the Liverpool Library, which plans to put the document on display in 2013. Why so long? The writing was for a contest in which McCartney won...
AT&T Protests Google Voice Discrimination to FCC
Posted on September 26, 2009Friday ended with the opening of another battle between AT&T and Google. This time it's over Google Voice. The application/service (I'm not sure which label applies, and this may be important) allows users to aggregate existing phone numbers to receive...
Banned Books Week Begins Today
Posted on September 26, 2009Since 1982, the ALA has sponsored this event to remind us not to take our intellectual freedom for granted. ALA reports that there were 581 challenges to books in schools and libraries in 2008; however,the Banned Books Week web sight...
Ah, the Good Old Days: Dedicated Legal Research Terminals, Keyboard Overlays ...
Posted on September 26, 2009Along the way to completing an ILL request, look at what Sarah Glassmeyer found. I had one of these dedicated terminals on my desk. Thanks for the walk down memory lane Sarah. Note the generational gap in two comments to...
Round-Up of State Personal Injury Practitioner Blogs
Posted on September 26, 2009Kentucky Injury Attorney Blog http://www.kentuckyinjuryattorneyblog.com http://www.kentuckyinjuryattorneyblog.com/index.xml Covers injury law reports, cases and opinions in Kentucky. Published by Miller & Falkner. Washington DC Injury Lawyer Blog http://www...
Friday Fun: Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor
Posted on September 25, 2009From The Onion, of course. [JH] Report: Growing Ranks Of Nouveau Poor Facing Discrimination From Old Poor
First Digitally Signed Order Issued by US District Court Magistrate
Posted on September 25, 2009The order was executed by the John M. Facciola, Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and it took place on August 26, 2009 according to this press release which promotes the technology used with...
Google Doesn't Use Keyword or Description Meta Tags in Page Rankings
Posted on September 25, 2009Just in case you didn't know and having been spending way too much time to get web page meta data "just right," Google ignores keyword and description meta tag data in its SE page ranking. Hasn't been using the meta...
Desperately Seeking Publicity: We Got Cited! We Got Seats!
Posted on September 25, 2009So last June SCOTUS favorably cited a 13 year old article published in the Tulane Maritime Law Journal. Like Madonna desperately seeking publicity by pulling out her tried and tested move - a lesbian kiss - the Tulane Law School...
Justice Kennedy Shovels Dirt for New McGeorge Law Library
Posted on September 25, 2009How many Universities break ground for a new Law Library, and how many of them get a Supreme Court Justice to help them when they do? Justice Anthony Kennedy did just that at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School...
Oregon Bar Offers Fastcase to All Oregon Lawyers Via License
Posted on September 25, 2009Fastcase and the Oregon State Bar Association announce what amounts to a state wide site license to the Fastcase legal database. 16,000 Oregon attorneys will have access. This kind of makes me wonder how much a primary law online collection...
Top 10 Federal Agencies By Facebook and Twitter Subscribers
Posted on September 25, 2009According to Federal Computer Week (links to reports embedded in column headings). Facebook Fans Twitter Followers White House: 327,592 Marine Corps: 83,144 Army: 49,416 CDC: 21,257 State Department: 16,386 NASA: 7,768 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: 6,536 Library of Congress: 6,520...
Attention Legal Research and Writing Profs: Example of How Not to Draft Court Filings Provided by Judge's Mark-Up of One; Note the Order
Posted on September 25, 2009Hat tip to ATL's Elie Mystal for calling attention to this one! A local attorney in Daytona Florida, received "editing assistance" from U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell in the form of this order: This matter came before the Court without...
Protecting Jobs in the Good Old AAUP Way
Posted on September 25, 2009In the September/October 2009 edition of the Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, John Buschman blasts the American Library Association for failing to protect the intellectual freedom of librarians. the ALA should defend librarians just as the American...
More Friday fun - Westlaw videos feature stress-toy abuse
Posted on September 25, 2009Westlaw has a pair of promotional videos demonstrating how using its online research products can help reduce office-related stress. We must warn you, though, some of the images in these videos are very disturbing. You may not want to watch...
Putting West and LexisNexis Case Law Digesting Systems to the Relevancy Test
Posted on September 24, 2009Susan Nevelow Mart's (Faculty Services Librarian, UC Hastings Law Library) has uploaded Reining in the Results: The Use of Human Indexing and Computer Algorithms in West?s Headnotes & Key Numbers and LexisNexis?s Headnotes & Topics as Tools for Finding Relevant...
What's Old is New Again: Reading by Flipping Pages Thumbnails Offered by Google Fast Flip
Posted on September 24, 2009The Official Google Blog announced the launched of Google Fast Flip. Essentially, we're talking about navigating an aggregation of partnered newspapers and magazines by flipping through a series of thumbnail images of content organized by broad topics like sections of...
CRS Report on Access to Government Information
Posted on September 24, 2009Access to Government Information In the United States (Aug. 31, 2009) provides an overview of federal records and meeting access statutes, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and the Government in the Sunshine...
Extortion or Bad Joke: Make a Donation or RWU Law Will Interrupt Alums' Family Dinner Time with Phone Calls
Posted on September 24, 2009Strange but true. Above the Law has republished this message from Rogers Williams School of Law: Subject: A quiet dinner - from RWU Law At Roger Williams University School of Law, we understand the importance of family time. Our fall...
Who Let the Marketing Dogs of War In? AALL Spectrum Article by West Defines Pragmatic, Competent Vendors
Posted on September 24, 2009I didn't know there was a synergy between the library community and West until I read Leveraging the Synergy of the Librarian and the Vendor in the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of AALL Spectrum. Written by Michael Orrick, VP of Law...
Pay-for-Publication: How Equitable is the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity?
Posted on September 23, 2009The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity supports "equity" of scholarly publishing business models by committing each university to "the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access...
Balancing DMCA Take-Downs with Put-Backs Based on Fair Use
Posted on September 23, 2009Looking for Fair Use in the DMCA's Safety Dance, 3 Akron Intellectual Property Journal 119 (2009) [SSRN] by Ira S. Nathenson offers a detailed analysis and argument for a "fair-use friendly" way of reading the DMCA to better protect users...
Internet Content Factoids
Posted on September 23, 2009Slaw's David Canton writes "before you click on the link, take a guess at how long it would take you to read the entire internet if you printed it off, or how much area that paper would cover." And here's...
Felony Stupidity in Facebook Use
Posted on September 23, 2009Jonathan G. Parker, 19, of Fort Loudoun, PA, was arraigned last week on one count of felony burglary for breaking into a home and stealing two diamond rings valued at more than $3,500. Not news, but how Parker was caught...
Google Book Settlement Hearing Likely Postponed
Posted on September 23, 2009The parties in the Google Book Settlement proceedings have asked the Court to postpone the October 7th hearing while they work out details based on the objections raised by the Department of Justice and other parties. The brief notes 400...
Legal Research Instruction Must Extend Beyond the First Year
Posted on September 22, 2009Kudos to Brooke Bowman, Assistant Professor of Legal Skills, Stetson, for reiterating the argument for advanced legal research instructions law librarians know all to well. In Researching Across the Curriculum: the Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year, 61 Okla...
Personalizing Search: On the Irreconcilable Differences Between Libraries and Commercial SE Providers
Posted on September 22, 2009Does your public access workstations contain a Google search toolbar in the workstations' browsers? Do you delete the Google cookie on their hard drives? The answer to the first question problem probably is "yes" but probably should be "no" unless...
Google Book Settlement: Not Exactly Topic of the Nation but Featured Topic on NPR's Talk of the Nation
Posted on September 22, 2009NPR's Talk of the Nation, hosted by Neal Conan, features a discussion about the Google Book Settlement with guests Daphne Keller, managing product counsel for Google Books, EFF staff attorney Fred Von Lohmann and WSJ staff reporter Jessica Vascellaro...
Get Your Punk On with Dirty Librarian Chains
Posted on September 22, 2009When's the last time you read anything in Elle that strung the words "dirty" and "librarian" and "chains" together? Ah, well, perhaps quite regularly but then I don't read Elle because I've reduced my fashion choices to binary options: black...
A Bit More on the FCC's Net Neutrality Push
Posted on September 22, 2009The ISP reactions are in. Ars Technica has a nice survey of the major company statements. They tend to be surprisingly positive about the FCC's proposals. And why not? Strategically this is too early to come out with a confrontational...
MIT students create "gaydar" program for Facebook - raises privacy concerns
Posted on September 22, 2009As part of a class project for a course on Internet ethics and law, two MIT students created software that they say can predict whether a male is gay or straight based on who he has "friended" on Facebook. They...
Back Inside the Cave: Eyebrows Raised Over Shadows Presented in Boston College Law Prof's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
Posted on September 21, 2009In body language talk, raised eyebrows signal surprise and dismay and that's how BC law prof Scott Fitzgibbon punctuates his anti-gay marriage commercial attaching Maine's gay marriage ballot proposition after stating that "homosexual marriage will be taught in public schools...
Findings from Survey of Law School Legal Research Programs
Posted on September 21, 2009First off, I'd like to thank Joe for this opportunity. Our library has recently been discussing the skills we'd like our students to have at different stages in their legal education. So, we decided to poll other law school libraries...
Securing the Federal Cloud
Posted on September 21, 2009On September 15th, the federal government officially launched Apps.Gov, the "one-stop source for cloud services" for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services in the hope of reducing the $75 billion a year the federal government spends...
Patry's Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars
Posted on September 21, 2009About Google Senior Copyright Counsel William Patry's Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars (Oxford UP, Sept. 3, 2009), Carl Malamud writes "Patry makes real policy prescriptions and emphasizes hard economic data, combined with his characteristic morality, innovation, and learning...
Opening: Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian, Valparaiso Law Library
Posted on September 21, 2009The Valparaiso University School of Law Library invites applications for the newly-created position of Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian. Responsibilities: The Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian will coordinate library services to the law faculty, develop continuing legal education programming and...
Kudos to Terry Martin, Kumar Jayasuriya and Erika Wayne
Posted on September 21, 2009And to the 900-plus law librarians, legal scholars, government depository librarians and others who signed the Improve PACER Petition! Legal Research Plus is reporting that the petition was delivered to he Administrative Office of the United States Courts...
FCC Chair Promotes Net Neutrality Rules in Speech
Posted on September 21, 2009FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a widely anticipated speech today at the Brookings Institution which announced his intention to formalize principles of net neutrality in the Commission rules. There are four principles the Commission adopted in 2005 which give it...
Free e-textbooks don't hurt online sales according to recent report
Posted on September 21, 2009The Chronicle of Higher Ed is reporting that a recent British study found that the availability of free e-textbooks doesn't hurt hardcopy sales. Not surprisingly, one publisher is questions that conclusion arguing instead that print sales have in fact been...
Website that catalogs Texas executions including the last words of condemned prisoners
Posted on September 21, 2009If this doesn't send a chill down your spine, nothing will. In a recent Op-Ed piece, the New York Times published excerpts from a Texas Department of Criminal Justice website that iincludes the last words of condemned prisoners. Here's the...
RiP! A Remix Manifesto
Posted on September 20, 2009Brett Gaylor explores "issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers." That's the brief description provided for RiP! A Remix Manifesto on Hulu. The....
DOJ Opposes Google Book Settlement Terms, Not the Settlement
Posted on September 19, 2009The Department of Justice has issued their brief in the Google Book Settlement case late Friday. The United States is opposed to the settlement in its present form. Compared to some of the commercial critics out there, the brief is...
Google Has Easter Eggs
Posted on September 19, 2009We've come to love, or at least be amused by Easter eggs in DVD menus. These are hidden content on a disc that's displayed by following undocumented combinations of navigation steps using a DVD remote. Here's an Easter egg from...
Yikes, Love Affair Between Prosecutor and Judge Not Good Enough Grounds for New Trial for Inmate on Death Row in Texas
Posted on September 19, 2009The Courthouse News Service is reporting the story. In a 6-3 decision, the highest criminal court in Texas ruled that the death row inmate waited too long to raise the argument that the relationship tainted his 1990 trial. In a...
Two Social Networking Sites for Law Students
Posted on September 19, 2009Hat tip to Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian at Cleveland Marshall Law Library, for calling attention to Advanced Advocates and CaseMakerX. Check out Sue's post for brief descriptions. [JH]
Interesting Note from Football
Posted on September 19, 2009As I sit on my couch this afternoon I was very surprised to hear the CBS announcers for the Florida - Tennessee football game today throw in the tidbit that Florida kicker, Jonathan Phillips, isn't just enrolled at the University...
Friday Fun: Quiet Please, Don't Be a Grover
Posted on September 18, 2009Another Sesame Street classic, Grover in the Library. [JH]
Creative Commons Publishes Findings of Survey on What ?Noncommercial Use? Means to the Online Community
Posted on September 18, 2009Creative Commons has published Defining ?Noncommercial?: A Study of How the Online Population Understands ?Noncommercial Use.? The report details the results of a research study launched in September 2008 to explore differences between commercial and noncommercial uses of content found...
Suggestions Wanted for ABA Journal's Next 100 Best Law Blogs by October 2
Posted on September 18, 2009The ABA Journal wants to know which law blogs should be included in its annual list of the 100 best law blogs. The list will be published in December. Suggestions should be made by October 2. This would be a...
Hints That Web 2.0 May Alter Long-Standing Patterns of Civic Engagement Based on Socioeconomic Status According to Pew Internet Survey
Posted on September 18, 2009"Contrary to the hopes of some advocates," writes the authors of the Pew Internet's September 2009 survey findings in The Internet and Civic Engagement, "the internet is not changing the socioeconomic character of civic engagement in America." Higher income, higher...
Kudos to University of Montana School of Law and Its Law Library
Posted on September 18, 2009The University of Montana School of Law will dedicate its new building today. The current building was constructed in 1961, and its last major renovation was in 1978. The $14.8 million addition adds nearly 46,000 square feet to the school's...
Friday Fun: Colbert on Citizens United v. FEC
Posted on September 18, 2009Stephen Colbert breaks down the recently argued Supreme Court case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. It's Sonia Sotomayor's first chance to show her justice-i-ness in this rare out of session argument. The case revolves around the Hillary Clinton...
603(c), 603(d) & Surgery
Posted on September 18, 2009ABA Approval for Law Schools Standard 603(c) reads, ?A director of a law library should have a law degree and a degree in library or information science and shall have a sound knowledge of and experience in library administration.? "Should"...
What Happens to Law School Graduates That Fail the Bar Exam?
Posted on September 17, 2009In contrast to the rich body of literature examining the long-term outcomes of lawyers, we don't know much about what happens to law school graduates who fail to pass the bar exam. The legal academy prefers to hid them under...
Hello Words and Phrases Online, Goodbye Words and Phrases in All Formats
Posted on September 17, 2009Citing West Librarian?s Relations Newsletter (9/2/2009) the Cocky Law Blawg provides the following except reporting on a new Westlaw database for the Company's long-running print Words and Phrases title. On August 24, a new WORDS-PHRASES database was released that permits...
New Law Titles from the University of Chicago Press
Posted on September 17, 2009The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley From the Blurb: According to Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley in The Patent Crisis and How the Courts Can Solve It,...
A possible solution to illegal downloads - France considers cutting off internet access
Posted on September 17, 2009Talk about a deterrent! There's legislation pending in France that would cut-off internet access for up to a year (as well as impose substantial fines and possible jail time) for anyone caught illegally downloading content from the web. According to....
Pace Law School To Admit First Midyear Class in January, Students to Graduate in 2.5 Years Instead of 3
Posted on September 17, 2009Pace Law School will launch of a new program for candidates seeking to start law school in January rather than September and to reduce duration of attending law school by one-half year. According to the press release, the inaugural class...
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in ALL-SIS Task Force's Recommendations for ABA Standards Revision Relating to Academic Law Libraries
Posted on September 17, 2009The ALL-SIS Task Force on ABA Standards Review has submitted its Recommendations for ABA Standards Revision Relating to Academic Law Libraries to the AALL Executive Board. In several but not all respects, I think most law librarians would agree with....
A Few More Comments on the ALL-SIS Task Force's Recommendations
Posted on September 17, 2009I would like to add some thoughts to Joe Hodnicki's excellent post on the ALL-SIS Task Force's Recommendations for ABA Standards Revision Relating to Academic Law Libraries. The Task Force is content to leave the standards for job security in...
Horror Stories: "When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to criticize the court" on social media sites
Posted on September 16, 2009A September 12, 2009 article in the New York Times, A Legal Battle: Online Attitude vs. Rules of the Bar by John Schwartz reviews recent disciplinary proceedings against practicing attorneys. One case involved a blogging criminal attorney who questioned the...
If You Put Something into the Public Domain, Can You Take It Out Later?
Posted on September 16, 2009One of Cincinnati Law's better young gun law profs, Tim Armstrong, has deposited Shrinking the Commons: Termination of Copyright Licenses and Transfers for the Benefit of the Public in SSRN. The article addresses the possible consequences of one of the...
CRS Report on FOIA Issues for the 111th Congress
Posted on September 16, 2009From the summary of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Issues for the 111th Congress (Aug. 12, 2009): In his first full day in office, President Obama issued a memorandum to federal departments and agencies encouraging more collaboration, participation, and transparency...
Boys Will Be Boys: On "Cool" Facebook Apps
Posted on September 16, 2009In What value do users derive from social networking applications? (First Monday, Sept. 2009) Larry Neale and Rebekah Russell-Bennett investigate the value users derive from ?cool? Facebook applications and the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications...
Philadelphia Public Libraries Announce Closing in Budget Dispute
Posted on September 16, 2009The public libraries in Philadelphia are closing as of October 2 due to the failure of the Pennsylvania State Senate to pass a budget. The web site for the Free Library of Philadelphia has the details of the closing. NBC...
If you've ever wondered how West creates headnotes and key numbers . . . .
Posted on September 16, 2009Then this is the video for you. A behind the scenes look at how the editorial staff at West takes a case (here, it's the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller) moments after it's decided and...
Government to Tap Cloud Computing and Google Wants to Help
Posted on September 16, 2009Google is securing certification for Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) (no cute acronym here) in conjunction with Google Apps and an initiative to provide cloud computing to federal and state governments. This comes in conjunction with the announcement that...
Does the Internet mean the end of universities in the next 10 years?
Posted on September 15, 2009That's the premise of this story from Sunday's Washington Post as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Ed in which Professor Zephyr Teachout predicts "that kids heading off to college this year might be part of the last generation for...
94% of lawyers still don't like Twitter
Posted on September 15, 2009And that makes, um, two of us. While I've seen some retailers put Twitter to very good use, for me - and, as it turns out, for the vast majority of other attorneys - the hype on Twitter far exceeds...
BigLaw Firm Libraries: Looking Back From a 20-Year Old Perspective
Posted on September 15, 2009Reflecting on this year's findings in the AmLaw 200 Law Library Survey [see LLB's post, Lexis or Westlaw No Longer a Blasphemous Question at BigLaw Firms], Ron Friedmann wonders whether law firms and libraries have fundamentally re-thought how firm libraries...
Who Is Lining Google's Pockets Today? Daily Adwords Revenue Stats
Posted on September 15, 2009Permuto Blog has identified Google's highest Adword search advertisers and analyzed the revenue down to daily spending levels. Average daily spending per Adword advertiser is $39, per the top 10 advertisers, which includes AOL, Expedia, NexTag, Target, Amazon, Local...
The Kelo Back-Story
Posted on September 15, 2009Condemnation cases are about people, not property, and Susette Kelo's story is a perfect example. Little Pink House (Grand Central Publishing, 2009) by Jeff Benedict relies more on interviews of the litigants than delving deeping into legal analysis to document...
UMG Loses at Trial in Infringment Suit Against Veoh
Posted on September 15, 2009The Universal Music Group (UMG) sued Internet video provider Veoh in September, 2007, for direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement and for inducement of copyright infringement. The case turned on whether Veoh was eligible to invoke the safe harbor provisions...
Law Schools Could Save a Forest by Ending Law Porn Mailings: One Law Prof's Plea
Posted on September 15, 2009In his Saving the Environment post on Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca writes: Quit sending me brochures about your law school. I don?t vote in the U.S. News & World Report survey. Nor do I know anyone who does. I?m willing...
Robert Richard's Survey of Recent Developments on Legal Research Instruction
Posted on September 14, 2009For the best survey of recent developments on legal research instruction I've seen in the law librarian blogosphere, check out LLB contributing editor Robert Richard's post on his Legal Informatics Blog. The very detailed post covers such topics as Testing...
Orin Kerr Needs Law Librarians' Advice
Posted on September 14, 2009As one of the authors of the just released 5th edition of Hornbook on Criminal Procedure (with Wayne LaFave, Jerold Israel and Nancy J. King), Orin Kerr was given twenty-five copies of the new work by West. "That's about twenty-two...
Transforming Websites into Digital Branch Libraries
Posted on September 14, 2009ALA TechSource will be hosting a one-hour webinar with David Lee King, author of Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website (Library Technology Reports, Volume 45, Number 6, August-September 2009), on Tuesday, September 15th at 2:00 PM...
Loyola University Chicago Law School to Be Renamed
Posted on September 14, 2009The Loyola University Chicago Law School will be renamed the Philip H. Corboy Law Center. The name change is prompted by a gift by prominent Chicago personal injury attorney Corboy and his wife. The amount was not disclosed, but is...
Sears Knows More About You Than the Government, Maybe
Posted on September 14, 2009Forget the alleged federal wiretapping that scanned the entire Internet, including personal communications, for references to terrorism. Sears has (or had) a better idea. Why not get U.S. consumers to install tracking software on their machines with their permission in...
Got $100, Buy Someone's Email or Social Media Site Password: No One Is Cracking Down on Hacker Services
Posted on September 14, 2009Buying a password to almost anyone's Yahoo, Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN, Gmail, MySpace, FaceBook and AOL accounts is as easy as sending $100 to services like Slick Hackers. From the site: Welcome to SlickHackers.com The most reliable, fast and leading...
Licentious Gotham Meets Historical Newspaper Hunt
Posted on September 14, 2009I am in the middle of a great book titled "Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York." It is, as the title suggests, an analysis of how New York became the center of pornography. Of course,...
IT Staff: Damn Those Antisocial, Insubordinate, Victim-Prone, Bullheaded and Credit-Whoring Geeks!
Posted on September 14, 2009Not my experience or sentiment. Nor Jeff Ello's who distroys the geek stereotype facet by facet in Opinion: The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks, but with this cautionary note: I have come to realize that perfectly healthy groups with solid,...
Bing 2.0 About To Be Released?
Posted on September 13, 2009Wait a minute, wasn't Bing 1.0 just released? Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft might roll out Bing 2.0 as early as Monday, Sept. 14. She writes "Microsoft rolled out Bing 1.0 in late May. The first rollout was as...
Sign of the Times: Getting Harder Every Day to Give Away Print Resources
Posted on September 13, 2009From a recent law-lib message: Last call (emphasis added) for the following sets of books for postage, all updated to May 2009. USCA, has 2008 pocket parts West's Federal Practice Digest 4th, 49 boxes, has 2008 pocket parts- (2009 pocket...
Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs
Posted on September 12, 2009Miami Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog http://www.miamicriminaldefenselawyerblog.com http://www.miamicriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/index.xml Reviews criminal law news, cases and reports in Florida. Published by Donet, McMillan & Trontz. Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyers Blog http://www...
SharePoint in Plain English
Posted on September 12, 2009Some say Microsoft's SharePoint may be the fastest-growing product in Microsoft's history even though it may also be as shoddy as the Company's other offerings. It looks like a relatively inexpensive enterprise-level platform for hosting websites, information stores, documents as...
Damage Award Against Microsoft Reversed in Patent Case
Posted on September 12, 2009The Appellate court for the Federal Circuit upheld a jury decision that Microsoft infringed an Alcatel-Lucent patent but overturned the $358 million verdict. The patent involved a date picking feature in Outlook and other Microsoft software. The verdict was based...
Friday Fun: Library Pranks, Japanese Style
Posted on September 11, 2009Note the library staffer in the background [JH]
Tracing the Policy Path of PACER User Fees
Posted on September 11, 2009Stephen Schultze, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is looking for feedback for an extensive examination he plans to make about the role of user fees for public access to court records in the budgeting process...
Are Law Schools Making a Mission-Transforming Turn Toward Professional Education?
Posted on September 11, 2009If your graduates are entering a professional career, one would think providing a professional education would be a no-brainer regardless of the labor market. Not so. In Reality's Knocking, Karen Sloan offers antedotal evidence to support the proposition that "the...
Through the Dharma Gate, Down the Rabbit Hole: Cincinnati Law's Paul Caron on "What's Wrong with Law School"
Posted on September 11, 2009In a post entitled, What's Wrong with Law School, Cincinnati law prof Paul Caron quotes UC-Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky from a recent Los Angeles Times story about the opening of the law school, UCI Law has status, not...
SCOTUS Scores "Just About Right" Rating in Gallup's Latest Poll
Posted on September 11, 2009As SCOTUS prepares to get down to business, Gallup reports that its 61% public approval rating is the most positive approval rating the Court has received since 2001. The heightened public approval of the Supreme Court is accompanied by an...
Google Offers To License the Book Database at Congressional Hearing
Posted on September 11, 2009The most recent statement from Google about their exclusive control of the content that is subject to the Book Settlement is that they are willing to license it to other resellers. This came at a House hearing yesterday. The offered...
Google to Defend Book Settlement Before House Judiciary Committee Today
Posted on September 10, 2009Google's Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, will be quizzed by the full House Judiciary Committee this morning as will be Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild. The speaker list also includes Paul...
"You have to start all over" when a new Justice joins SCOTUS: C-SPAN's Interviews with Supreme Court Justices
Posted on September 10, 2009Here's some excerpts from C-SPAN interviews of Supreme Court Justices -- to be shown in their entirety during C-SPAN's "Supreme Court Week" beginning Oct. 4, 2009. Tied to Sonia Sotomayor's first appearance on the Bench, the quotes reflect Justice's thoughts...
Not a West! Moment: Hi, my name is Jen and I'm your Matthew Bender Account Manager
Posted on September 10, 2009Jen has been my Matthew Bender account m...
Attorney Use of Free Email Services and Third Party Communications
Posted on September 10, 2009Is the use of free email services like Gmail and Yahoo for client communications a violation of Rule 1.6(a) of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct because lawyers are revealing client information to a third party? Toby Brown says...
Law firms begin to develop policies on social media use
Posted on September 10, 2009I'd previously posted on the Legal Writing Prof Blog a story about the USMC banning soldiers from using social media because, among other reasons, the security risks these forms of communication present. I speculated in the post that private law...
Will Microsoft buy Blackboard in 2010?
Posted on September 10, 2009That's the hypothetical being posed by a blogger on the Inside Higher Ed website. Five reasons are suggested as to why we should expect to see Microsoft acquire the education-ware maker sometime next year. 1. The education market will continue...
Obama says to teens: "Be careful what you post on Facebook"
Posted on September 10, 2009During his school speech yesterday, President Obama told teens to be careful about what they post on their Facebook pages. I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you...
The International Conference on Academic Libraries & PKP
Posted on September 10, 2009The International Conference on Academic Libraries meets in Delhi this October with an eye to create a future roadmap for academic libraries. The Conference, idea, and location are all intriguing, but what I want to report on is the conferencing...
Lexis offers sexy cheesecake calendar as part of rewards program
Posted on September 10, 2009LexisNexis has just upped the ante in its competition with Westlaw for your online research dollars. Above the Law is reporting that Lexis has embarked on a new "rewards" program that allows subscribers to redeem points for "millions of items."...
IALL 2009 Website Award Contest
Posted on September 10, 2009The International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) is seeking nominations for its annual website award contest. Here is the announcement: This is an opportunity to nominate your favourite legal information website. The winner will be announced at the 28th Annual...
Are a Public School Teacher's Personal eMail Messages Disclosable as a Public Record?
Posted on September 10, 2009The Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide later this fall whether personal public school teacher emails are public records. The case involves a citizen request for the emails of Wisconsin Rapids School District teachers conducted at their work computers from the...
Are all law librarians legal positivists?
Posted on September 10, 2009Or, put another way, should all law librarians acknowledge that their job is to be legal positivists? Legal Positivism is a school of Jurisprudence which holds that the only legitimate source of laws comes from written laws specifically enacted or...
After the Fact Verification of US News Clerkship Ranking Data
Posted on September 09, 2009Two law school administrators have reported that the US News Clerkship Placement Ranking published incorrect data. The University of North Dakota School of Law Dean doesn't know where the magazine got the data for her school which resulted in North...
Satisfaction with BigLaw Career Correlated to Law School Ranking: Lower-Ranked Law School Grads Happier and More Motivated
Posted on September 09, 2009It appears that BigLaw attorneys who graduated from less selective, that is to say, lower ranked law schools are more satisfied working in larger law firms than attorneys who graduated from top ranked schools. That's one of the conclusions Ronit...
New FDsys Collections Include Retrospective Resources and Tools for Legislative Research
Posted on September 09, 2009The GPO has added eight new collections into the Federal Digital System (FDsys). Legislative Resources: History of Bills (1983 to present) Congressional Record Index (1993 to present) Congressional Record (Bound) (1999 to 2001)(Authenticated digital signature) United States Statutes at Large...
Thinking Strategically Blog Launched by AALL
Posted on September 09, 2009The AALL Executive Board Strategic Directions Committee is tasked with developing the Association's new game plan. To help it do so the Committee has created a new blog, Thinking Strategically, for member input. [JH]
Kudos to Claire Hand
Posted on September 09, 2009Claire Hand, UNLV Wiener-Rogers Law Library Assistant, was awarded a scholarship this summer from the UNLV Office of the Vice President for Diversity & Inclusion-Multicultural Center to attend the third annual Women of Color Leadership Conference hosted by the MGM...
ALA, ARL, and ACRL Weigh In on the Google Book Settlement (One More Time)
Posted on September 09, 2009The American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries have supplemented their May 4th filing with the District Court overseeing the Google Book Settlement. The supplemental filing is available from the...
New US News Law School Ranking: Judicial Clerkship Placements
Posted on September 08, 2009U.S. News has published its first-ever ranking of which law schools are sending the largest proportions of their graduates on to local, state and federal judicial clerkships. The data was collected from each law school in fall 2008 and early...
"Website Business as Usual" Policy: Google Books Privacy Policy for Services Under Settlement Agreement Released Just Ahead of Deadline for Filing Objections
Posted on September 08, 2009Resources from Recent Google Book Settlement Conferences On the left coast, check out Digital Koans for links to articles and posts on the UC Berkeley School of Information's Google Books Settlement and the Future of Information Access Conference. On the...
Recent Web 2.0 Developments for Monitoring Congress
Posted on September 08, 2009The 111th Congress of the United States reconvenes today. In her LLRX article, The Government Domain: Tracking Congress 2.0, Peggy Garvin highlights some Web 2.0 resources to monitor legislation. The article features GovTrack.us, OpenCongress.org and two recently launched THOMAS feeds...
Opening: Head of Reference Services, Duke Law Library
Posted on September 08, 2009The J. Michael Goodson Law Library, Duke University, invites applications for the position of Head of Reference Services. Responsibilities: The Head of Reference Services leads and works collaboratively with four law-trained reference librarians to coordinate the work of the Reference...
If someone steals your Kindle, don't expect Amazon to help
Posted on September 08, 2009You can add this story to the recent bad press about Amazon's Kindle (i.e, the public relations snafu in July over Amazon's unilateral decision to delete certain titles from the device) - if someone steals yours don't expect Amazon to...
Musings on the ABA Questionnaire
Posted on September 08, 2009It is that time of year when 1Ls flood the elevators and academic law librarians turn their eyes to the ABA Annual Questionnaire - an item on the "to do" list that never seems to be without controversy. This year...
And then there are the state judicial clerkships.
Posted on September 08, 2009As a former clerk for the New Jersey Judiciary, I believe that a clerkship with a state judge is an invaluable experience. Perhaps it doesn't carry the prestige of the federal clerkship, but it was good enough for me. And...
Kirkland and Ellis Lays Off Attorneys
Posted on September 08, 2009The recession affected yet one more law firm. Kirkland and Ellis laid off attorneys from its various local offices. Reports indicate the cuts came in the corporate and intellectual property departments. What, couldn't they find more clients who are willing...
University of Chicago Law Gets New Dean
Posted on September 08, 2009The new Dean of the University of Chicago is Michael H. Schill, currently dean of the UCLA School of Law. The appointment takes affect of Friday, Jan. 1, 2010. Schill succeeds Saul Levmore, who had presided over the law school...
Where to Find Google Book Settlement Filings (Other Than Pacer)
Posted on September 08, 2009Today is was the last day for comments to the District Court in the Google Book Settlement before the next hearing on October 7th. More objections have been filed at the deadline, including the French government, D.C. Comics and (finally)...
Federal Employment Forecast Offers Glimmer of Hope for Legal and Information Professionals
Posted on September 07, 2009Based on a survey conducted by the Partnership for Public Service of 35 federal agencies representing nearly 99 percent of the 1.9 million federal workforce, the federal government needs to hire nearly 273,000 workers in mission critical jobs in the....
High Profile American Female JDs in Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women
Posted on September 06, 2009Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women ranking include several high profile female JDs holding public office: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (36th place), First Lady Michelle Obama (40th, OK - not sure she counts as an official office-holder), Justice Ruth Bader...
Should Anyone Be Characterizing a Person's Death, even Dick Cheney's, as a "Blessed Day"?
Posted on September 05, 2009See Jim Lindgren's Volokh Conspiracy post, Michelle Goldberg argues against heated rhetoric while mentioning that she "hated Bush so much" and talks of the "blessed day" when Dick Cheney dies. Lindgren's post title says it all. Here's the link to...
Staffing the Reference Desk Today?
Posted on September 05, 2009God, I hope no one is stuck sitting at the reference desk today but if you are I bet you have plenty of time on your hands. Might as well take a quick look at a search engine list that...
BigLaw Attorneys May Have the Labor Day Weekend Off: Results of Above the Law's 2009 Billable Hours Poll
Posted on September 04, 20095,255 BigLaw attorneys had enough spare time to respond to ATL's billable hours poll asking for predicted hours for 2009. "Looks like 1600 minus billers are trending up and 2400 plus billers are trending down, writes ATL's Kashmir Hill. "We...
How "Fit" is Your Facebook Page? Florida Bar Examiners Single Out Suspected Stoners for Social Media Site Investigations as Part of Character and Fitness Review
Posted on September 04, 2009On Legal Blog Watch, Carolyn Elefant reviews reports that the Florida Bar Examiners may search bar applicants' social media sites to hunt down evidence of suspected substance abuse. In particular the Florida Bar intends to single out the following applicants:...
ABA Journal's Legal Rebels Project
Posted on September 04, 2009Recently launched, the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels Project will be profiling 50 of the profession's leading innovators over the course of the next three months. You can nominate a "legal rebel" you think the project should profile here. [JH]
The first "Internet addiction" center opens in the US
Posted on September 04, 2009South Korea already has them. So does China and Taiwan. Now the US is going to get its own according to today's Washington Post. And how appropriate that it has opened outside Seattle, the same area that birthed Microsoft. The...
How to make your Facebook page "tenure-ready"
Posted on September 04, 2009Here's some advice from the Chronicle of Higher Ed about how to tweak your social networking presence to enhance your career. The author is clearly trying to help career-minded people and is undoubtedly correct in many of his observations but...
The Future of Libraries: No Books
Posted on September 04, 2009At least public libraries, and according to CNN. [MG]
Ban on Word Stayed by Appellate Court
Posted on September 04, 2009In an move that is hardly shocking or unexpected, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has stayed the lower court order forbidding sales of Word that violate the custom XML patent belonging to i4i. Microsoft's appeal is slated...
Friday Fun on Thursday: YouTube Hidden Features!
Posted on September 03, 2009A little Friday Fun on Thursday for those of us who are extending the 3-day Labor Day weekend to four days by taking tomorrow off. Check out the YouTube Hidden Features video from College Humor Labs' "completely accurate" tech series...
Over $730,000 Spent by Law Libraries in PACER Fees Last Year
Posted on September 03, 2009Sanford Law Library Deputy Director Erika Wayne reports on a survey she conducted on law library PACER expenses in 2008. Apparently the survey was limited to law firm and academic law libraries but the findings still show that over $730,000...
Souter Bans Access to Papers for 50 Years
Posted on September 03, 2009Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter has placed a 50-year ban on public access to his personal and professional papers. In The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times, Tony Mauro writes The unusually severe bar on access is...
Is There an e-Book Reader in Your Future?
Posted on September 03, 2009Forrester Research forecasts the US e-Reader market to grow from 1 million units to 12 million by 2012 but an e-Book reader is not in my future. I'm liking the mini-laptop as an alternative to largely tethered, single purpose gizmos....
Reminder: Today's Law Librarian Talk Show on Research Services and Products Law Firms Use
Posted on September 03, 2009Today's Law Librarian Blog Talk Radio program, What's Real in the Real World?, will feature a discussion about what resources are being used in law firms with a group of firm librarians at 3:00 PM ET. Should be very interesting;...
Constitution Day is Every Day!
Posted on September 03, 2009Actually, it's September 17th, the day in 1787 the U.S. Constitution was signed. For those of us in federal courthouses, it's also the time of year when we see school groups come to visit and learn about the judiciary and...
Free e-Books for Sony Reader at Heart of Deal Resulting in Google Chrome Becoming Default Browser on All New Sony PCs?
Posted on September 03, 2009"Why would Sony preinstall Google's Chrome, which now has less than 3% of the browser market, when Firefox has nearly 23%?" asks the writer of Wharton's Knowledge Today's blog post, Google by Default. A comment to the post offers the...
Lexis or Westlaw No Longer a Blasphemous Question at BigLaw Firms
Posted on September 03, 2009Librarians at 86 Am Law 200 firms completed American Lawyer's 2009 law library survey. Summary findings provided in Alan Cohen's Law Librarians Survey: No More Sacred Cows American Lawyer article include: 46% report budget cuts this year compared to 9%...
US Internet traffic peaks late at night as people stay up to surf
Posted on September 03, 2009The Washington Post reports on a new study showing that the web surfing habits of Americans are changing. It used to be that most internet traffic occurred during the work day. But now researchers are seeing some of the heaviest...
Google Mobile App: What Might It Mean for Legal Research? Part 2
Posted on September 02, 2009In part one of this post, I described Google Mobile Application (?GMA?), its effectiveness for certain kinds of legal research, the history of voice recognition for legal research in the U.S., and some factors suggesting that GMA may become a...
Federal Contracts with Social Media Providers Released
Posted on September 02, 2009The Government Services Administration released several contracts and amendments to contracts between the federal government and Web 2.0 companies in response to an Electronic Privacy Information Center FOIA request. Here's links to the contracts: Agreements Blip...
Who Benefits? Unionization and Academic Libraries and Librarians
Posted on September 02, 2009Assistant Professor, Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, Rachel Applegate's article, Who Benefits? Unionization and Academic Libraries and Librarians has been published at 79 The Library Quarterly 443 (October 2009) (subscription required)...
Is Justice Stevens Retiring After the Upcoming Term?
Posted on September 02, 2009News reports are speculating that Justice Stevens may retire because he has hired only one law clerk for 2010. A similar move apparently signaled Justice Souter's retirement. Retired justices usually have one clerk rather than three or four. Reports are...
Kudos to Catherine Best
Posted on September 02, 2009Courthouse Libraries BC reports that The Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research has been redesigned with new features added. "Research lawyer Catherine Best has updated the site content, including information about newer tools such as RSS feeds, blogs, and Google...
Facebook quizzes pose privacy threat according to the ACLU
Posted on September 02, 2009You know those oh-so-popular Facebook quizzes that tell you what European country or Sopranos' character you're most like? Or how your I.Q. compares to others on Facebook? Admit it - you've taken at least one or two. Well, before you...
Google's Gmail goes down big-time - millions of users left in the lurch
Posted on September 02, 2009The Washington Post reports that Google's Gmail service was out of commission on Tuesday for several hours leaving tens of million users (including many businesses) without email service. It's yet another reminder of how dependent we've all become on Google...
Google Mobile App: What Might It Mean for Legal Research?
Posted on September 01, 2009Voice search may soon become a popular tool for legal research in the U.S. The reason? The Google search engine?s smartphone application, called Google Mobile Application or Google Mobile App (?GMA,? currently available for BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android phones), includes...
Is Peer Pressure Stimulating Increase in Web 2.0 Usage Among Adults 35 and Older?
Posted on September 01, 2009The New York Times reports some Web 2.0 usage stats from a recent Forrester Research report. 80% on online adults of all ages use social media in some form at least monthly. Nearly 25% of adults are content creators by...
New Edition of Wojcik's Illinois Legal Research Just Released
Posted on September 01, 2009I imagine John Marshall Law School (Chicago) prof Mark Wojcik's day is pretty full with teaching and blogging at International Law Prof Blog and Legal Writing Prof Blog but somehow he found the time write the second edition of his...
Germany Says Nein to Google Book Settlement and More
Posted on September 01, 2009There are various moves in the ebook/reader business. The major one is the filing by the German government in District Court opposing the Google book settlement. Some of the reasons for opposition are that Google has digitized books by German...
Be Sad When Your Kindle Goes Away
Posted on August 31, 2009What if you lose your Kindle or it's stolen? Amazon may not be much help when that happens, except to sell you another. Read one person's (bad) experience in Ars Technica. [MG]
Houston Public Library Offers Book Curb Service
Posted on August 31, 2009Does your library have a parking problem? That's apparently the case for the Houston Public Library. Their solution is to provide curb service where staff will take your book order out to your waiting car. Library Executive Director Rhea Brown...
From Messenger Pigeons to the Web: Thomson Reuters Spends $1 Billion to Make Its Financial Information Services User Friendly
Posted on August 31, 2009Reuters, "never really been known for its cutting-edge advances," will unveil Project Utah, the final leg of a $1 billion technology investment to upgrade its systems reports James Ashton in the Sunday Times, Thomson Reuters explodes into web age. Some...
No One Likes Heller (Or Why I'm Having the Citator Blues Again)
Posted on August 31, 2009Like so many (or perhaps so few), on June 26, 2008, I anxiously awaited for the United States Supreme Court?s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (2008) to be handed down. The Court held that the...
Open Book Alliance Kicks Off Campaign Against the Google Book Settlement
Posted on August 31, 2009Countdown to Court Review of Proposed Google Book Settlement September 4: Deadline for submissions to US District Court September 4: Deadline for authors/rightsholders to opt-out of settlement September 7: European Commission Hearing September 18: Deadline for Dept...
Beware the Armed Law Prof
Posted on August 31, 2009As reported on LLB here and here, a Louisville Law School library staffer called university police when he saw Thomas H. Irwin, who was banned from campus for harassing an employee, walk into the law library. Irwin was charged with...
Ferrari and Smart Fail to Score Cash for Clunkers Sales
Posted on August 30, 2009With the close of the Cash for Clunkers Programs, the Department of Transportation is reporting some stats about the program: 690,114 car sales were transacted with rebate applications totaling $2.877 billion. 84% of trade-ins were trucks, and 59% of new...
Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs
Posted on August 29, 2009Tampa Bay Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog http://www.tampabaycriminaldefenselawyerblog.com http://www.tampabaycriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/index.xml Reports on criminal law news, cases and opinions in Florida. Published by the Slavin Law Firm. Oregon Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog http://www...
Friday Fun: Divorce Court Will Never Be the Same
Posted on August 28, 2009It started with the wildly popular wedding ceremony video on YouTube and quickly moved to divorce court. [JH]
iAWFUL's Top Ten Worst Legislative and Regulatory Proposals Targeted at e-Commerce
Posted on August 28, 2009Through the Internet Advocates' Watchlist For Ugly Laws (iAWFUL) site, NetChoice, a coalition of trade associations and eCommerce businesses, tracks dangerous legislation and mobilizes citizens to defeat bills and proposals that threaten the future of ecommerce and online communication...
Are Rank-and-File Librarians Sitting on the Fence Over the Google Book Settlement?
Posted on August 28, 2009According to a Publishers Weekly survey as reported by Norman Oder in the Library Journal, the answer is yes. 29% of librarians support the Google Book Settlement. 21.5% oppose it. 37% are unsure. On the publishing industry and Authors Guild...
New Website Offers Documentation on the Palestinian Occupation
Posted on August 28, 2009The Israel Law Resource Center focus on civil rights, human rights and international law within Israel occupied territories. The site offers primary source materials, including laws, regulations, military orders, and court rulings. The Center also offers study guides on various...
U.S. lags behind several countries in Internet speed
Posted on August 28, 2009Despite being the country that invented drag racing and speed dating, a new report by the Communication Workers of America shows that download speed in America is slower than at least 27 other countries. The 2009 speedmatters.org survey also reveals....
Is Your Weekend Yard Sale Violating the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008?
Posted on August 28, 2009It is if you are selling recalled products! From the US Consumer Product Safety Commission website: Selling recalled products is now unlawful. The law sets strict limits for lead in paint and for lead content. Additionally, three types of phthalates....
Google Books to Support EPUB Format for Public Domain Titles
Posted on August 28, 2009Google will offer more than one million public domain titles for download in the EPUB format, a free open format supported by a wide variety of readers and applications. The new Sony reader can take advantage of the format. Google...
Ted Kennedy, 1932 - 2009: The Passion of My Life Speech
Posted on August 27, 2009Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy died late Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts after a long battle with brain cancer. He was 77. Long-time champion of civil and voting rights whose endorsement of Barack Obama remains a political debt....
Where Are the "Academic Lawyers"?
Posted on August 27, 2009I guess Judge Posner and I have one thing in common (though it's certainly not IQ scores). We're both "old school" about law school and by that I mean the legal academy is or at least was the place where,...
Computer and Internet Industries Earn Highest Marks, Legal Profession and Banking Rank Near the Bottom in Latest Gallup Poll
Posted on August 27, 2009In its annual Work and Education poll, Gallup asks Americans to rate each of 25 major businesses and industries as positive, negative, or neutral. This year's update, conducted Aug. 6-9, found that the computer industry ranks the highest with a...
Ethical Considerations for the Law Review Submission Process
Posted on August 27, 2009Maryland law prof David Gray has been mulling over the "normative issues germane to the process for placing articles in law reviews" and offers his opinion on Concurring Opinions with the following caveat: My sense is that this is touchy...
Healthcare Insurance Reform, the Back of the Napkin Explanation by Dan Roam
Posted on August 27, 2009With debunked claims still popping up in town hall meetings about health care reform, as reported recently by CNN in Rumors influencing health care debate, perhaps we need a back of the napkin explanation. Dan Roam, author of The Back...
Shedding West at Stanford Law Library
Posted on August 27, 2009Stanford's Paul Lomio has to cut his law library budget by 15%. How? Let's start with West. On Legal Research Plus, Lomio writes "We are shedding West publications left and right (mainly because of, in my opinion, outrageous annual price...
Genachowski Says FCC Will Enforce Net Neutrality Principles
Posted on August 27, 2009The Hill caught up with newly installed FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday. The big news, though not very surprising, is Genachowski's statement that the agency will enforce net neutrality principles. Broadband providers are probably grumbling that they have to...
A Prelude to Assessing Our Annual Meetings: Results of LLB's Polls on the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting and Its Festivities
Posted on August 26, 2009Here's the results of LLB's informal 5-star rating poll of the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting. Thanks to the 175 respondents who answered one or more of the questions. The findings show that the keynote speech was well-received. The average score...
First Comprehensive Analysis of the Law and Policy of Privacy on Social Network Sites
Posted on August 26, 2009New York Law School prof James Grimmelmann's Saving Facebook has been published at 94 Iowa Law Review 1137 (2009). Using Facebook as an example, the article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the law and policy of privacy on social...
Colucci's Justice Kennedy?s Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Liberty
Posted on August 26, 2009About Frank Colucci's Justice Kennedy?s Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Liberty (University Press of Kansas, September 3, 2009), Ken Kersch writes "Colucci makes a convincing case for the proposition that, far from being a seat-of-the-pants situationalist, Kennedy is...
New Sony eBook Reader Allows Library Check-Outs
Posted on August 26, 2009Sony's new eBook reader was unveiled yesterday. The Reader Daily Edition retails for $399 and can store up to 1,000 titles. It comes with free 3G connectivity through AT&T. That last bit might be disappointing to some. Apple's iPhone also...
Another Boner from West: "Hi, my first name is Joe and I'm a law librarian"
Posted on August 26, 2009After Monday's Westlaw bonehead move where the Company first terminated its free printer services at Puerto Rican law schools and then quickly reinstated the program after the uproar that caused (see LLB's Thomson West Starts the Academic Year Off with...
The Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education
Posted on August 25, 2009Here's the final version of the the Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education, the product of a recent conference of legal research professionals interested in reforming legal research education. The official statement about the conference is provide below...
The 12 Facebook personalities you love to hate
Posted on August 25, 2009CNN.com has compiled a list of the twelve types of Facebook personalities we find the most annoying. So how many do you recognize? 1. The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore. 2. The Self-Promoter. 3. The Friend-Padder 4. The Town Crier. 5. The TMIer...
CRS Report Identifies Issues in the U.S. Ratification Debate Over CEDAW
Posted on August 25, 2009The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: (CEDAW): Issues in the U.S. Ratification Debate (August 7, 2009) provides an overview of CEDAWs background, objectives, and structure, including the role of the Conventions monitoring body,...
Website Offers Advice on Legal Typography
Posted on August 25, 2009In the mid-80s I saw an attorney drafting on a personal computer for the very first time. My first thought was "why the hell do that (!)" because the attorney, a partner, have a great secretary right outside his office...
Pro-Life Legal Writing Instructor Applicant at University of Iowa College of Law Files Suit Alleging Viewpoint Discrimination in Hiring
Posted on August 25, 2009Teresa Wagner, an applicant for a legal writing instruction opening at the University of Iowa College of Law, has filed suit against Iowa Law's Dean, Carolyn Jones, alleging viewpoint discrimination in the College of Law's hiring. Wagner alleges in her...
Thomson West Starts the Academic Year Off with Bonehead Move: Westlaw Free Printer Access Cut Off to Puerto Rican Law School Students
Posted on August 25, 2009Thomson West never ceases to amaze. Westlaw canceled their free printer service to Puerto Rican law schools because printer use was proportionately much higher than at other American law schools where service was not affected. Why the higher use? Probably...
Outed Blogger to Sue Google for $15M
Posted on August 25, 2009This is a bit of an update on the soap opera that outed the anonymous blogger who had allegedly defamed model Liskula Cohen by calling her a "skank" on her blog, hosted by Google. Cohen got a judge to order...
Multitaskers Can Have, Uh, Cognitive Problems
Posted on August 25, 2009The brain is in the news again. Not the mouse who wants to take over the world, but the one inside the head. This time the news involves the cognitive abilities of multitaskers. A series of tests show that people...
Axis of Hatred to Join Open Book Alliance in Effort to Derail Google's Book Rights Registry
Posted on August 24, 2009Adding a little commentary to Mark Giangrande's LLB post, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon to Oppose Google Book Settlement, the story is that former Bush speechwriter David Frum originally coined the phrase "axis of hatred" before it morphed into the "axis of...
No Backup Plan: GAO Wants More Info About NARA's Electronic Records Archives
Posted on August 24, 2009In Electronic Records Archive: The National Archives and Records Administration's Fiscal Year 2009 Expenditure Plan (July 24, 2009) the GAO reports that NARA's plan for it's "archives of the future," the Electronic Records Archives (ERA), does not have a contingency...
University of Iowa College of Law Charged with Age Discrimination in Faculty Hiring
Posted on August 24, 2009The National Law Journal is reporting that Donald Dobkin has filed state and federal ADEA charges alleging he was passed over for a faculty position in favor of two under-40 job applicants by the University of Iowa College of Law....
Felony Harrassment Charge Filed Under Missouri's "MySpace Suicide" Law
Posted on August 24, 2009Courthouse News Service is reporting that Missouri prosecutors have charged Elizabeth A. Thrasher, 40, with felony harassment for allegedly posting a fake, sexually suggestive ad under the "casual encounters" section of Craigslist in an attempt to humiliate a 17-year-old girl...
Man With Guns Arrested at U. of Louisville Law Library
Posted on August 24, 2009The University of Louisville had an incident on Friday where a former student and part-time employee was arrested at the law library after he brought two handguns and 53 rounds of ammunition on campus. Guns are not allowed on campus,...
Apple and AT&T Respond to FCC Questions; Apple's Answer Sheds Light on How the App Store Works
Posted on August 24, 2009Responses to the Google Voice Dustup Apple AT&T Google (Redacted) On Friday, Apple and AT&T answered a series of questions posed by the FCC regarding the Google Voice app and the App Store's evaluation policies. See LLB's earlier post, Google...
Google Reader Adds More Social Media Features
Posted on August 23, 2009According to the Google Reader Blog, users are now able to share content with the new "Sent to" feature. To enable this feature, click on the setting link and enable the services you would like to use (i.e., Facebook, Twitter,...
West Sued Over Drivers License and Related Information Database
Posted on August 23, 2009West is being sued for privacy violations concerning drivers licenses and other personal driver information from 28 states and the District of Columbia. The complaint says that West violated the Driver's Privacy Protection Act by selling the information through one...
Europeans Cool to Google Book Settlement
Posted on August 23, 2009More opposition is rising to the Google Book Settlement, this time from European publishers. Many publisher and rights societies are urging their members and authors to withdraw their publications from the Book Registry once it goes into effect. They New...
Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon to Oppose Google Book Settlement
Posted on August 22, 2009The news appeared at the end of this week that Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon are joining forces to oppose the Google Book Rights Registry. The three are joining the Open Book Alliance, an umbrella organization that opposes the settlement, at...
Survey of Reaction to Model Unmasking Blogger Via Court Order
Posted on August 22, 2009Another case affecting the anonymity of blogging came to a head when model Liskula Cohen pressed for and received a court order forcing Google to turn over information leading to the identity of the owner of the Skanks in NYC...
Samuelson Takes the Case Against the Google Book Search Settlement to the Masses
Posted on August 22, 2009UC Berkeley law prof Pamela Samuelson is taking her critique of the Google Book Search Settlement to the masses in a series of articles in The Huffington Post. OK, maybe not the masses, to the readers of ... The Audacity...
Friday Fun: Follow Me to Pointless Babble
Posted on August 21, 2009In 'Pointless Babble' Tops Twitter Use, Information Week's Antone Gonsalves reports the findings of Pear Analytics Twitter Study - August 2009 report: "40% of the tweets flowing on the site were about someone eating a sandwich or some other "pointless...
Guide to Wisconsin Legal Information Sources for Practitioners
Posted on August 21, 2009Check out Bonnie Shucha and Heidi Yelk's Guide to Wisconsin Legal Information Sources. Using LibGuide's great app, it is a compilation of legal information sources for Wisconsin attorneys that emphasizing sources of free and low-cost information for case law, citators,...
Users Claim Facebook Violates Privacy Because It's a Social Networking Site
Posted on August 21, 2009Apparently not understanding what a social network is, five Facebook users are suing the Company for violating California privacy laws because other users are looking at the photos they post, read their updates, etc. Hello plaintiffs, adjust your privacy settings...
CrimProf Blog is Back
Posted on August 21, 2009The Law Professor Blogs Network's CrimProf Blog is back. Edited by Kevin Cole, Dean & Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law, and five USD Law criminal law profs, the blog was relaunched on Monday, August 17th....
Quicklaw Founder Hugh Lawford, 1933-2009
Posted on August 21, 2009Hugh Lawford, former law professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and the founder of the Quicklaw database, passed away Monday, August 17, 2009 at the age of 76. Library Boy observes "one indication of his immense influence is the...
Secretive Expansions?
Posted on August 21, 2009I qualify premise this article by saying there is something about Thomas Cooley Law School that is cool and intriguing to me. I just like schools that are rebels with the status quo (I think Charleston also fits in this...
Fordham Law School Bans Military Reed Smith from Campus Interviews for 5 Years
Posted on August 21, 2009Fordham Law School Dean William Michael Treanor recently decided to ban Reed Smith from recruiting on-campus for the next five years because the firm's last-minute withdrawal from on-campus interviewing was unprofessional. Above the Law broke the story Wednesday...
Scholarship alert: Legal Reference Services Quarterly special volume devoted to teaching legal research
Posted on August 21, 2009Volume I of the Legal Reference Services Quarterly is devoted exclusively to articles about teaching legal research. Links to the individual articles, set forth below, can be found here. Here's the bibliography: Bintliff, Barbara. Legal research: MacCrate's "fundamental lawyering skill"...
Alert law librarian at Louisville's Brandeis U. averts potential tragedy
Posted on August 21, 2009This librarian deserves a medal for preventing what may have turned into yet another on-campus shooting rampage reports the Louisville Courier-Journal (with a hat tip to Above the Law for cluing me into the story). According to the paper, a...
Disclaimer for Providing Public Access to Commercial Legal Research Service Databases
Posted on August 20, 2009LC's Michael Ashenfelder reports on the transfer of digital content from universities, publishers, web archivists and other organizations to the Library of Congress in 21st Century Shipping, D-Lib Magazine, July/August 2009. The amount of data is amazing...
Harvard Law Review Speech Code Comment Ignites FIRE-storm
Posted on August 20, 2009At issue, an April 2009 Harvard Law Review commentwhich argues that DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008), the most recent and leading federal court of appeals precedent to strike down a campus speech code, was decided...
Just Released, The Case for Congress: Separation of Powers and the War on Terror
Posted on August 20, 2009The Case for Congress: Separation of Powers and the War on Terror (Ashgate, August 2009) examines the constitutional relationship between Congress and the President in the post-September 11 world. The authors, Victor Hansen and Lawrence Friedman, argue that Congress should...
CRS on Health Care Topics
Posted on August 20, 2009The Congressional Research Service tackles the issue of health care reform in reports dated April 19, 2009 and updated to July 29, 2009. The reports are called Health Care Reform: An Introduction. Related issue briefs on topics such as care...
Tintin Book "Removed" by Brooklyn Public Library
Posted on August 20, 2009The New York Times is reporting that the Brooklyn Public Library has removed a copy of Tintin au Congo to a collection that is kept under lock and key. An appointment days in advance are necessary to view the title....
U.S. News 2010 College Rankings Now Available
Posted on August 20, 2009Lead-off page here. View U.S. News ranking of national universities here. [JH]
Confidential Settlement Requires Federal Court Judge to Pull Eight Published Rulings from Westlaw and LexisNexis
Posted on August 20, 2009U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel vacated his opinions and directed Westlaw and Lexis to pull eight of his published rulings in Klein v. Amtrak, an attractive nuisance case, to honor the terms of a confidential settlement after the Third U.S....
The Future of Westlaw and LexisNexis Pricing or How the "Radical Transformation of the Legal Publishing Marketplace" May Not Save Law Libraries Much Money
Posted on August 19, 2009When I left library school for a mid-sized Chicago SEC law firm in 1980 I thought I arrived in legal research heaven. Don't worry about Lexis costs for research. Go ahead and use Dow Jones online to get the latest...
New and Forthcoming State Bibliographies Now Being Published by Hein
Posted on August 19, 2009Hat tip to Hein for taken on the publication of the state bibliographies for AALL's Government Documents SIS. Here is Hein's sales flyer. Note the new, updated and forthcoming bibliograhies for New Mexico, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oregon, North Dakota, Oklahoma,...
Professional Readings: Sag's The Google Book Settlement and the Fair Use Counterfactual
Posted on August 19, 2009Hat tip to Digital Koans for calling attention to Matthew Sag's (DePaul) The Google Book Settlement and the Fair Use Counterfactual [SSRN]. Here's the abstract: This Article compares the Google Book Search Settlement to the most likely outcome of the...
Vault's Top 100 Law Firm Rankings
Posted on August 19, 2009The official Vault law firm rankings for 2010 was released yesterday. It is based on 15,000+ associates who ranked the prestige of their peer firms. (Got to wonder how many of the survey respondents are still employed.) Here's the top...
The Beloit College annual "mindset" list describing the life experience of this year's college freshmen
Posted on August 19, 2009Yes, friends, it's that time of year again when we get reminded just how old - and out of touch - we are compared to this year's crop of entering freshmen college students. So grab your anti-depressant of choice and...
D.C. Adopts Standards for Unmasking Internet Posters in Defamation Cases
Posted on August 19, 2009A very interesting case just came out of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The case involves a company seeking the identity of an anonymous tipster who accused a company of using unlicensed software to a trade association who...
"Wouldn't It Be Cool" IT Tech Staff Moments and the Learned Caution of Public Service Staff
Posted on August 18, 2009The digital divide inside the library may be characterized as the difference between "wouldn't it be cool" moments of IT tech staff and the cautious reaction from public service staffers about them as Kate Sheehan does in this thoughtful ALA...
Need a Lawyer? Call One for a Free Consult on Newlawyer.com
Posted on August 18, 2009Many attorneys still charge a client before they speak to them for the first time but many people, particularly partons we see at the reference desk, cannot afford to pay for an initial consultation. Newlawyer.com is a professional network of...
"Good Against the World:" Natural Law Argument for Intellectual Property Rights
Posted on August 18, 2009Natural law philosophy, argues Alina Ng (Mississippi College School of Law), has a lot to teach about the copyright system as a larger ethical and moral institution to promote the progress of society through the process of authentic authorship in...
Opening: Access Services Librarian, Minnesota Law Library
Posted on August 18, 2009The University of Minnesota Law Library is seeking talented and motivated candidates for the position of Access Services Librarian. This professional position will promote and manage all aspects of access services in a highly patron oriented academic law library that...
Some Thoughts on the Future of Printed Law Reviews
Posted on August 18, 2009Did anyone notice the article last Thursday in Ars Technica which contained in the headline the suggestion that publishers are on the road to purely digital publications? The story is about a leaked memo from the American Chemical Society's publishing...
Shaffer, not Schaffer (Law Librarian of Congress redo)!
Posted on August 18, 2009Last night I posted an announcement regarding the new Law Librarian of Congress. I must post a corrected version of that announcement as I confused part of Roberta Shaffer?s (the new Law Librarian of Congress) credentials with those of Ellen...
Power Searcher Feedback Sought for Google's Next-Generation Search Infrastructure
Posted on August 17, 2009Google's Webmaster Central Blog is a blog many online searchers are not likely to read but Sabrina Pacifici does. In a recent beSpacific post, she calls attention to an opportunity to try out Google's next-generation search infrastructure. About the test...
Is There a Biological Basis for Recognizing Property, Fairness, Liberty and Equality Rights?
Posted on August 17, 2009In A Biological Basis of Rights [SSRN], Edwin S. Fruehwald (Hofstra) advocates rights based on anthropocentric truths--"truths that are true only because of the kinds of minds that we happen to have and the cultural worlds in which our minds...
PACER gets some help from Firefox and CITP
Posted on August 17, 2009The Princeton Center for Information for Technology Policy has come up with a Firefox extention to bring PACER documents to the public for free. The Firefox extention is called RECAP. RECAP replicates PACER content and uploads it to a mirror...
AALLtogo Debuts
Posted on August 17, 2009This summer AALL announced its new online learning platform, AALLtogo. This platform was designed for AALL members to access online professional educational events and material. Hopefully, they will market it to the special interest sections and chapters for distance education...
YouTube video illustrating exponential growth of social media on our lives
Posted on August 17, 2009A new YouTube video done in the same style as the viral phenomenon "Did You Know 1.0" by Scott McLeod and Karl Fisch shows the impact of social media on our lives. The video begins by asking the question "is...
Comments to AALL's ALL-SIS Task Force on ABA Accrediation Standards Review Due This Week
Posted on August 17, 2009ABA Standards Review Committee Roster Chair: Donald J. Polden, Dean, Santa Clara University School of Law Vice Chair: Margaret Martin Barry, Professor, The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law Steven C. Bahls, President, Augustana College Edwin J...
Roberta Shaffer named Law Librarian of Congress!
Posted on August 17, 2009The Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) announced that Roberta I. Shaffer, the current FLICC Executive Director, was appointed Law Librarian of Congress. This is fabulous news. Ms. Shaffer is a leader among information professionals and was very active...
City of Chicago Takes the Day Off
Posted on August 17, 2009The City of Chicago is basically closed for business today except for essential services. In addition to City Hall, public libraries, health clinics and most city offices have been shut down in a cost-savings measure. Most city employees are off...
How Does Surveillance Frame Social Networking Sites?
Posted on August 16, 2009The research questions addressed in Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society by Christian Fuch are: How does economic and political surveillance frame social networking site usage? How knowledgeable are students about surveillance in society? How critical are students about...
Brave New World in Citations: Eliminate Full Stops
Posted on August 15, 2009On Slaw, Gary Rodrigues campaigns for the elimation of full stops for citing English and Commonwealth law reports to rectify consequences of including them, "thousands upon thousands of unnecessary key strokes in setting type and endless hours of citation checking...
Friday Fun: The Colbert Report's "Award Eligible" Nailed 'Em Series Features Library Criminal Activity
Posted on August 14, 2009Hat tip to LISnews. [JH] The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Nailed 'Em - Library Crime www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers
Google Book Settlement Information for Faculty from ARL
Posted on August 14, 2009ARL has created a web page with some general information about the Google Book Settlement with links to a one-page handout and a template letter for providing faculty members with information about the settlement. [JH]
Is There an E-Discovery Bubble?
Posted on August 14, 2009On 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg Lambert says yes, and the bubble is going to burst. "I'm not saying that E-Discovery is going away," writes Lambert in I'm Calling It!! - There's an 'E-Discovery Bubble', "what I'm saying...
Getting a Head-Start on Law School from LexisNexis
Posted on August 14, 2009Many law schools now require a brief Intro to Law course for incoming 1Ls. Helpful perhaps. Law profs have their own idiosyncratic views on this head-start approach to law school though younger law profs teaching the course may be more...
Fair Use Survives RealDVD Case Even if the Software Does Not
Posted on August 14, 2009Real Networks lost big earlier this week when Judge Marilyn Patel issued a temporary injunction preventing Real from distributing the RealDVD software. If sold, it would have allowed consumers to back up their video library to a home server which...
Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 Introduced in the House
Posted on August 13, 2009Representatives Edward Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), introduced H.R. 3458, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009, [Thomas, OpenCongress] on July 31 to protect network neutrality under the Communications Act, safeguard the future of the open Internet and protect...
Lippe Responds to "Snarky" Law Prof Comments to His Law School 4.0 Article
Posted on August 13, 2009Paul Lippe's reports that he received 50-plus responses to his June 22 article, Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0. Most, he writes "were quite favorable, including from law school deans and faculty; a few were snarky and...
Guide to Information Resources for New Legal Practice Technologies
Posted on August 13, 2009In his LLRX article, Law Practice Technology Information Sources and Tools, Ken Strutin provides a short list of information resources covering new technologies that apply to legal research and law practice. He also identifies several specific tools that may contribute...
JSTOR to Get Current, MUSE to Get Deeper
Posted on August 13, 2009JSTOR intends to add current issues to its content. An article in Inside Higher Ed describes efforts to bring its publications up to date rather than having the blackout wall of one or more years in its collection of 800...
Microsoft Ordered to Halt Word Shipments in 60 Days
Posted on August 13, 2009The news that a federal court in East Texas issued a permanent injunction against Microsoft, commanding that no copy of Word 2003 or 2007 can be sold 60 days after the date of order, inspires visions of Microsoft being deprived...
HeinOnline Responds to User Feedback by Implementing New Search Tool Feature
Posted on August 12, 2009Thanks to a company that takes listening to librarians and others seriously, HeinOnline has added a new search tool that allows users to search for words or phrases in the section, or the page they are currently viewing. The new...
New Tool for Law School Admissions Staff: iPhone App Provides Law School Rankings
Posted on August 12, 2009Law School 100is an iPhone app that ranks 100 law schools in the United States and provides capsule profiles of each school. It's produced by LawTV Inc., the publisher of The Law School 100. "Even for aspiring law students, the...
Failed Banks List
Posted on August 12, 2009Using FDIC data, ProPublica has created a chart of failed banks, the federal agency that provided oversight to each one, and the major public enforcement that occurred against the bank prior to its collapse. It?s sortable state, date, or even...
How the web 2.0 is impacting homelife
Posted on August 12, 2009This article from Sunday's New York Times may strike a responsive cord with many of you - it certainly did with me - in terms of how much of our daily rituals have been forever altered by social networking technology....
The 50 best law firms for working mothers
Posted on August 12, 2009Working Mother magazine has just published the winners for 2009 based on the following criteria: The firm's "workforce profile," family friendly policies, leadership, compensation and their advancement and retention of women, among other factors. Any firm with more than 50...
Are universities wasting their time communicating to students via Twitter?
Posted on August 12, 2009That's one interpretation of a new Nielsen survey finding that people under the age of 25, generally speaking, don't Tweet. Instead, the Twitter hype is being driven by an older demographic. One explanation is that teens and young adults care...
Two Videos from the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research
Posted on August 11, 2009The Media Committee of the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research has released two videos demonstrating the importance of legal research and writing instruction in legal education. You can view then on Legal Writing Prof Blog: Benefits of...
Google Voice: Apple, the iPhone App Killer; FCC Wants Answers
Posted on August 11, 2009On Public Knowledge Blog, Art Brodsky reports that the FCC wants to know why Apple rejected Google?s new Voice application, whether AT&T had anything to do with it, and what other applications have been rejected for the iPhone. The answers...
Great dot-gov Websites 2009
Posted on August 11, 2009Hat tip to the July issue of the AALL Washington E-Bulletin for calling attention to Joab Jackson's Great dot-gov Web Sites 2009 published in Government Computing News. Featured sites include OMB's Data.gov, The Defense Information Systems Agency's Forge...
Harvard Law School Library Re-engineered
Posted on August 11, 2009Under John Palfrey's leadership, the Harvard Law School Library has been reorganized and has implemented Google's human resources policy for engineers that allows engineers library staffers to spend 20 percent of their time to pursue professional interests outside their core...
A Few Thoughts on the e-Book Market
Posted on August 11, 2009Peter Osnos has a nice essay in the Atlantic that ponders the future of e-books. He makes a number of interesting points. One is that books, unlike other electronic information products (think newspapers, among other types) do not have advertising...
Cleveland's Unpublished Opinions Redux
Posted on August 10, 2009LLB readers may recall the interview I conducted with David Cleveland (Nova Southwestern) last October about his two now published articles on the history, value, and future of unpublished opinions in the federal courts, Overturning the Last Stone, The Final...
OpenCongress Relaunched with New Design and Features
Posted on August 10, 2009OpenCongress recently completed a design re-do with a number of great new features. From their "what's new" announcement: Contact Congress -- for the first time, from any page on OpenCongress, you're just one click away from sending an email to...
Light Reading Just Before the Start of the New Academic Year?
Posted on August 10, 2009Commenting on Robert Schnakenberg's Secret Lives of the Supreme Court: What Your Teachers Never Told You About America's Legendary Justices (Quirk Books, 2009), Ruthann Robson (CUNY School of Law) writes in a Constitutional Law Prof Blog post "[the book] is...
Opening: Director, St. John?s University School of Law Library
Posted on August 10, 2009St. John?s University School of Law seeks applications for the position of Director of the Law Library, a 400,000 volume / volume equivalent library serving a faculty of 60 and approximately 900 law students. The Rittenberg Law Library?s primary mission...
House Votes Name Change: Law Library of Congress to Become the National Law Library
Posted on August 10, 2009The House has voted overwhelmingly in favor on a bill that would rename the Law Library of Congress as the National Law Library. The bill also establishes the William Orton Law Library Support Program, which allows the Library to accept...
UNT To Get Law School
Posted on August 10, 2009The University of North Texas will get a law school thanks to a bill signed into law last June by Texas Governor Rick Perry. The public law school will be located in the Dallas Metroplex area, joining Southern Methodist University...
"As you mull over the lastest West invoice" ... Thomson Reuters 2Q Profits More Than Doubled
Posted on August 10, 2009On Legal Research Plus, Erika Wayne, Stanford's Deputy Law Library Director, suggests some reading material "as you mull over the latest West invoice," The Age's August 7th financial news story, Thomson Reuters profit doubles on cost cuts, a story published...
Overlawyered, Oldest Law Blog, Hits 10-Year Mark
Posted on August 09, 2009According to Bob Ambrogi's Legal Blog Watch post, Walter Olson's Overlawyered is the oldest law blog in the blogosphere and July 1st was the 10th anniversary of its launch. Belated happy birthday. Ten years is one hellva long time to...
A Second First for Justice Sotomayor
Posted on August 09, 2009Judge Sonia Sotomayor was officially sworn is as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts Saturday, August 8, in two ceremonies. The first oath of office was a private ceremony in a room where...
CRS Report on the U.S. Newspaper Industry
Posted on August 08, 2009Two snips from The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition (July 8, 2009): The U.S. newspaper industry is in the midst of a historic restructuring, buffeted by a deep recession that is battering crucial advertising revenues, long-term structural challenges as readers...
Another Director Named Jim: SUNY Buffalo appoints new law library director
Posted on August 08, 2009Much to my surprise - for a number of reasons - I saw a tweet from AALLNET dated Thursday night show up on twitter late last night announcing that the new SUNY Buffalo Library Director and Vice Dean for Legal...
A Modest Proposal for Bar Exam Reform
Posted on August 07, 2009On The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin suggests "members of bar exam boards ... and presidents and other high officials of state bar associations should be required to take and pass the bar exam every year by getting the same passing...
Friday Fun: Bookstore's 10-Round Smackdown between the Printed Book and Kindle
Posted on August 07, 2009Hat tip to Hugh D'Andrade on EFF's Deeplinks Blog for calling attention to San Francisco bookstore Green Apple Books' on-going 10-part series of humorous videos that highlight the advantages of paper books over Amazon's Kindle. At Deeplinks Blog you can...
Per Day Limit Set by FreeCourtDockets
Posted on August 07, 2009Due to high volume use of the popular FreeCourtDockets, Courtport LLC has been for forced to implement a limit on docket data a person can obtain in a single day to "$2.40 worth of dockets." The limit does not apply...
DOL Revamps Disability Resources Website
Posted on August 07, 2009The U.S. Department of Labor has re-named and re-launched DisabilityInfo.gov as Disability.gov. From the press release: The new Web site integrates content from 22 federal agencies and will be managed by the Labor Department. The former DisabilityInfo...
Reminder: Today's Law Librarian Show to Review AALL Annual Meeting at 3:00 PM Eastern Time
Posted on August 07, 2009Rich Leiter and Brian Striman's podcast/internet radio show, The Law Librarian, will review this year's AALL annual meeting today at 3:00 PM Eastern Time. Should be interesting. [JH]
Is Marketing Us to Death the Future of e-Readers and Newspapers?
Posted on August 07, 2009Editor & Publisher is reportingthat the e-reader (Kindle, et al.) will have to evolve to a broader mix of reader products, including newspapers and magazines. Otherwise the recreational reading market may not be enough to reach the level of penetration...
Message from West on AALL Sponsorship Policy
Posted on August 07, 2009The following message by Anne Ellis, Senior Director, Librarian Relations, Thomson-Reuters, was distributed this morning on the AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS and AALL Court & County SIS listservs and probably other (all?) AALL listservs: We?ve noticed some chatter on...
Google's Alexander Macgillivray on the Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on August 06, 2009The Berkman Center has released a video of Alexander Macgillivray, Google's Deputy General Counsel for Products and Intellectual Property, discussing the Google Book Search Settlement. Hat tip to Digital Koans. [JH]
Congressional Documents on FDsys
Posted on August 06, 2009Peggy Garvin provides an excellent overview of congressional documents on GPO's FDsys in The Government Domain - Congressional Documents on FDsys: the Basics on LLRX. [JH]
Internet Use Studies from Pew Research Center
Posted on August 06, 2009Use of the Mobile Internet Increases; African Americans Most Active Users. According to Wireless Internet Use, a report of an April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center?s Internet & American Life Project, use mobile devices to access the Internet...
Study Says Jurors Discount Coercion in Confessions
Posted on August 06, 2009There is a recent study that suggests when jurors are confronted with allegations of a coerced confession, they tend to ignore them. The belief is that coercion only affects the guilty but not the innocent. The paper is on SSRN....
The Improve PACER Petition Passes Halfway Mark
Posted on August 06, 2009PACER subscriptions officially topped the one million mark on July 31, 2009. Meanwhile the Improve PACER petition has passed the halfway mark toward reaching its 1,000 signature goal. Have you signed the petition? See also LLB's earlier post, Online Petition...
Does A PowerPoint Presentation Have to Be Boring?
Posted on August 06, 2009One of the most annoying things about most PowerPoint presentations is that they present text that acts as an outline of the presentation. It is a useful feature for PowerPoint at its most basic, but annoying nonetheless because few presenters...
Tell Google You Want At Least as Much Privacy When Reading Books Online as You Have When Reading Print Books in Your Library
Posted on August 05, 2009EFF, the ACLU of Northern California and the Samuelson Clinic at UC Berkeley have sent a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt demanding that Google take specific steps to protect Book Search users' freedom to read privately. They are demanding...
Free Kindle: Who's Not Laughing About Tethered Electronic Resources
Posted on August 05, 2009Perhaps you remember when Amazon founder Jeff Bozos appeared on The Daily Show to promote the new Kindle earlier this year. (If you don't, the video of Jeff's laughing jag is available below.) Not everyone is laughing as freakishly loud...
Top 10 Speedy Law Prof Blog Readership Ranking (Why Does It Take Readers of This Blog So Long to Read a Post?)
Posted on August 05, 2009We all know that number-crunchers like tax professionals are brainiacs because they work with math-'ma-tiks and complicated operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and the like. Mathematical brainiacs can do magically things with numbers...
CRS Report on Spectrum Policy
Posted on August 05, 2009Spectrum Policy in the Age of Broadband: Issues for Congress (July 13, 2009) considers the possibility of modifying spectrum policy: (1) to support national goals for broadband deployment by placing more emphasis on attracting new providers of wireless broadband services;...
Did AALL Refuse Thomson-West Sponsorship Cash for the Annual Meeting?
Posted on August 05, 2009Did you notice that Thomson-West wasn't a Gold Sponsor for this year's AALL annual meeting? It came to my attention by omission when Gold Sponsors, companies that have contributed $75,001 or more, were acknowledged before the keynote presentation: "BNA, LexisNexis,...
Time for an AALL Senior Law Librarians Caucus or Why Our Post-West Party Bar Tab Was $150 Before Tips
Posted on August 04, 2009The world?s older population (65 and over) is increasing by approximately how many people each month in 2008? a. 75,000 b. 350,000 c. 600,000 d. 870,000 The answer is "d" according to the Census Bureau's An Aging World: 2008. The...
Orphan Works: A Statement of Best Practices
Posted on August 04, 2009The Society of American Archivists has released its revised version of Orphan Works: A Statement of Best Practices. The statement outlines reasonable efforts archivists should take to identify and locate rights holders. Hat tip to Digital Koans. [JH]
NLJ's 2009 U.S. Supreme Court Review
Posted on August 04, 2009The National Law Journal's annual review of the Supreme Court examines the numbers and trends that shaped the last term and will affect the term to come. [JH]
A "Librarian" to head LC
Posted on August 04, 2009Library Journal is reporting that long-time head of the Library of Congress, James Billington, who recently reached 80 years of age, is stepping down. LJ identified Carla Hayden, Director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, as the front...
FSF Offers Petition to Free the Kindle
Posted on August 04, 2009The Free Software Foundation is circulating an online petition demanding that Amazon remove DRM and DRM-like features from the Kindle. Ars Technica has an interesting story on the petition, catalogs the considerations with vendor lock-in, and makes the obvious prediction...
CRS Looks at a Cash For Clunkers Program, in 1996
Posted on August 04, 2009The Cash For Clunkers program is nothing new. The Congressional Research Service analyzed the issues in 1996. They found benefit for the environment and as a method of economic stimulus. The report also notes opposition to these programs from the...
Findings from Law Firm Research Instruction Needs Survey Also Useful for Collection Development Decisions
Posted on August 03, 2009In Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 101 Law Library Journal 297 (2009), Patrick Meyer, Associate Library Director and Adjunct Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, reports on the findings of his 2007 survey of law firm librarians...
Judge Aldisert's Opinion Writing, 2d ed. Now Available
Posted on August 03, 2009A couple of weeks ago LLB posted an announcement about Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert's article, Opinion Writing and Opinion Readers [SSRN], which was inspired by the work done by the author and his law clerks in editing and preparing the...
Webcast of The Future of Today's Legal Scholarship Symposium
Posted on August 03, 2009In case you weren't able to attend The Future of Today's Legal Scholarship: A Symposium in Honor of Bob Oakley which took place on Saturday, July 25 at Georgetown Law, the symposium's archived webcast is available. Here's the agenda: Welcome...
Amazon Sued Over Kindle Deletions
Posted on August 03, 2009The first lawsuitsover Amazon's mass deletions of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindle are now filed. That didn't take very long. The two plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit are Justin Gawronski of Michigan and Antoine Bruguier of...
Thumbs Up or Down for 2009 AALL Annual Meeting
Posted on August 03, 2009http://llb.questionform.com/public/2009-AALL-Annual-Meeting
5-Stars, 4-Stars, 3-Stars ... What did you think about the festivities at the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting?
Posted on August 03, 2009http://llb.questionform.com/public/2009-AALL-Festivities
Preparing for 1Ls
Posted on August 03, 2009I have to give a shout out to my colleague Mary Rumsey for creating this short movie on rules for using the reference desk service and posting it on Facebook. I know you will all appreciate it: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090803112456176 I must...
West Releases Publisher 5.0 for Court Reporting Agencies
Posted on August 02, 2009From the press release, Publisher 5.0 features include: Faster and easier. Publisher?s simpler interface and new features make transcript post-production faster than ever, while making it easy to specify metadata and Bundle and cover page properties.Publisher 5...
Practitioner Law Blogs Roundup
Posted on August 01, 2009South Carolina Injury Lawyer Blog http://www.southcarolinainjurylawyerblog.com http://www.southcarolinainjurylawyerblog.com/index.xml Provides opinion on injury law news, cases and reports in South Carolina. Published by Howell and Christmas, LLC. Fort Lauderdale Criminal Attorney Blog http://www...
Friday Fun: William Shatner Does Sarah Palin Twice
Posted on July 31, 2009William Shatner recited Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's farewell speech and some Palin tweets in the form of poetry on Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show. Hat tip to Mashable. [JH] Palin Tweets Palin's Farewell Speech
Did Blogs Save the Web?
Posted on July 31, 2009Cofounder of Salon.com, Scott Rosenberg chronicles blogging?s unplanned rise and improbable triumph, tracing its impact on politics, business, the media, and our lives in Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters (Crown, July 7, 2009)...
Advice for Drafting Multiple-Choice Questions in Law School Exams
Posted on July 31, 2009ALR instructors who use multiple-choice testing may find Janet Fisher's (Suffolk) article Multiple-Choice: Choosing the Best Options for More Effective and Less Frustrating Law School Testing, 37 Capital University Law Review 119 (2008) [SSRN] helpful...
A Quick Look at Freelance Law
Posted on July 31, 2009Freelance Law is a national database of freelance attorneys, paralegals, and other legal professionals, offering their services to law firms on an independent contractor basis. The site, still in beta, is offering a free webinar about its services on July...
Windows 7 Family Pack Pricing Announced
Posted on July 31, 2009Those apparently looking for a bargain in a family pack to upgrade multiple PCs to Windows 7 may be disappointed with today's announcement. The cost for three licenses as a package will be $150, "while supplies last." In other words,...
USPS May Close 677 Post Office Locations
Posted on July 31, 2009The House is holding hearings on mail delivery, taking into account the significant drop in volume the U.S. Postal Service carries due to Internet communications. The Postal Service has identified 677 post office locations for closure or consolidation and presented...
iPhone Virus Alert: Beware the Square Character Text Message
Posted on July 31, 2009Security experts Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner have exposed an iPhone virus that could allow others to control your phone just by sending a a single square character in a text message. If you get the square character, turn off...
What did you think about AALL 2009?
Posted on July 31, 2009I am always supportive of our national organization. In the last 14 years, I have been a speaker on at least one program for 10 of those years. I am telling you this to demonstrate that I have been an...
Critical Issues
Posted on July 31, 2009The Educause 2009 survey of critical IT issues in higher education was released on the Educause Review web site. Topping the list among the top ten issues was IT Funding. Let's face it, funding is the number one issue on...
Twitter Launches New Homepage
Posted on July 30, 2009Twitter comes of age -- gone are explanations of what Twitter is and how to use it. The new Twitter homepage centers around search. A big search box is the first thing that grabs one's attention. [JH]
New Google Book Settlement Resource: The Public Index
Posted on July 30, 2009The Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School have launched The Public Index, a website to study and discuss the Google Book Search Settlement. The site features a a collection...
Katz & O'Neill's Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching
Posted on July 30, 2009Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching: A Primer for New (and Not So New) Professors Howard E. Katz & Kevin Francis O'Neill Aspen Publishers (2009) From the product description: Strategies and Techniques of Law School Teaching is intended to...
New and Updated Research Guides on GlobaLex
Posted on July 30, 2009New Research Guide A Guide to Qatar?s Legal System by Ahmed Aly Khedr Updated Guides Religious Legal Systems in Comparative Law: A Guide to Introductory Research by Marylin Johnson Raisch Guide to Legal Research in the Dominican Republic by Marisol...
Another Shoe Drops at DePaul: How Many More to Come?
Posted on July 30, 2009Brian Leiter's Law School Reports posted an entry on July 22nd titled DePaul College of Law: Heading to Loss of ABA Accreditation? One colleague Brian quoted in the post suggested that the ABA would do nothing. The evidence was anecdotal,...
FTC Proposes New Constraints on Debt Relief Marketers
Posted on July 30, 2009The recession has spawned plenty of television and radio ads from companies offering consumer debt relief, affecting credit card and other unsecured debt. Sometimes the claims seem too good to be true. The Federal Trade Commission has filed a notice....
CRS Reports Collected at State
Posted on July 30, 2009One of the least likely places I expected to find an extensive collection of CRS Reports is the State Department web site. The site hosts reports as late as July 2nd, 2009, and begins the archive with reports dated 2000....
Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished?
Posted on July 29, 2009From the abstract of Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished? by Steven Shavell, Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School: The conventional rationale for copyright of written works, that copyright is needed to foster their creation, is seemingly...
Cleveland Marshall's War Crimes Research Guide
Posted on July 29, 2009Cleveland Marshall Law Library's new War Crime Research Guide identifies basic sources for researching the legal aspects of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. [JH]
New Edition of Garner's Modern American Usage
Posted on July 29, 2009The third edition of Garner's Modern American Usage (Oxford UP, July 2009) including an interesting new feature, Garner's Language-Change Index, which registers where each disputed usage in modern English falls on a five-stage continuum from nonacceptability (to the language community...
Pants Judge Loses Again in Suit Over Job
Posted on July 29, 2009Remember the pants lawsuit where an administrative law judge sued a dry cleaners for some $50+ million for losing a pair of pants? Remember how he pursued the suit and refused to settle for way more money than the pants...
Tattooed Librarians of Texas Calendar
Posted on July 29, 2009Texas librarians reveal their ink in calendar to help raise funds for the Texas Library Association Disaster Relief Fund. It's for a good cause. Details (yes, images) with ordering information here. [JH]
Microsoft and Yahoo Finally Tie the Search Knot
Posted on July 29, 2009Microsoft and Yahoo finally came to a deal over search, announced today. This started some time ago when Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo for some $47 billion or so in early 2008. That led to financial turmoil for both companies....
SLA IT Division Launches Information Systems Wiki
Posted on July 28, 2009The Information Systems Wiki includes an overview of vendor system evaluations, operating systems and security, social networking, and other useful sites, plus occasional polls including the following: What do you use for your primary operating system? [Results] What social networks...
Current Status of LexOpus
Posted on July 28, 2009John Doyle reports on the status of LexOpus, Washington & Lee Law School's free online law review submission service: As of July 16, 2009, 367 law journals have logged-in to LexOpus to create accounts. 1327 law journals are receiving weekly...
New Law Titles from Oxford UP
Posted on July 28, 2009Guide to Latin in International Law Aaron X. Fellmeth and Maurice Horwitz Offers a comprehensive understanding of commonly found Latin terms used in diplomacy and international law practice. New Institutions for Human Rights Protection Edited by Kevin Boyle Presents an...
IBM To Buy SPSS for $1.2B
Posted on July 28, 2009SPSS makes the popular analytical software for statistics that is heavily usedby business and academic institutions. CNET has the story. [MG]
NASA Makes Enhanced Moon Landing Tapes Available
Posted on July 28, 2009NASA, if one remembers, lost the original recordings of the 1969 moon landing tapes and initiated a furious search for them. The agency recently discovered that the high resolution tapes were wiped. The broadcasts that appeared on television at the...
Tweeting Spawns a Defamation Suit
Posted on July 28, 2009It had to happen sooner or later. Someone somewhere would find something from Twitter troublesome enough to file a defamation lawsuit. The someone in this case is Horizon Group Management, of Chicago, who filed a libel lawsuit against a former...
AP's New Unauthorized Use Scheme Includes Implementation of Spyware-Like Tracker
Posted on July 27, 2009Continuing its hard line approach to use of its content on the web, the Associated Press has announced that it is developing a news registry to protect all AP content from unauthorized use. AP's objective is to require non-AP content...
First Class All the Way: California-Irvine Sets Example on How to Launch a New Law School
Posted on July 27, 2009After a shaky start when Erwin Chemerinsky was hired, fired, and then re-hired as dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law in 2007, the school has proceeded to make its presence felt in the legal academy...
Clouds of Federal Tweets
Posted on July 27, 2009Nextgov looked at a random sample of 100 tweets from 10 different government organizations to find out what "feds are talking about, 140 characters at a time" by performing word frequency analyses to generated clouds of the 40 most-used words...
GAO Has Critical Comments for NARA ERA
Posted on July 27, 2009The Government Accountability Office has issued a report on the National Archive's Electronic Records Archive (ERA) system and plans for FY 2009. In summary, NARA could do a better job getting the archive up and getting records from the Bush...
New Google Books Game
Posted on July 27, 2009Google is promoting Google Books with a game of questions about book content that can be answered by searching Google Books. Prizes are awarded for submitting results. The top 3 submissions per day will receive Sony Readers and the first...
Microsoft Will Ship Windows 7 With Browser Choice in Europe After All
Posted on July 27, 2009Microsoft and the European Union seem to be closer together on a solution for including competing browsers in Windows 7 distributions in Europe. Microsoft will offer a browser ballot on start up that gives users a choice that will be...
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business Newsletters Now Available Through Ozmosys
Posted on July 26, 2009Ozmosys will monitor subscriptions and deliver to newsletter subscribers a consolidated e-mail message with links to all newly-posted content, thereby streamlining the e-mail process and reducing the total number of e-mails received. Details including list of newsletters and subscription information...
Almost $900,000 in Economic Stimulus Money Going to Elite Law Firms
Posted on July 25, 2009"Have things gotten so bad that law firms -- even firms as prestigious and profitable as Debevoise & Paul Weiss -- need government funds?" Above The Law is reporting that Debevoise & Plimpton is receiving $432,680 and Paul Weiss $462,528...
Five Tips for Social Media Users
Posted on July 25, 2009And they are: Social media is useless without goals Different social media sites serve different purposes ?Social media? is a misnomer People want to hire other people, not businesses Lawyers cannot afford to be left out of the loop For...
Practice and Procedure in Witch Trials
Posted on July 24, 2009Will the Holy Grail's classic witch scene be covered in the bar exam? [JH]
Yahoo's Homepage Gets a Facelift
Posted on July 24, 2009Earlier this week Yahoo launched its redesigned homepage. Did anyone notice? According to Search Engine Land's review, Yahoo will start random testing a new look and feel for search results that conceptually mirrors what it?s doing on the home page.....
University Presses Going Digital for Monographs: University of Chicago and Oxford
Posted on July 24, 2009Following up on LLB's earlier post, Harvard University Press Goes Digital, The University of Chicago Press is offering over 700 titles online using Adobe's Digital Editions software. The Press currently offers three e-book licensing options: Perpetual ownership at list price,...
Reminder: CRIV Vendor Roundtable to Discuss FTC's Proposed Prenotification Negative Option Plans Rule on July 27
Posted on July 24, 2009On Monday July 27 at noon in room 143B at the convention center, the CRIV Vendor Roundtable will discuss the FTC's Proposed Rule Concerning the Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans. Additional topics of discussion include licensing and SERU. [JH]
Nothing Else To Do? Vote for Your Favorite TV Law Show
Posted on July 24, 2009You can vote for your favorite legal TV show on the ABA Journal's site here and read the Journal's August 2009 issue article The 25 Greatest Legal TV Shows. See also The 25 Greatest Legal TV Shows: Honorable Mentions. [JH]
Do Commercial Online Services That Distribute Court Briefs Infringe on Author's Copyright?
Posted on July 24, 2009Briefs filed in court are part of the proceeding's offical record but distribution of them by Lexis, Westlaw and other commercial online service providers may infringe on the copyright of their authors. When an attorney (Ed Connor) learned the California...
Openings: Assistant Director for Public Services & Foreign, Comparative and International Law Librarian, LSU Law Library
Posted on July 24, 2009Assistant Director for Public Services Louisiana State University Law Center Law Library Responsibilities: Responsible for planning, directing and coordinating the overall Public Services operations of the LSU Law Library, including reference, research and instructional support, research guide production, interlibrary loan,...
Google Maps Update - just in time for D.C.
Posted on July 23, 2009Google maps has always been a great asset for finding your way, but now it is even better! Their improvements, released today, will make finding your way in D.C. even easier. After finding your walking/driving directions, you can run multiple...
Video of John Yoo Being Pranked During Lecture at Chapman Law
Posted on July 23, 2009Berkeley law prof John Yoo, the former Bush Administration deputy assistant attorney general who authored the controversial torture memo, was pranked by an Australian comedian from Chaser?s War on Everything during a lecture Yoo was giving on international law at...
JISC's Documentary on Libraries of the Future
Posted on July 23, 2009JISC has commissioned the following 10 minute video on academic libraries of the future. Details here and video below. Hat tip to Library Boy. [JH]
Have Federal e-Government Initiatives Plateaued?
Posted on July 23, 2009Despite spending enormous sums, progress on electronic government appears to have plateaued, according to the report E-government 2.0, published by McKinsey & Co. "Many new e-government initiatives have neither generated the anticipated interest among users nor enabled clear gains in...
Zittrain on the Dangers of the Cloud
Posted on July 23, 2009Lost in the Cloud, a New York Times op-ed contribution by Johnathan Zittrain, identifies some of the dangers of moving from manipulating and storing data on your computer to doing everything online where you entrust your files to service providers...
Keep Up with the News (and Gossip) at AALL with Twitter
Posted on July 23, 2009Regardless of whether you are a fan of Twitter, a number of law librarians are enthusiastic users of the microblogging service, and they are coming to the AALL Annual Meeting. With free wifi in the Convention Center (thanks BNA!) and...
Green Resources on the Internet
Posted on July 23, 2009LLRX has compiled a current list of green resources and sites on the Internet. Many of them have a practical application in reducing energy consumption and environmental awareness. Hat tip to the Pace Law Library Blog for the links ....
Michigan?s State Law Library Faces Service Cuts, Uncertainty
Posted on July 22, 2009The future of Michigan?s State Law Library has become uncertain in light of a July 13, 2009 executive order issued by the state?s governor. The Governor?s press release respecting the order is available here. Section II(B)(8)(b) of the order, Executive...
Copyright Office Proposes Rule Change Exempting Works Only Available Online from Mandatory Deposit
Posted on July 22, 2009The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online. The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory...
Attractions In and Around DC
Posted on July 22, 2009After a long hard day of attending AALL sessions, law librarians deserve a break. Check out the Washington Convention and Visitors Association website generally and it's list of 100 free (or nearly free) things to do in DC. See also...
Reminder: 4th Annual Bloggers Get Together at AALL, Monday, July 27
Posted on July 22, 2009Roger Skalbeck (Georgetown) and others have organized the 4th Annual Bloggers Get Together during AALL's annual meeting in D.C. 4th Annual Bloggers Get Together Monday, July 27 from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm Old Dominion Brew House 1219 9th Street...
Roll Call is Buying Congressional Quarterly
Posted on July 22, 2009The details are in this article from the Washington Post. [MG]
Don't Just Ban Them, Burn Them As Well
Posted on July 22, 2009There's a story in CNN about yet another attempt to ban books, this time in West Bend, Wisconsin. The books in question deal with homosexuality and other sexual topics that some may find squeamish or offensive, at least in subjective...
Government Research on Cell Phone Driving Accidents Suppressed for Six Years
Posted on July 22, 2009The United States Department of Transportation wanted to conduct a study of 10,000 drivers over time to assess the risk of cell phone use. This was in 2003. The Department collected substantial research and statistics and ultimately did not publish...
Before You Go ? Some Tips for AALL
Posted on July 22, 2009Whether you?re a first time attendee or a seasoned veteran of AALL Annual Meetings, the schedule of educational programs, committee meetings and social events can be overwhelming. Thankfully, our fellow law librarian colleagues have wealth of advice to offer for...
ARL's Academic Law Library Stats
Posted on July 21, 2009Data collection for ARL's Academic Law Library Statistics has been completed and the final tables can be viewed on ARL's website. Here's a sample of summary stats from the compiled data: See also ALR's updated graph for academic library expenditures....
Assessment of State e-Government Services
Posted on July 21, 2009The National Center for Public Performance and the American Society for Public Administration have released U.S. States E-Governance Report (2008) An Assessment of State Websites, which evaluates security, usability and content of state websites, the type of online services being...
Reminder: AALL Legal Research Round Table Scheduled for Sunday, July 26
Posted on July 21, 2009The 2009 Legal Research Round Table at this year?s AALL Annual Meeting is scheduled for Sunday July 26. It will start at 12:15 pm and last about one hour. See you in WCC Room 146 B. Discussion topics include: Teaching...
Opening: World Digital Library Content Manager, Library of Congress
Posted on July 21, 2009This position is located in the World Digital Library, Office of the Librarian, and reports to the Technical Project Director, World Digital Library. The mission of the World Digital Library (WDL) is to make available on the Internet, free of...
Europe to Weigh In on the Google Book Settlement, and B&N Gets Into the e-Book Market
Posted on July 21, 2009Two stories in Ars Technica cover developments in the nascent e-book market. The first details that the European Union has decided to look over the Google Book Settlement and offer their findings to U.S. authorities. A hearing is scheduled for...
Google Book Scan, the EU, and the Senate Judicidary
Posted on July 21, 2009According to the AP, European Union regulators are seeking advice and comments from the publishing industry on the controversial Google book scan project. Regulators are concerned that the project would violate the complicated structure of copyright laws in Europe...
TechCrunch Provides Insight Into Twitter's Corporate Plans from Internal Documents Stored in Hacked Google Apps Account
Posted on July 20, 2009In a somewhat controversial move TechCrunch has decided to selectively publish and review some of the 310 confidential Twitter documents it received from a hacker. About the decision to publish, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington wrote "the vast majority of these documents...
Facebook Finding Under Canada's Privacy Law: Adequate Safeguards Not in Place
Posted on July 20, 2009The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released Report of Findings into the Complaint Filed by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) against Facebook Inc. The Privacy Commission found that Facebook has not complied with...
Reminder: 2009 AALL Salary Survey Responses Due July 31
Posted on July 20, 2009So the response rate this year have been very low, perhaps too low to yield accurate findings. Law library directors can complete the entire survey online by following the link provided in AALL's e-mail or if complete the survey in...
Opening: Legal Information Analyst, Law Library of Congress
Posted on July 20, 2009The Legal Information Analyst works under the broad supervision of the Assistant Director of Law Library Services for Public Services (1) analyzing, summarizing, and indexing laws, treaties, regulations, court decisions, and legislative histories involving United States domestic and international legal...
Judicial Philosophy and Activism on the Supreme Court
Posted on July 20, 2009Nate Silver says that conservative Supreme Court justices are as activist as anyone with a liberal bent to their philosophies. In fact, he finds the Rehnquist Court to be the most activist in history followed by the Warren Court. This...
Legal Aid Meets the Public Library
Posted on July 20, 2009One of the problems with working in a law library is public patrons asking for legal advice. We can't give advice, and they get frustrated. The John F. Kennedy Library in Vallejo, California is addressing the problem by having a...
Amazon Deletes Books From Kindle in Rights Dispute
Posted on July 20, 2009Last week Amazon deleted electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles in the United States. Aside from the irony of the nature of the works, it was a startling move by Amazon. Customers had purchased the...
Elsevier Launches SciVal Spotlight Bibliometric Service
Posted on July 19, 2009Elsevier's SciVal Spotlight uses "science mapping" to reveal the structure of scientific publishing in no fewer than 80,000 areas of research by means of bibliographic analysis and visualization algorithms. [Press Release] Think traditional bibliometric research measurements on steroids in so...
Practitioner Law Blogs
Posted on July 18, 2009San Diego Criminal Attorneys Blog http://www.sandiegocriminalattorneysblog.com http://www.sandiegocriminalattorneysblog.com/index.xml Analyzes criminal law cases, news and reports in California. Published by Sean F. Leslie. Florida Mortgage Modification Lawyer Blog http://www...
Do We Need Book Cart Competitions at AALL's Annual Meeting?
Posted on July 17, 2009Folloing up on LLB's earlier post, New Programs at AALL?, here's Dana C. Rooks, Dean of the University of Houston Libraries, staring is a Madonna-inspired dance routine at the 2009 Texas Library Association's Book Cart Drill Team competition. Hat tip...
Light Reading for the Flight to DC
Posted on July 17, 2009Lawyers in Your Living Room! Law on Television (ABA, 2009) ($24.95 less the ABA's current 20% discount) might be the cure for boredom on flights to DC for the AALL Annual Meeting. From the product description: From Perry Mason and...
Arnold's The Google Trilogy
Posted on July 17, 2009If you want to know more about how Google delivers its products and services and have $650 laying around for PDFs, you might find Stephen E. Arnold's The Google Trilogy interesting: The Google Legacy (2005) concentrates on an overview of...
More reading for the DC flight (especially for baseball fans)
Posted on July 17, 2009Also new from the ABA, John H. Minan and Kevin Cole's The Little White Book of Baseball Law. The ABA has this to say about the book, the latest in a series that already includes The Little Green Book of...
8 Reasons Not To Go To Law School
Posted on July 17, 2009Only eight? This short list may be grounded in humor, but the humor is grounded in truth reality, at least from my law school experience. [MG]
Harvard University Press Goes Digital
Posted on July 17, 2009Harvard University Press is selling digital copies of books on Scribd, some 1,000 in fact. Here's the announcement on Scribd, with links to some of the titles and their prices. [MG]
Country Reports on Habeas Corpus Rights
Posted on July 16, 2009The Law Library of Congress has published country reports on the right of habeas corpus in Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Kingdom, and Yemen. Hat tip to Library Boy. [JH]
Schauer's Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning
Posted on July 16, 2009"Schauer is a leading scholar of jurisprudence and legal process, and his new book is as comprehensive, thorough, and sophisticated an introduction to legal reasoning as it is a lucid one. All of the bases are covered, and law students,...
Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow
Posted on July 16, 2009NISO and OCLC have published a white paper entitled Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow, written by consultant Judy Luther. The paper analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. Through interviews with over 30...
Library of Michigan May be a Casualty of State Finances
Posted on July 16, 2009What is going on with the Library of Michigan which is the State Library? Library Journal is reporting that Governor Jennifer Granholm has issued an executive order eliminating the Michigan Department of History, Arts, and Libraries and transferring most of...
NY Law School Annouces Initiative on Google Book Search Settlement
Posted on July 16, 2009The New York Law School announced a new program called the Public Interest Book Search Initiative that will foster public discussion about the law and policy of digitizing books, making them searchable, and distributing them online. The initiative will be...
14 Years Incarcerated for Civil Contempt Comes to an End
Posted on July 16, 2009It what may be the longest term served for a civil contempt charge, a 73-year-old former corporate lawyer has been freed after spending more than 14 years in jail for refusing to give his ex-wife more than $2.5 million in...
AspenLaw Studydesk 3.0 Now Available
Posted on July 15, 2009Aspen Publishers has released version 3.0 of AspenLaw Studydesk. Enhancements include new word processing tools, an improved briefing template, an improved flashcard wizard that allows users to create their own flashcards and export flashcard sets to Microsoft Word for formatting,...
Canadian Association of Law Libraries Membership Survey Results
Posted on July 15, 2009Key findings from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries' membership survey have been posted on the CALL website. Here's a sample: Question 2. How is the profession of law librarianship changing? What do you see as the emerging challenges and...
Drudge Report as Gateway to Conventional Journalism
Posted on July 15, 2009In New Media vs. Old Media: A Portrait of the Drudge Report 2002-2008 (First Monday), Kalev Leetaru reports that the Drudge Report relies heavily on wire services and obscure news outlets to find small stories that will break large tomorrow,...
Opening: Research Attorney, Cornell Law Library
Posted on July 15, 2009Cornell Law Library is currently accepting applications for the position of Research Attorney. The position includes reference, teaching, and faculty liaison work, as well as developing innovative technologies within our dynamic teaching and scholarly environment...
Google Image Search Now Has a Copyright Filter, and the Life Photo Archive
Posted on July 15, 2009Google has added a nifty feature to its Image Search function. The Advanced Search now features a filter for copyright license, at least for images that are tagged with that information. Obviously Google cannot account for whether images are tagged...
Press Coverage of Sotomayor Hearings's First Day
Posted on July 14, 2009From the nation's opinion leaders: New York Times: Sotomayor Vows ?Fidelity to the Law? as Hearings Start Wall Street Journal: Nominee Outlines Philosophy on Bench Washington Post: Sotomayor Pledges 'Fidelity to the Law' [JH]
Wisconsin-Madison and Texas Amend Google Books Agreements
Posted on July 14, 2009The terms of the UW-Madison and Texas Google Books agreements reportedly follow along the lines of the University of Michigan's amended Google Books agreement [text] and are contingent upon the Google Books settlement agreement being approved by the court...
U.S. News Joining the Law Firm Ranking Game
Posted on July 14, 2009U.S. News is joining the law firm rankings game by teaming up with Best Lawyers. From the press release: U.S. News Media Group, the nation's leading source of rankings and service journalism, and Best Lawyers, the leading survey of lawyers...
Law Prof and Tax Reform Advocate Susan Pace Hamill Running for Alabama House Seat
Posted on July 14, 2009Pope Benedict XVI Suggests Tax Policy From Caritas in Veritate: "One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they...
Kudos to Frank Houdek
Posted on July 14, 2009Frank Houdek, former SIU law library director and associate dean for academic affairs since July 2007, has been appointed interim dean at SIU's School of Law. Houdek brings almost a quarter of a century of administrative experience at SIU to...
Rutgers Newark Law Library Receives IMLS Grant
Posted on July 14, 2009The Rutgers (Newark) Law Library just received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) to preserve old and rare books in its collection. Specifically, the grant applies to manuscripts and books in the U.S. Supreme Court...
Pro Se Stories on This American Life
Posted on July 14, 2009Public radio program This American Life?s most recent episode featured stories of people defending themselves (in court and in life). From the episode intro: ?It's tempting to act as your own lawyer, to argue your own cause. Who better to...
PLI Selling Books in Kindle Format
Posted on July 13, 2009According to the PLI press release, there are currently 67 PLI titles available on Kindle, covering such areas as business, corporate and securities law, banking and commercial law, intellectual property law, estate and tax planning law, real estate law, insurance...
Can $300,000 in additional scholarship money to prop up U of I's US News law school ranking be defended on moral grounds?
Posted on July 13, 2009Following up -- hopefully for the last time -- on LLB's earlier coverage of the University of Illinois College of Law admissions scandal published here and here, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that during a hearing before the Mikva Commission...
Primer for the Sotomayor Hearing
Posted on July 13, 2009David Ingram has written a brief primer for the Sotomayor hearing. See A Dozen Themes Frame Sotomayor Hearing (National Law Journal). [JH]
1,100-plus Law Profs Members of the Legal Academy Sign Letter Supporting Sotomayor Confirmation
Posted on July 13, 2009The letter opens with the sentence "We the undersigned professors of law write in support of the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor..." but 1. Commenting on the letter on The Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler asks, "what percentage of the 1,100-plus...
Library of Congress Launches Facebook Page
Posted on July 13, 2009Here it is. See the Library of Congress blog post for details. [JH]
Wisconsin Law School Privilege In Court
Posted on July 13, 2009Wisconsin's diploma privilege to practice in that state without taking the bar exam for graduates of Wisconsin law schools is under attack. Actually, it's been under attack since 2007 with lawsuits filed, dismissed, reinstated on appeal and turned into a...
Live Webcasting of Sotomayor Hearing
Posted on July 13, 2009The Senate Judiciary Committee is providing live webcasting of its hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's SCOTUS nomination. Here's the link. Hat tip to SCOTUSblog. [JH]
New Programs at AALL?
Posted on July 13, 2009On All Things Considered (National Public Radio series), you can watch the winner of the Librarian's Book Cart Championship. The competition is sponsored by DEMCO and run by ALA. This year's competitors were: ?Oak Park Public Library Warrior Librarians,? Oak...
The Feds Are All A-Twitter
Posted on July 13, 2009Just like libraries, the government is also taking advantage of Web 2.0 technology to get the word out. Dozens of federal agencies are already twitter prolific. Now we have a service that monitors their tweets. ?The Feed? is produced by...
When There's No Print Edition, Do Readers Flock to Newspaper Websites?
Posted on July 12, 2009Editor & Publisher reports on its analysis of what happens to a newspaper's web traffic once the print edition is dropped on certain days or eliminated completely. Is there a spike in online readership? Is the print product a necessary...
Hey Prof, What's Your Cell Phone Number?
Posted on July 12, 2009Sign of the Times: some FSU departments are removing office phones in a cost-saving move. [JH]
Rounding Up Some State Law Practitioner Blogs
Posted on July 11, 2009Alabama DUI Lawyer Blog http://www.alabamaduilawyerblog.com http://www.alabamaduilawyerblog.com/index.xml Reviews DUI cases, reports and legislation in Alabama. Published by Steven D. Eversole. California Criminal Lawyer Blog http://www.california-criminal-lawyer-blog...
Oversight Report on Government Surveillance Released
Posted on July 11, 2009The Federation of American Scientists web site is hosting a copy of the unclassified report that details the Bush administration surveillance program and the way it came about. The justification for the program was written by John Yoo. That has...
Speechifying Our Nation's Most Pressing Issues in Congress
Posted on July 10, 2009From the Onion. [JH] Congressman Demands To Know Who Left Fish Sandwich To Rot On House Floor
Judge Aldisert on Opinion Writing and Opinion Readers
Posted on July 10, 2009Opinion Writing and Opinion Readers (SSRN) was inspired in large part by the work done by Judge Aldisert, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and two of his law clerks, Meehan Rasch and Matthew P. Bartlett, in...
Reminder: July 15th Webinar on HeinOnline's Code of Federal Regulations
Posted on July 10, 2009Hein's webinar, "Using & Searching the Code of Federal Regulations" in HeinOnline, will focus on: Browsing by years, titles, bindings or browsing the indexes & finding aids How to quickly pull up a title, part or section using the Title/Part/Section....
Lend-a-Hand Outreach Initiative Launched by LexisNexis
Posted on July 10, 2009LexisNexis has launched the Lend-a-Hand program for all U.S.-based attorneys who recently worked for a law firm with more than 50 attorneys and are currently unemployed. The program offers free marketing services, networking opportunities, and employment resources...
Opening: Reference Librarian, Univ. of Texas Tarlton Law Library
Posted on July 10, 2009The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin invites applications and for the position of reference librarian. Tarlton supports the scholarship and teaching activities of a faculty whose interests range across disciplines and whose research often involves...
Caught in the Act: Elsevier Offers $25 Gift Card for 5-Star Reviews
Posted on July 10, 2009Inside Higher Ed is reporting that Elsevier offered $25 gift cards for 5-star reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Noble to contributors of the publisher's new title, Clinical Psychology (On Amazon, note the 1-star review calling attention to the marketing...
End of SCOTUS Term, Colbert Style
Posted on July 10, 2009Stephen Colbert comments on the three major cases that concluded the Supreme Court term at the end of June. He explains Coeur Alaska, Inc. v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council way better than I ever could. [MG] The Colbert ReportMon -...
ALA Reports Mean Salary for Librarians
Posted on July 10, 2009The ALA press release on July 7th, reported that the mean librarian salary for public and academic librarians was down less than one percent, from $58,960 in 2008 to $58,860 this year. The survey included responses from 1,179 public and...
Are Deadwood Blogs Monuments to Failure?
Posted on July 09, 2009Blogging is first and foremost about regular posting. If you're not up to the task or have decided to call it a day, Scott Greenfield suggests you should take down your blog: Pull it. Remove it, once and for all....
On the Twilight of the West Paradigm for Case Reporting
Posted on July 09, 2009I think most law librarians will agree with William Mills' (New York Law School) propositions that (1) the foundation of trust that underpins case law reporting has been undermined because Internet case law sources, other than Lexis or Westlaw, appear...
Wikipedia's British Cousin, Wikimedia UK, Ruled Not Tax Exempt
Posted on July 09, 2009A recent UK determination letter has denied Wikimedia UK tax exempt status because dissemination of ideas "is not in itself a charitable object unless it is combined with teaching or education.". Check out Should Wikipedia Not be Tax Exempt? Its...
Clinton Library Releases Sotomayor Documents
Posted on July 09, 2009The William J. Clinton Presidential Library has released about 5,000 pages of materials related to President Clinton's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. They are available online here. From the description of the materials at...
Rush Limbaugh Impersonator Joins Senate Judiciary Committee
Posted on July 09, 2009That's right, Al Franken has been appointed to the Senate Judiciary Committee less than one week ahead of the Committee's hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended his decision to...
Admissions on Corrupt Admissions: University of Illinois and College of Law Officials Testify They Tried to Get Jobs for Law School Grads and Additional Scholarships for Being Forced to Admit Clouted Students to Law School
Posted on July 08, 2009Testifying before the Mikva Commission that is investigating corruption in University of Illinois admissions, Chancellor Richard Herman admitted he sought jobs for law school graduates after being forced to admit to the University's College of Law under-qualified students from political...
Guide to Negotiating Vendor Contracts
Posted on July 08, 2009A veteran of vendor negotiations for law firm online and print contracts, Elaine Billingslea Dockens offers a detailed guide for vendor representatives (VRs) and law librarians inexperienced in the ways of vendor contracting in Vendor Pitfalls in Negotiating Large Multi-Year...
Casemaker vs. Fastcase for Caselaw Research
Posted on July 08, 2009Bob Ambrogi offers a head-to-head review of Casemaker and Fastcase in Law Technology News. He concludes that in terms of coverage of federal and state libraries and the relative strengths of their search tools, "neither stands out as significantly superior...
IT Dashboard Provides Details on Federal Information Technology Spending
Posted on July 08, 2009The IT Dashboard provides details of Federal information technology investments and provides users with the ability to track the progress of investments over time. The IT Dashboard displays data received from agency reports to the Office of Management and Budget,...
What's Old -- Legal Apprenticeships -- is New Again
Posted on July 08, 2009On Legal Writing Prof Blog, Jim Levy (Nova) reports on how law firms are making up for the lack of adequate law school training by jumping on the legal apprenticeship bandwagon. Levy writes about this new trend, "at a time...
GAO and CRS Cybersecurity Reports
Posted on July 08, 2009The news that various federal web sites were subject to a denial of service attack over the 4th of July weekend came as a bit of a surprise. North Korea is identified as the likely culprit. Surprise or not, it's...
My Second & Third (Final) Weeks Teaching Legal Research in China
Posted on July 08, 2009[Please refer to my March 8 and May 18 LLB posts for background.] I meant to post about these things right after they happened in late May, but I was too busy teaching then to do so. And I've been...
Last Will of Michael Joseph Jackson
Posted on July 07, 2009Copy of the King of Pop's last will is available here. Hat tip to Texas Tech law prof and Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog editor Gerry Beyer. [JH]
Can Universities Require Open Access of Faculty-Produced Scholarship?
Posted on July 07, 2009Probably not. "There is no such thing as a mandate on faculty," writes Stuart M. Shieber, Director of Harvard's Office for Scholarly Communication. Shieber continues "I am not saying that university open-access policies can?t be successful. But success has to...
Law School Not Golden Ticket to Secure Employment: Univ. of Miami Law Urges Incoming Students to Consider Deferring Their Admission Until 2010
Posted on July 07, 2009Law Firm Layoffs and Employment Prospects In a New York Times commentary, Another View: In Praise of Law Firm Layoffs, Dan Slater, the former writer of The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, argues that layoffs at law firms are the...
How to Fend Off the Summer Doldrums, Count Mouse Clicks
Posted on July 07, 2009Mouse click rankings for SSRN downloads covering US News law schools ranked from 23 to 100 by Bridget Crawford can be found on Feminist Law Professors (why starting with 23?) and "since it's the boring dog days of summer, and...
Villanova Law Dean Resignation Due to Prostitution Link
Posted on July 07, 2009The Philadelphia Business Journal is reporting that former Dean Mark Sargent who resigned on June 29th will not return to the faculty. Sargent is linked as a customer to a prostitution ring and is part of an investigation by the...
2009 Mid-Year Law Firm Layoff Review: 10,000-plus Attorneys and Staff
Posted on July 07, 20092009 will go down in history as the worst year for law firm layoffs. According to Law Shucks's mid-year review, 125 major law firms have announced or had confirmed layoffs. The combined total is 10,723 people, 4,015 of which are...
Never Say Anything Nice About Someone and Predicting SSNs
Posted on July 07, 2009The pitfalls of social networking sites seem to be mostly confined to photos of underage drinking or some other type of embarrassing or illegal conduct. Youthful indiscretions, as politicians would say, when justifying something most people find offensive...
Congratulations to AALL Award Recipients
Posted on July 06, 2009The Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award: Patrick E. Kehoe, American University and Elizabeth Ann Puckett, University of Georgia School of Law The Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award: William H. Manz, Rittenburg Law Library, St. John's University School of Law,...
Best Practices for Government Libraries, 2009 Edition
Posted on July 06, 2009Best Practices for Government Libraries, 2009: Change: Managing It, Surviving It, and Thriving On It, is a LexisNexis-produced 181 page compilation of 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and...
User-Centered Strategic Planning for Court Libraries in Catalonia
Posted on July 06, 2009The creation of a charter of court library service goals is described by Ivet Adell Duch and her colleagues of the Xarxa de Biblioteques Judicials de Catalunya del Departament de Justícia, in ?The Service Charter of the Network of Court...
Amazon Says "No" to Collecting Sales Tax by Closing Affiliate Accounts
Posted on July 06, 2009Amazon has decided to end its business relationships with North Carolina and Rhode Island marketing affiliates by closing their accounts because both states have passed laws that require collection of sales taxes if in-state online-marketing affiliates get a sales commission...
Oldest Known Bible Digitized
Posted on July 06, 2009CNN and others are reporting that the world's oldest known Christian Bible has been digitized and is available online. The Codex Sinaiticus presented particular problems for archivists as the physical pages were scattered across four locations. The Bible's pages originated...
Missing Items from US Archive, Found Item in UK Archive
Posted on July 06, 2009The National Archives reports that dozens of historical documents have gone missing from the national archives. Larry Margasak from the Associated Press indicates that the the items were stolen by researchers or Archives employees,while others disappeared without a trace...
GM's Asset Sale Approved
Posted on July 06, 2009Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber gave GM the go-ahead late Sunday night to sell its most-prized assets -- including the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC brands -- to a new government-backed company. Text of opinion here. [JH]
Commentary from Around the Web on SCOTUS Nominee Sonia Sotomayor
Posted on July 05, 2009The National Law Journal has published a compilation of news and commentary from around the Web on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Hat tip to Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog. [JH]
Why Do States Fail?
Posted on July 04, 2009As we celebrate the founding of our country and our civil rights and liberties this Fourth of July, perhaps we also ought to reflect on why states fail. Which failed states are global security threats and which are simply tragedies...
A Delightful Short Film that Has Absolutely Nothing to Do with Law Librarianship
Posted on July 03, 2009Little man, the way girls are is a story about a boy and his homework, and his attempt to understand girls. [JH]
Thomson West Launches Do Justice and Between Cases
Posted on July 03, 2009Thomson West has launched Do Justice, a pro bono outreach initiative to support law firm pro bono activities. The Company has also launched Between Cases, a new online resource for displaced legal associates seeking employment and networking opportunities...
The Obama Administration?s Proposal to Reform the U.S. Financial Regulatory System
Posted on July 03, 2009CCH has issued a white paper, The Obama Administration?s Proposal to Reform the U.S. Financial Regulatory System. Written by CCH Principal Securities Law Analyst Jim Hamilton, the white paper identifies the proposal as the most sweeping and fundamental regulatory reform...
Entries for Access Group's Video Scholarship Contest for Law Students Due July 15th
Posted on July 03, 2009Access Group has launched another video scholarship contest for law students this year. Entitled ?My Inspiration,? law students are asked to create a video that describes what motivated them to go to law school. The grand prize is a $10,000...
Lyons' Recommendations for Free Access to PACER Without Compromising Privacy and Security Interests
Posted on July 02, 2009In Free PACER: Balancing access and privacy, Susan Lyons (Rutgers University (Newark) Law School Library) presents an excellent analysis of the issues resulting in the Administrative Office of the United States Courts' (AOUSC) abrupt suspension of the PACER pilot program...
June, the Month Chinese Censors Stopped Taking Their Medication
Posted on July 02, 2009In a recent post on Internet censorship in China, Rebecca MacKinnon writes that June was "the month the censors stopped taking their medication." From her review of recent developments: Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now...
Merit Selection or Election of State Court Judges?
Posted on July 02, 2009Running for Judge: The Rising Political, Financial, and Legal Stakes of Judicial Elections (NYU Press, July 1, 2009) examines the increasingly contentious judicial elections over the last twenty-five years by providing a timely, insightful analysis of judicial elections...
Opening: Law Librarian - Research Services, USC
Posted on July 02, 2009The Gabriel and Matilda Barnett Information Technology Center and The Asa V. Call Law Library at the University of Southern California (USC) Gould School of Law has an opening for Law Librarian - Research Services The USC Law Library's primary...
JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool
Posted on July 02, 2009JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) allows you to compare bilbiographic and full text databases. There are sfour main functions on the site: Compare Journal Title Lists Compare key features of database platforms Compare e-Book platforms Compare charts and statistice...
OUP USA Head Endorses Google Book Deal
Posted on July 02, 2009The head of Oxford University Press USA calls the Google Book Settlement flawed but necessary. Tim Barton published his essay on the settlement in the Chronicle of Higher Education on June 29th. One of the compelling reasons for embracing the...
A Day to Celebrate
Posted on July 02, 2009The Writer?s Almanac reports that today is the anniversary of the founding of the first circulating library: It was on this day in 1731 that Ben Franklin founded the first circulating library, a forerunner to the now ubiquitous free public...
Lawyer denied bar admission due to large student loans
Posted on July 02, 2009The New York Times reported that a panel of N.Y. State Appellate judges denied bar admission to law grad Robert Bowman, despite receiving the requisite recommendation from the state's committee that reviews bar applications. According to the Times, the judges...
Bad Legal Research or Faulty Legal Ethics? Or does it matter...
Posted on July 02, 2009Attorney General Eric Holder and the office of professional responsibility is investigating the use of harsh interrogation techniques authorized by the Senate Judiciary Committee based on advice provided by Attorneys Jay Bybee (now a judge for the 9th circuit) and...
2009 Edition of Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual Now Available
Posted on July 01, 2009Ken Svengalis is every law librarian's best friend. While I buy Bowker's Law Books and Serials in Print once every ten years, I purchase Ken's Legal Information Buyer's Guide & Reference Manual (Rhode Island LawPress) every year. I always look...
Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) Re-Introduced
Posted on July 01, 2009Senators Cornyn and Lieberman re-introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) (S. 1373) [Press release dated June 25, 2009; Text on Thomas]. Specifically, the FRPAA would: Require every researcher with an annual extramural research budget of $100 million or...
Twenty Years as an Internet Open Access Publisher
Posted on July 01, 2009In June 1989, Charles W. Bailey, Jr. launched PACS-L. In his A Look Back at Twenty Years as an Internet Open Access Publisher, he writes "PACS-L was one of the first library-oriented mailing lists, and, at the time, it was...
OUP Lexicographers Study the Linguistics of Tweeting
Posted on July 01, 2009OUP lexicographers have been monitoring more than 1.5 million random tweets since January 2009 and have noticed any number of interesting facts about the impact of Twitter on language usage. Tweets contain significantly more instances of the word "I" than...
Reminder: NELLCO Executive Director Featured Guest on The Law Librarian This Afternoon
Posted on July 01, 2009Richard Leiter and Brian Striman will be chatting with NELLCO's Executive Director, Tracy Thompson-Przylucki, about NELLCO and it's many projects and services in today's episode of The Law Librarian. The episode will air live at 2:00 PM (Central). [JH]
SCOTUSblog Releases End of Term "Super Stat Pack"
Posted on June 30, 2009SCOTUSblog has published its stats, charts, lists, and observations about the just-concluded Supreme Court Term. The "Super Stat Pack" includes data covering the following: Opinion Tally Justice Agreement Decisions by Final Vote Frequency in the Majority Opinion Authors by Sitting...
Why Won't Bloomberg Discuss Its Citator?
Posted on June 30, 2009Stymied by Bloomberg's relucance to discuss the Bloomberg Citator (BCIT) in preparation for what he hoped would be a detailed analysis of BCIT, Michael Robak (Univ. of Illinois Law) was forced to rely on product literature and his own use...
Just Released, Special Collections 2.0
Posted on June 30, 2009Web 2.0 applications are finding a place in a variety of professional endeavors?and nowhere with more usefulness and potential than in the realm of specialized document collection and archiving. Lynne M. Thomas and Beth Whittaker's new book, Special Collections 2...
Minnesota Supreme Court Rules for Franken
Posted on June 30, 2009The news just broke. The Court ruled that Franken won the senate election over Coleman. The opinion from the Court's web site is here. The Washington Post story is here. [MG]
States Eye Internet Sales Tax, Vendors Fight Back
Posted on June 30, 2009It's no secret that the states are strapped for cash. They've always eyed tax revenues from Internet sales as a money source. The current taxation scheme requires a nexus for a vendor's physical presence within the state to collect revenues....
Did the University of Illinois Barter Jobs for Law School Grads in Exchange for Law School Admission of Under-Qualified, Politically Connected Students?
Posted on June 29, 2009Factors other than GPA/LSAT scores ought to be taken into consideration when it comes to law school admissions but what was happening at the University of Illinois College of Law is not an example that illustrates this point. The Chicago...
CRS Analysis of Sotomayor's Opinions: "Most consistent characteristic ... has been an adherence to stare decisis."
Posted on June 29, 2009In the CRS report, Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Analysis of Selected Opinions (June 19, 2009), Anna C. Henning and Kenneth R. Thomas provide an analysis of selected opinions authored by Judge Sotomayor during her tenure as a judge on the Second...
Best Law Firm Articles and Alerts Aggregrator on the Web
Posted on June 29, 2009On 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Greg Lambert reviews myCorporateReources.com, a site that aggregates client alerts published by AmLaw 100 firms, calling the site "hands-down the best law firm articles and alerts aggregator" he has seen. Check out his...
Supreme Court Actions at the End of Term
Posted on June 29, 2009The Court issued two of the three highly awaited opinion this morning, concluding the 2008-2009 term. The opinions in the New Haven firefighter case reversed the lower courts allowing New Haven to throw out the test results when it became...
We Are Living in Exponential Times
Posted on June 28, 2009Did You Know 3.0 is fascinating video on the progression of information technology. Created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod, it's the 2008 edition of the "Shift Happens" video. [JH]
Are you doing a presentation soon? Like at AALL09?
Posted on June 28, 2009It is summer time, and that means many librarians are busy attending conferences, giving talks, and preparing for lectures. Some of these presentations might take place online for economic or time considerations. I though it would be worth reviewing some...
You're on Cheaters Camera
Posted on June 27, 2009In Cheating 2.0: New twists on a venerable temptation are confronted by law schools (National Law Journal) Leigh Jones reports how law students are taking cheating to the next level by using their cell phones, taking advantage of flaws in...
Treasury Secretary Offers Fast Solution for Monetary Meltdown
Posted on June 26, 2009Last month LLB alerted readers that they needed to turn in their toxic dollar bills to the Treasury Department for their own safety. The ruse didn't work. Now comes news that the Treasury Secretary has a new plan for solving...
E-Books: Understanding the Basics
Posted on June 26, 2009Jane Lee, California Digital Library Assessment Analyst, covers e-book essentials in E-Books: Understanding the Basics. In her brief article, Lee observes that "the rise of e-books highlights the struggle to offer services that address the increasing demand for electronic resources...
CRS Report on the State Secrets Privilege and Other Limits on Litigation Involving Classified Information
Posted on June 26, 2009From The State Secrets Privilege and Other Limits on Litigation Involving Classified Information (May 28, 2009): The state secrets privilege is a judicially created evidentiary privilege that allows the government to resist court-ordered disclosure of information during litigation, if there...
PLI Scholarships Available for Law Librarians
Posted on June 26, 2009Practising Law Institute is now offering scholarships to law librarians, among others, for PLI seminars and CLE. Details are here. [MG]
Law Librarians of the Caribbean
Posted on June 26, 2009Did anyone know that the 24th annual meeting and seminar of the Caribbean Association of Law Libraries was taking place? The meeting was addressed by Barbados Attorney-General Freundel Stuart. His comments suggest that any image problem law librarians have is...
Happy Birthday to the Barcode
Posted on June 26, 2009Just wanted to pass along this New York Times article about the 35th birthday of barcodes. Many a law library uses bar codes to keep track of their collection so if you are like me and know those first 5...
Delegation of Work Assignments by Lawyers to Nonlawyers in Law Firms
Posted on June 25, 2009In Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice within Law Firms, [NELLCO] Paul R Tremblay (Boston College Law School) articulates a framework for assessing choices lawyers make when they delegate some tasks to nonlawyer colleagues. The framework relies on insights about lawyering judgment...
Using Custom Search Engines
Posted on June 25, 2009Check out law librarian and blogger John J. DiGilio's new LLRX article, Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control. [JH]
Rounding Up Some State Law Practitioner Blogs
Posted on June 25, 2009Alabama Injury Attorney Blog http://www.alabamainjuryattorneyblog.com http://www.alabamainjuryattorneyblog.com/index.xml Reviews injury law cases, news and reports in Alabama. Published by Martinson & Beason, PC. Arizona Construction Accident Lawyer Blog http://www...
Supreme Court Action Today
Posted on June 25, 2009We're still waiting for Ricci to come out. With that, here are today's opinions. Horne, Superintendent, Arizona Public Instruction v. Flores et al. (08-289). The Respondents in the case were plaintiffs in an action that alleged inadequate funding for English...
Shifts in the Legal Market Place
Posted on June 25, 2009Two postings in the blogosphere this week targeting how we might see certain segments of the legal market emerge from the economic downturn. In his post Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0, Am Law Daily blogger Paul...
Help Save Ohio Public Libraries from Governor's Draconian Budget Cutback Proposal -- 50% Reduction in State Funding
Posted on June 24, 2009Governor Ted Strickland has proposed what amounts to a 50% reduction in state funding for Ohio's public libraries. His June 19 proposal would cut a total of $227.3 million over the next two years from the state?s Public Library Fund....
Online Privacy: Problematic Data Handling Practices and Consumer Expectations
Posted on June 24, 2009Online privacy and behavioral profiling are of growing concern among both consumers and government officials. In KnowPrivacy, Joshua Gomez, Travis Pinnick, and Ashkan Soltani, UC Berkeley, School of Information, examine both the data handling practices of popular websites and the...
New Law Titles from Yale UP
Posted on June 24, 2009A Right to Discriminate? How the Case of Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale Warped the Law of Free Association By Andrew Koppelman and Tobias Barrington Wolff From the blurb: The book demonstrates that the ?right? to discriminate has...
Staring at Glowing Rectangles
Posted on June 24, 2009A new report published this week by researchers at Stanford University suggests that Americans spend the vast majority of each day staring at, interacting with, and deriving satisfaction from glowing rectangles. Details at 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At...
Europe Issues New Privacy Rules for Social Networks
Posted on June 24, 2009The European Union has issued guidelines for how social social networks protect the privacy of their members. European data collection is governed under the Article 29 Data Working Party. European privacy rules tend to be stricter than those in the...
Ezra Rosser: A normal human being trapped in a law faculty body
Posted on June 24, 2009In On Becoming "Professor": A Semi-Serious Look in the Mirror, 36 Fl. St. Univ. L. Rev. 215 (2009), [SSRN], Ezra Rosser, WCL Assistant Professor of Law and co-editor of Poverty Law Prof Blog, promises to "say something about legal academia"...
2.0 Challenge Assistance
Posted on June 24, 2009I am one of the librarians assisting in preparing the materials for the AALL CS-SIS 2.0 Challenge this year (blogged here on Law Librarian Blog) and ask that if you use Flickr in your Law Library that you leave a...
The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement: Jonathan Band's Guide to the Perplexed
Posted on June 23, 2009Following up on his A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries have released Jonathan Band's A Guide for...
Recent Website Reviews on InSITE
Posted on June 23, 2009Law librarians at Cornell search the Internet for potentially useful websites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary twice a month via the Cornell Law Library's current awareness service, InSITE. If you aren't already subscribing to InSITE's RSS feed...
A Handful of Practice Area Blogs by Lawyers
Posted on June 23, 2009Military Veteran Attorney Blog http://www.militaryveteranattorney.com http://www.militaryveteranattorney.com/index.xml Provides insight on veteran law news, cases and opinions in Michigan. Published by Serafini, Michalowski, Derkacz & Associates, PC. Products Liability and Injury Lawyer Blog http://www...
Opening: Reference and Research Services Librarian, Univ. of Richmond Law Library
Posted on June 23, 2009Reference and Research Services Librarian William Taylor Muse Law Library University of Richmond School of Law Responsibilities: This full-time position will provide reference and research services and instruction for faculty, students and other library users (including one evening per week...
Robert C. Post Appointed Yale Law School Dean
Posted on June 23, 2009Robert C. Post has been appointed the Dean and Sol and Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, effective July 1, 2009. Here's the press release. [JH]
Amazon eBook Download Confusion
Posted on June 23, 2009Amazon's practices in regard to download policy for books to their Kindle device and their iPhone app seems all over the place. One one hand, there is a policy for unlimited downloads to a Kindle device. Some customers have had...
Supreme Court Action Yesterday
Posted on June 23, 2009I had hoped to get this post out yesterday. We've been dealing with some, cough, cough, business here at DePaul that is an unfortunate distraction, even at my level of employment. Nonetheless, we are getting close to the end of...
Honesty Not the Best Policy at DePaul: Law Dean Fired for Disclosing Required Information to ABA Accreditation Committee; Associate Dean Resigns in Protest
Posted on June 22, 2009DePaul Law's Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship & Faculty Development Resigns Last Friday, Stephen Siegel, Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship & Faculty Development at DePaul resigned his associate deanship, "effective when the expected announcement...
New Edition of Wojcik's Introduction to Legal English for Lawyers and Law Students Who Speak English as a Second Language Published
Posted on June 22, 2009The International Law Institute of Washington D.C. has published the third edition of Introduction to Legal English: An Introduction to Legal Terminology, Reasoning, and Writing in Plain English by Mark Wojcik, John Marshall Law School (Chicago) professor and co-editor of...
States Facing Declining Personal Income Tax Receipts
Posted on June 22, 2009As state governments race to prepare new budgets by July 1st, Stateline.org staff writer Pamela M. Prah surveys findings from recent reports about declining personal income tax revenue at the state level. Public law libraries dependent on state funding take...
Opening: Associate Dean for Law Library Services & Information Technology, NKU Chase College of Law
Posted on June 22, 2009Northern Kentucky University Chase College of Law is seeking a dynamic, forward thinking individual to fill a vacancy in the following position: Associate Dean for Law Library Services & Information Technology. The Associate Dean for Law Library Services & Information...
Interim Dean of DePaul Law Appointed
Posted on June 22, 2009Following up on LLB's earlier post about the DePaul fiasco, Provost Helmut Epp announced today that Illinois Appellate Court Judge Warren D. Wolfson has been named interim dean of the DePaul University College of Law. Judge Wolfson will assume the...
New Interface for Google's Book Search Engine
Posted on June 22, 2009Google's book search engine has a new interface that adds a number of useful features including: New toolbar option to embed a preview in websites or blogs, a lot like the embed tag used to share YouTube videos Better search...
X Games Circa 1899
Posted on June 21, 2009This Thomas Edison produced clip was shot in 1899, and might be the first recording of bike stunts. [JH]
Working the Saturday Shift at the Old Law Library?
Posted on June 20, 2009Having trouble staying awake at the Reference Desk? Then you need to go to Kuku Kloc, the online alarm clock webpage. Set the time of your alarm clock and select the alarm sound. Your choices: cockerel, classic clock, electronic, Slayer...
LOC to Archive All Sotomayor Confirmation Tweets
Posted on June 19, 2009The "official" Library of Congress announcement was a tweet: "LOC will capture tweets on #sotomayor for its web archives on the Sotomayor nomination." [JH]
Are America's Manslaughter Laws Too Vague?
Posted on June 19, 2009From the Onion. [JH] Political Talk Show Host Suddenly Very Interested In Manslaughter Law Loopholes
New Articles and Updated Research Guides on GlobaLex
Posted on June 19, 2009Luxembourg: Description of the Legal System and Legal Research by Nicolas Henckes REGARD SUR LE SYSTEME JURIDIQUE ET JUDICIAIRE DU NIGER par Bello Mahamadou Boubacar Updated Research Guides Philippine Legal Research by Milagros Santos-Ong Researching the United Nations: Finding the...
From Institutional Repositories to Electronic Libraries
Posted on June 19, 2009In The End of Institutional Repositories & the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries (LLRX), Stuart Basefsky advocates broadening the concept of institutional repositories (IRs) to serve as full-fledged electronic libraries and documents how they...
CRS Report - The 2009 Influenza A(H1N1) Outbreak: Selected Legal Issues
Posted on June 19, 2009From the summary of The 2009 Influenza A(H1N1) Outbreak: Selected Legal Issues (May 6, 2009) available on OpenCRS: Recent human cases of infection with a novel influenza A(H1N1) virus have been identified both internationally and in the United States...
Openings: 4 Professional Librarian Positions at UC-Irvine Law Library
Posted on June 19, 2009The University of California, Irvine School of Law ? which will open its doors on August 24, 2009 to an inaugural class of 65 students ? has three new positions available in the Law Library: a Faculty Services Librarian, a...
Blind Taste Testing Search Engines
Posted on June 19, 2009No patrons with quizzical looks on their faces approaching the reference desk? Nothing else to do? Then take a break and perform some "blind taste testing" search engine exercises using a couple of new resources Phil Bradley recently spotted: Blind...
CS-SIS Web 2.0 Challenge 2009
Posted on June 19, 2009The CS-SIS is rolling out their Web 2.0 Challenge again this summer, a fantastic opportunity to learn about and play with new technologies that can be implemented in any kind of law library. The official announcement is below: Announcing the...
LOC Investigators Want Their Guns Back
Posted on June 19, 2009Investigators at the Library of Congress want their guns back. The Office of Inspector General has complained in his semi-annual report to Congress that not having guns impedes investigations. The office had the power to carry guns for at least...
Using Social Media to Track Events in Iran
Posted on June 19, 2009Yesterday, I was watching CNN report on the events surrounding the elections in Iran. They were relying on social media sites, especially Twitter, to get real time information due to the limited coverage permitted by the Iranian government. As you...
Online Petition Drive Launched to Improve PACER
Posted on June 18, 2009Erika Wayne (Stanford Law School Library) and others have launched an online petition drive directed at the Administrative Office of the US Courts to improve PACER. The petition reads: We ask the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve...
Guide to Legal, Factual and Other Internet Sites
Posted on June 18, 2009Legal, Factual and Other Internet Sites for Attorneys and Legal Professionals, 15 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 13 (2009), by Timothy Coggins, Associate Dean for Library & Information Services and Professor of Law, Univ. of Richmond School of Law, lists Internet...
RaceTracker Wiki Now Tracking Every Election for Congress and State Governor
Posted on June 18, 2009The RaceTracker project on OpenCongress ? a non-partisan, fully-referenced, open-source and crowd-sourced wiki project ? now lists every candidate running in every U.S. Senate, House and governor?s race. Details on OpenCongress. [JH]
Who are we anyway?
Posted on June 18, 2009I wanted to give this a catchy title that wouldn?t make me sound like I am repeating the age old question of ?what is the future of librarianship? or ?what skills should a librarian have? or ?what is the role...
Law Prof Tries Selling IRC at Yard Sale
Posted on June 18, 2009Librarians know that trying to give away, let alone sell, deaccessioned volumes of legal materials is pretty hard to do these days. On Concurring Opinions, Sarah Waldeck's (Seton Hall) posted a photo essay about her attempt to sell a copy...
Heads Up Job Seekers
Posted on June 18, 2009If you are interested in the Southeastern-ish part of the country the AALL Job Hotline in the past 2 days pumped out five jobs in the SEAALL territory. They are: Associate Dean - Chase College of Law / Northern Kentucky...
Supreme Court Action Today
Posted on June 18, 2009The Supreme Court issued four opinions this morning. The one making the news is the access to DNA testing. I'll get to that one in a bit. On to the others. Gross v, FBL Financial Services Inc. (08-441). This case...
How the Media Frames "Open Access"
Posted on June 17, 2009Philip Davis, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at Cornell University and a former science librarian, applies concepts of media framing to the debate over open access in How the Media Frames ?Open Access? (Journal of Electronic Publishing)...
Who's Running the Most Web Servers?
Posted on June 17, 2009From publicly available data: 1&1 Internet: 55,000 servers Rackspace: 50,038 servers The Planet: 48,500 servers Akamai Technologies: 48,000 servers OVH: 40,000 servers (company) But according to Rich Miller in Who Has the Most Web Servers? there are much larger server...
Reminder: Applications for the 2009 AALL Leadership Academy Due June 30
Posted on June 17, 2009The AALL Leadership Academy, will be held October 16-17 in the Chicago area. Applications will be accepted May 1-June 30, and participants will be selected and notified by mid-August. Fellows will participate in pre-engagement exercises, have an opportunity to obtain...
CRS Analyzes Tobacco Legislation
Posted on June 17, 2009Congress is poised to pass legislation regulating the tobacco industry through the FDA. One of the elements of the legislation yet to be reconciled between the House and Senate is the reimplementation of the 1996 rule that limited tobacco advertising...
New Property Tax Database
Posted on June 16, 2009The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the George Washington Institute of Public Policy have launched Significant Features of the Property Tax, an online database that presents data on the property tax in all 50 states. This new site provides...
Using A Blog to Peer Review Drafts of an Academic Book
Posted on June 16, 2009Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz, let the readers of a blog peer review drafts of his latest book, Expressive Processing (MIT Press). He shares his final conclusions about the...
Add OpenJurist to List of Free U.S. Case Law Websites
Posted on June 16, 2009Well, I'm adding OpenJurist to my list -- news to me but I might be behind the curve because of the proliferation of free case law websites. OpenJurist's database currently has approximately 647,000 opinions from the United States Supreme Court...
Preserving Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use
Posted on June 16, 2009What are the archival challenges presented by contemporary authors' practice of drafting almost all of their materials on a computer? Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, a white paper produced by the Office of Digital...
Kudos to Washington & Lee's Sally Wiant on a Job Very Well Done for 31 Years
Posted on June 16, 2009Sally Wiant will retire as director of the Washington and Lee Law School Library at the end of June after 31 years at the helm according to W&L's announcement. She will assume full-time duties on the Washington and Lee Faculty...
Are Lawyers Competent to Construct Keyword Searches?
Posted on June 16, 2009I wrote a post on the Tech Law Prof Blog yesterday with the same title above that is relevant to law librarians. It covered one of the more recent opinions in e-discovery cases where lawyers either can't agree on keyword...
Attend the CALI Conference Virtually ? for Free!
Posted on June 16, 2009The CALI Conference for Law School Computing always has an interesting mix of sessions for librarians, IT folk and law faculty, and new this year, all the sessions will be webcast live! Using the open source web meeting software Dimdim,...
Lessons Learned from the Messy Practicalities of Law and Society Research
Posted on June 15, 2009Hat tip to Stanford Law School Library Director Paul Lomio, Legal Research Plus, for calling attention to Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices by Simon Halliday and Patrick Schmidt (Cambridge UP, May 25, 2009). According to...
Cleveland Law Library Association Awarded Grant to Create Online Tutorials
Posted on June 15, 2009The Cleveland Law Library Association has been awarded a grant to create online tutorials for Association members and site visitors. The Law Library will receive its funding from the Attorney Outreach Grant Program of the United States District Court for...
Map of Disputes Between WTO Members
Posted on June 15, 2009The World Trade Organization has created an interactive map that depicts disputes between its member states. The web page display also includes hyperlinks to enable the user to access dispute documents, a chronological list of disputes, lists of disputes by...
Opening: Web Services Developer, George Mason University Law Library
Posted on June 15, 2009The George Mason University Law Library is seeking an experienced web services professional who will report directly to the Associate Dean for Library & Technology. Primary Duties: Design, update, and maintain the law school's public website and Intranet, including visual...
Need Design Ideas for Constructing or Renovating Your Law Library?
Posted on June 15, 2009Here's some. [JH]
Supreme Court Action Today
Posted on June 15, 2009The Supreme Court released two more opinions this morning: Nijhawan v. Holder, Attorney General (08-495). Petitioner was convicted of mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. The jury did not make a finding about the amount of loss.....
EFF's Terms-of-Service Tracker
Posted on June 14, 2009Terms-Of-Service (TOS) and other website policies form the foundation of one's relationship with social networking sites, online businesses, and other Internet communities. But most people become aware of these terms only when there's a problem. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has...
U.S. Geological Survey Launches Digital Map Beta
Posted on June 13, 2009The Digital Map - Beta is the first step toward a new generation of digital topographic maps being created by the U.S. Geological Survey. These maps are built from The National Map data, which are integrated from local, State, Federal,...
Head Over Heels Literally
Posted on June 12, 2009This week's Friday Fun video was suggested by Janet Fischer, Collection Development/Government Documents Librarian, Golden Gate University Law Library. Thanks Janet! [JH]
Product Development Thomson West-Style
Posted on June 12, 2009Update on Rudovsky v. West Publishing Corp. The Legal Intelligencer's Shannon P. Duffy is reporting that a federal judge has refused to dismiss a defamation suit brought by two law professors who claim that West Publishing harmed their reputations when...
Cheap Geek's Guide to Free Online Presentation Tools
Posted on June 12, 2009Greg Lambert writes that he couldn't live up to my reputation as the "cheap geek" if he didn't share three free online presentation tools: Adobe ConnectNow, Present.IO and Authorstream's "Present Live" feature for PowerPoints. Check out his review on 3...
Judge Sotomayor's 50 Most Important Opinions According to the PreCYdent Algorithm
Posted on June 12, 2009USD Law prof Thomas Smith has used his PreCYdent SE algorithm to compile Judge Sotomayor's 50 most important opinions. [download from his post]. Smith is the driving force behind this sophisticated search engine. For a guide to web resources covering...
Maybe Westlaw thinks Scalia was wrong, but?
Posted on June 12, 2009On May 26, 2009, the United States Supreme Court decided Montejo v. Louisiana, which overruled the Court?s 1986 decision, Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U.S. 625 (1986). To be sure, Justice Scalia in his majority opinion in Montejo stated on page...
Martha Minow Appointed Dean of Harvard Law School
Posted on June 12, 2009Martha Minow, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a member of the HLS faculty since 1981, has been named dean of the School effective July 1, 2009. Minow?s appointment follows the March confirmation of...
Simon & Schuster Will Sell Books Through Scribd
Posted on June 12, 2009The market for e-books got slightly bigger today with news that Simon & Schuster will use Scribd as a distribution channel. The company will make about 5,000 titles available. They will be in a secure PDF format that can be...
Twitter Usage Patterns: Peer-to-Peer Communications or One-Way Micro-Broadcasting Service?
Posted on June 11, 2009A recent Harvard Business School study by Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski, New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets, suggests that the top 10 percent of Twitter users produce more than 90 percent of all Tweets. On a...
JISC: Orphan Works Are Languishing Unused
Posted on June 11, 2009JISC has released In from the Cold: An Assessment of the Scope of 'Orphan Works' and Its Impact on the Delivery of Services to the Public. A snip from the announcement: The scale and impact of Orphan Works across the...
Firefox Add-ons for Research, Communication and Current Awareness
Posted on June 11, 2009Check out Bonnie Shucha's (Wisconsin) list of Firefox Add-ons which may be useful for the legal or library professional. Very helpful. [JH]
Slugfest in the Legal Blogosphere: Mr. "Legal Hitman" v. Mr. "Irresponsible Anonymous Blogger"
Posted on June 11, 2009Over the past several weeks Ed Whelam who writes for Bench Memos, a blog published by the National Review Online, and an a pseudonymous blogger at Obsidian Wings known as ?Publius,? have been debating various issues related to SCOTUS nominee...
DOJ Said to Focus on Google in Book Settlement Investigation
Posted on June 11, 2009News reports are percolating with the Department of Justice's latest look at the Google book settlement deal. That's not exactly fresh news. The whispers, however, from the publishers are that the information the DOJ is gathering focuses on Google rather...
LibGuides: the Future of Research Guides?
Posted on June 11, 2009Chances are, you?ve heard of LibGuides, a platform for creating research guides from Springshare. For any readers exhausted by all the talk of web 2.0 and the latest tech fads, put the skepticism aside, LibGuides really does live up to...
SCOTUS Gives Chrysler Sale to Fiat Green Light; Deal Could Be Closed Today
Posted on June 10, 2009A day after Justice Ginsburg temporarily halted the sale of the Chrysler?s assets as part of its bankruptcy proceedings, [LLB post] the Supreme Court unanimously denied the bid to block the sale to Fiat yesterday. The unsigned, 2-page per curiam...
The Next Frontier of Search
Posted on June 10, 2009Developers are entering the "next frontier of search" by trying to add structure to the mass of unstructured electronic data. Computational search engines like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared aim to construct a database of factual information based on user...
Should (When Will) Legal Research Skills Be Tested on the Bar Exam?
Posted on June 10, 2009The idea that the bar exam should include a legal research skills component has been kicking around for quite awhile. The late Roy Mersky, Clair Germain (Cornell), Blair Kauffman (Yale), and others have been promoting the cause for years. The...
U.S. Tax Court Instructional Videos Now Available Online
Posted on June 10, 2009Hat tip to Jacqueline Laínez (Memphis) for calling attention to the U.S. Tax Court's instructional videos on Clinical Law Prof Blog. The video series covers 1) Understanding the Process; 2) Introduction to the United States Tax Court; 3) Filing the...
Law Library of Congress Web Page Highlights
Posted on June 10, 2009I hadn't been to the web site for the Law Library of Congressin quite some time, but I found myself visiting yesterday looking for some primary constitutional law documents. They were there, in a newly reorganized form that brought all...
Kudos to Vicenc Feliu
Posted on June 10, 2009Vicenç Feliú has been appointed Law Library Director of the Law Library at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law effective July 1st. Vicenç Feliú comes to UDC from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana...