Legal Research

Round-Up of Practitioner Blogs

Posted on July 03, 2010
North Carolina Car Accident Lawyers Blog http://www.northcarolinacaraccidentlawyersblog.com http://www.northcarolinacaraccidentlawyersblog.com/index.xml Reports on medical malpractice cases, news and opinions in California. Published by Moseley Collins...

Fun Stuff About The Revolution and the 4th of July Holiday

Posted on July 03, 2010
On this Fourth of July weekend, here are some interesting holiday-related notes: Slate announces the winners of its contest to rewrite the Declaration of Independence in a single tweet. Read them here as hilarity ensues. I doubt that NARA will...

Resignation by Vendor Liaison

Posted on July 02, 2010
I received an email from an academic librarian informing me that "Marian [Parker] resigned the position a week ago and does not deserve your continued ire." My concerns about the Vendor Liaison were more about the position itself than the...

Friday Fun: Who is Still in Business, Packard Bell or the Library?

Posted on July 02, 2010
This 1996 Packard Bell commercial caused a stir because librarians were portrayed as storm troopers marching around the library shushing people. The library scene was edited out of later versions of the commercial but this one shows it. Hat tip...

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New and Updated Research Guides from GlobaLex

Posted on July 02, 2010
New Research Guide A Guide to United Arab Emirates Legal System by Ahmed Aly Khedr & Bassam Alnuaimi Updated Research Guides A Legal Research Guide to Armenia by Sergey Arakelyan and Anna Margaryan A Research Guide to the Legal System...

Moving Forward? New Vendor Liaison Search.

Posted on July 02, 2010
AALL President, Catherine Lemann, formally announced the resignation of the Vendor Liaison and stated: "The Executive Board remains committed to moving forward, and we will announce details of a search for a new vendor liaison in the coming weeks." Nothing...

?Librarians must either join the faculty or be permanently relegated to peripheral and inferior roles.?

Posted on July 02, 2010
The quote in the heading of this blog post is attributed to Arthur M. McAnally as stated in Status of the University Librarian in the Academic Community, pg. 5. I find that his statement clearly reflects reality and is equally...

AALL Executive Board Meeting Books: The Vendor Liaison Report Part One

Posted on July 01, 2010
I learned something interesting while writing my last blog post. On the AALL website there are posted Executive Board Meeting Books ("Meeting Books") that contain all sorts of information on what the Executive Board and various committees are doing. I...

Brantley's Proto Bill of eBook Management Rights

Posted on July 01, 2010
"The opportunism of publishers, merchants, and distributors now threatens to erode some of the best aspects of historical reading. Against these losses, greater convenience is not an acceptable compensation. Restrictive rights management, loss of first sale, and the sundering of...

Follow Up on the Composition of the Colloquium Committee

Posted on July 01, 2010
After I posted this morning I received some information on who has been appointed to the Colloquium Committee. If the information I received is correct then no CRIV members were indeed appointed. The composition is five vendor representatives (from BNA,...

WikiLeaks: From Whistleblowing to Information Vandalism

Posted on June 30, 2010
WikiLeaks instructs journalists that ?WikiLeaks should be described, depending on context, as the ?open government group?, ?anti-corruption group?, ?transparency group? or ?whistleblower?s site?.? "From one perspective, WikiLeaks is a creative response to a real problem afflicting the U...

Sign of the Times: Michigan Law Posting Job Ads for Indian Legal Outsourcing Company

Posted on June 30, 2010
The University of Michigan Law School, ranked 9th in US News, is now posting job opportunities from India. Details on ALT. In the story Elie Mystal writes "If you go to a top ten law school and end up having...

The Perfect Business Model for Digital Repositories of Legal Scholarship: Make Materials Available While Providing Download Counts to Stroke Law Prof Egos

Posted on June 30, 2010
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to implementation of the well-intended Durham Statement may very well be SSRN's asinine download stats. Here's a snip for the 2010 Mid-Year President's Letter. 2010 is our 16th year and it is off to a great...

White House, DHS, Proposed National Cyber Identity

Posted on June 30, 2010
Remember Microsoft's Passport? Microsoft's idea was to create a secure online ID that could be used as credentials for a variety of sites: Internet access, banking, shopping, and other services. The reaction was negative, not because it was necessarily a...

iPad Hacked! An LLB PSA for TR CEO Tom Glocer and Other iPad Users

Posted on June 30, 2010
A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. "They?and every other buyer of the cellular-enabled tablet?could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking" according to Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad...

A Second Westlaw Outage Leads to a Quick Question: Where's the Communication?

Posted on June 29, 2010
Late yesterday afternoon I learned that for the second time in a week, Westlaw access was unavailable. This by way of a ORALL listserv query from a county law librarian -- can you login? In this case the problem apparently...

The Shed West Era in Execution

Posted on June 29, 2010
Over 97,000 pounds of print were sent off to the recycling center from our little county law library in recent weeks and that doesn't include several thousands of pounds of recycled loose-leaf pages and books removed earlier this year. Easily...

Now This is What AALL's "Denver Experience" Is Really About: Karaoke Night!

Posted on June 29, 2010
While some like Caren Biberman, Mark Gediman and others (see comment trail to Caren's LLB's post) address AALL's annual meeting abysmal programming that may benefit CVs for academic law librarians but possibly no one else, what really matters is Karaoke...

Dell Alleged to Hide Mass Computer Failure From Customers

Posted on June 29, 2010
There is a fascinating story out there that may be interesting to anyone who bought a Dell Optiplex computer between 2003 and 2005, especially if it failed. The New York Times is reporting about a lawsuit brought against Dell in...

Dream Big or Comments on "A "Modest Proposal on Programming at AALL" and the Report of the AALL Annual Meeting Review Special Committee

Posted on June 28, 2010
I read with great interest the recent blog post "A "Modest Proposal" on Programming at AALL". In that post Mark Gediman suggested that the PLL Summit be folded into the Annual Meeting. I agree that would be good. However, that...

ResultsPlus on Steroids: TR's Chief Scientist and VP of Technology on WestSearch

Posted on June 28, 2010
Recently Jason Wilson interviewed Peter Jackson, Chief Scientist and Vice President of Technology at Thomson Reuters for Slaw. The interview focused on WLN's search engine. One way to over-simplify WestSearch in the WLN context is to view it as ResultsPlus...

Supreme Court Ends Term With Four Opinions

Posted on June 28, 2010
The Supreme Court ended its 2009-2010 term today by issuing opinions in the last four argued cases left on the docket. The cases were controversial and highly anticipated. The case that was likely anticipated the most is McDonald v. Chicago....

Round-up of Law Practitioner Blogs

Posted on June 27, 2010
Miami Real Estate Attorney Blog http://www.miamirealestateattorneyblog.com http://www.miamirealestateattorneyblog.com/index.xml Reports on real estate news, opinions and matters in Florida. Published by Alvarez & Barbara, LLP. Boston Personal Injury Attorney Blog http://www...

Grade Inflation in Law Schools

Posted on June 26, 2010
A June 22 New York Times article reports that grade inflation in law schools is being justified by the competitive edge it provides for students in this challenging economy. Try to reconcile the preamble of the ABA Standards with this...

How Long Does It Take to Write a Blog Post?

Posted on June 26, 2010
Ten minutes according to Scott Greenfield. "I average about ten minutes a post, often interrupted with important things like refilling my coffee mug, talking to my kids or listening to Dr. SJ's instructions on what I shouldn't screw up that...

iPhone Failure Rate: 26% Within 2 Years, 35% to 40% Within 3 Years (with PSA on How to Hold the iPhone 4)

Posted on June 25, 2010
The two-year failure rate for iPhones is reportedly better than the industry average and only 7.5% of the reported failures were due to a hardware malfunction according to SquareTrade, the warranty provider for the iPhone. See the full report here....

Friday Fun: LOST Re-enacted by Cats in 1 Minute

Posted on June 25, 2010
I know plenty of cat loving law librarians so today's Friday Fun video feature is for them with a big hat tip to LLB's co-editor Mark Giangrande. [JH]

A Wishlist for eBooks

Posted on June 25, 2010
Think make them more "social." Hat tip to LISNews. [JH]

Law of the Land Trumps Law of God: God's Not Going to be Happy with This Faculty Salary Survey Results

Posted on June 25, 2010
The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources has released its 2009-2010 academic year survey results for average faculty salaries by field and rank at four-year public and private colleges and universities. The data are based on reports covering...

Opening: Reference Librarian, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego

Posted on June 25, 2010
JOB TITLE: REFERENCE LIBRARIAN REPORTS TO: ASSOCIATE LIBRARY DIRECTOR SUPERVISES WHOM: CIRCULATION ASSISTANTS (in absence of Circulation librarians) CLASSIFICATION: EXEMPT (PROFESSIONAL) SUMMARY DESCRIPTION: The Reference Librarian serves as a member of the Library?s Reference Department, providing a wide range of...

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