January 2009 Archives

REMINDER: As previously reported in October, don't forget about this opportunity.

MORRIS L. COHEN STUDENT ESSAY COMPETITION

The Legal History and Rare Books Section of the American Association of Law Libraries announces the first annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition. The purpose of the contest is to encourage scholarship in the areas of legal history, rare law books, and legal archives, and to expose students to the American Association of Law Libraries and law librarianship.

ELIGIBILITY
Currently enrolled students attending accredited graduate programs in library science, law, history, or related subjects are eligible to enter the competition. Students may be enrolled either full- or part-time. Membership in the American Association of Law Libraries is not required.

REQUIREMENTS
Papers may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives. No paper, or portion of a paper, that has been published or accepted for publication before April 15, 2009 will be eligible for consideration. Papers and all supporting documentation must be submitted by April 15, 2009. The winner will be announced by May 15.

PRIZE
The winner will receive a $500.00 prize from Gale Cengage Learning. In addition, the winner will receive up to $1000 to be applied towards expenses associated with attendance at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries. The 2009 Annual Meeting will be held July 25-28 in Washington, D.C. Attendance at the Annual Meeting is encouraged, but not required.

Detailed procedures and an application form are available at the website of the Legal History and Rare Books Section of the American Association of Law Libraries: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lhrb/

Questions may be directed to Katherine Hedin, University of Minnesota Law Library: k-hedi@umn.edu OR Jennie Meade, Jacob Burns Law Library, George Washington University: jmeade@law.gwu.edu

Download an informative brochure here

This week there was an interesting development in open-access to legal educational materials.

The Legal Education Commons, http://w.cali.org/lec, a source of open-access, full-text teaching materials for law school courses, was launched on January 26 by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. See the CALI announcement here, http://www2.cali.org/index.php?fuseaction=pages.news&PHPSESSID=608277c566ab4ad5abd34c6a08dff119#212, and the Berkman announcement here, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/5014.

The Legal Education Commons (LEC) reportedly contains more than 700,000 full text cases and other court documents, plus approximately 300 illustrations from CALI tutorials. The copyrighted materials in the Commons are governed by a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (BY-SA), http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

The LEC seems to reflect two trends in legal publishing: a movement toward use of less formalized, customizable, practice-oriented materials in instruction (of which Professor Doug Leslie’s Casefile Method product, http://www.casefilemethod.com/ offers a commercial example); and an interest on the part of some law professors and librarians in utilizing open-access approaches to legal publishing.

Source: Rob Richards
Robert C. Richards, Jr., J.D.*, M.S.L.I.S., M.A.
Philadelphia, PA
richards1000@comcast.net
* Member New York bar, retired status

January 29, 2009
University Libraries Receive Prestigious "Excellence in Academic Libraries" Award

The University of Minnesota Libraries have received the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2009 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. Sponsored by ACRL and Blackwell’s Book Services, the award recognizes the staff of a college, university and community college library for programs that deliver exemplary services and resources to further the educational mission of the institution.

“Receiving an Excellence in Academic Libraries Award is a national tribute to a library and its staff for the outstanding services, programs and leadership they provide to their students, administrators, faculty and community,� said ACRL Executive Director Mary Ellen K. Davis. “It is wonderful to learn of the innovative programs and services being offered by these three exemplary institutions.�

The University of Minnesota Libraries, winner of the university category, was praised for developing excellent strategies to successfully transform and rebrand the libraries to secure a highly valued position on campus.

“The libraries understand the importance of the process of conducting scholarship and have implemented programs to support behaviors rather than product,� said Pamela Snelson, chair of the 2009 Excellence in Academic Libraries Selection Committee and college librarian at Franklin & Marshall College. “By ‘getting in the flow of users,’ the libraries have moved out of their comfort zone and shifted into an engagement-centered model for all library services and programs.�

"We’re immensely proud of the success we’ve had in integrating our expertise and resources into the life of the campus,� said Wendy Pradt Lougee, university librarian and McKnight presidential professor at the University of Minnesota. “To have our staff’s innovative work recognized by the ACRL community is quite simply wonderful."

The Libraries will receive $3,000 and a plaque, presented at an award ceremony to be scheduled on campus in the spring, as well as special recognition at the ACRL President’s Program during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, July 13, in Chicago.

Download the award nomination (PDF; 2.2MB)

Source: News from the Libraries

The Jeffersonian Ideal and the Internet
About David Post's In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford UP, Jan. 2009), Larry Lessig writes "reading this beautifully written and extraordinarily diverse work today is what it must have been like to know or read Jefferson then. Post has crafted an experience in understanding that allows us to glimpse the genius that Jefferson was, and to leave the book astonished by the talent this extraordinary writer is."

From the product description:

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the "complete skeleton, skin & horns" of an American moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his residence as a symbol of the vast possibilities contained in the strange and largely unexplored New World. Taking a cue from Jefferson's efforts, David Post, one of the nation's leading Internet scholars, here presents a pithy, colorful exploration of the still mostly undiscovered territory of cyberspace--what it is, how it works, and how it should be governed.

What law should the Internet have, and who should make it? What are we to do, and how are we to think, about online filesharing and copyright law, about Internet pornography and free speech, about controlling spam, and online gambling, and cyberterrorism, and the use of anonymous remailers, or the practice of telemedicine, or the online collection and dissemination of personal information? How can they be controlled? Should they be controlled? And by whom? Post presents the Jeffersonian ideal--small self-governing units, loosely linked together as peers in groups of larger and larger size--as a model for the Internet and for cyberspace community self-governance. Deftly drawing on Jefferson's writings on the New World in Notes on the State of Virginia, Post draws out the many similarities (and differences)between the two terrains, vividly describing how the Internet actually functions from a technological, legal, and social perspective as he uniquely applies Jefferson's views on natural history, law, and governance in the New World to illuminate the complexities of cyberspace.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

New United Nations Legal Research Tools
From a UN Pulse Post:

The UN Office of Legal Affairs, Codification Division has launched several new online resources:

+ Official Records of Diplomatic Conferences;

+ A new portal for all legal publications;

+ UN Legal Publications Global Search; and

+ RSS feed for the Audiovisual Library of International Law.

Source: ResourceShelf

Who Owns Your Scholarship? Copyright, Publication Agreements, and Good Policy

What: A Workshop for Authors and Creators of Academic Works
Who: Kenneth Crews, Director of the Copyright Advisory Office, Columbia University
When: 2:30-4:30 p.m., Monday, February 16, 2009
Where: Great Hall, Coffman Memorial Union

Free to University of Minnesota community; satisfies Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) educational requirements. Registration opening soon!

Kenneth Crews joined Columbia University in January 2008 as founding director of the Copyright Advisory Office (CAO). The principal service of the CAO is to provide guidance with respect to the relationship between copyright law and the research, teaching, and service mission of the University community. Beginning in 1994, Dr. Crews was director of the first such copyright office if its type, based on the IUPUI campus of Indiana University (IU). At Indiana he also held a named professorship in the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, with a joint appointment in the IU School of Library and Information Science. Read more about Dr. Crews...

Source: University Libraries Events blog

Taking Liberties [iTunes, Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player]
http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties

Britain has a rich and divergent set of traditions when it comes to freedoms and rights, and this highly interactive and well-designed online exhibit lets users explore some of the events, issues, and debates involved with such matters. The exhibit is meant to complement an in situ exhibit that ends in March 2009, and visitors can get started by looking over the "Star Items" section of the site. In this section, visitors can look over 40 "key icons of liberty and progress, from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Human Rights." The documents are arranged chronologically and by theme, such as "Rule of law" and "Parliament and people". Moving on, the "Audio & Video" area includes a four-minute introduction to the exhibition, a lecture on the Magna Carta, and a "virtual curator". The site is rounded out by the "Taking Liberties" interactive feature, which allows users to learn how they stand in regards to current debates on freedoms in society, detention without charge, and the right to privacy.

Nixon Tapes [Real Player]
http://www.nixontapes.org/

A number of organizations have offered the general public selections from the secret tapes made by President Richard Nixon between 1971 and 1973, but the Nixon Tapes project under the direction of Professor Luke A. Nichter at Texas A&M University-Central Texas aims to bring together a complete online audio archive of all the tapes in question. The project is well under way, and the site contains a tremendous number of full-length tapes and
transcriptions. It's no small task, as the sound quality on the tapes ranges from unintelligible to acceptable. Visitors can click on the "Audio & Transcripts" area to listen those tapes that are currently available. The project is an ambitious one, and it will certainly warrant several return visits.

Source:
Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2009. Internet Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, are preserved on all copies.

Jessup and Moot Court competition collections on HeinOnline
Among HeinOnline’s outstanding collection of databases, there are two that law students might find particularly interesting. The databases are the National Moot Court Competition and the Philip C. Jessup Library.

The National Moot Court Competition database includes current information and archives on the annual law student competition. Hein has collected the records and briefs back to the first national competition held in 1950 between teams of law students from Georgetown University Law School and Kansas School of Law. The competition is sponsored by the Young Lawyers Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the American College of Trial Lawyers.

In the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition Compendium, part of the Philip C. Jessup Library, Hein includes the Problem of the year, the Judges’ Bench Memorandum, the official rules of the competition, the list of schools competing, and the results. The International law Students Association organizes the annual competition. You can find more information about the competition on the ILSA website.

To access these HeinOnline databases, go to the Law Library homepage and select HeinOnline from the “Research Resources� under Quick Links on the left column. Browse down the list of databases on the HeinOnline welcome page. There are links to the National Moot Court Competition and the Philip C. Jessup Library.

Source: Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog

The UBE
Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View

The National Law Journal reports that the bar examiners in up to 19 states are considering incrementally implementing a Uniform Bar Exam. The uniform bar exam would consist of three components, all developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners: the MBE; the Multistate Performance Test; and the Multistate Essay Examination. The uniform test score would include performance on these components only and would not incorporate a state law portion.

Just a quick reminder: The Law Library has resumed regular academic year hours today. Here are the hours the Library and Reference Office are open:

Monday to Thursday : Library is open 8 am to 10 pm Reference Office is open 9 am to 8 pm

Friday: Library is open 8 am to 6 pm Reference Office is open 9 am to 5 pm

Saturday: Library is open 9 am to 6 pm Reference Office is open 11 am to 5 pm

Sunday: Library is open Noon to 6 pm Reference Office is open 1 to 5 pm

Exceptions will be posted on the Law Library's website, blog, and around the Library.

Note: UMN Law Students have 24/7 access to the building and Law Library. Welcome back!

The National Endowment for the Arts released their report “Reading on the Rise� on 12 January documenting that for the first time in 25 years, more Americans are reading.

According to the demographic breakdown, young adults show the biggest increase and fiction is the largest growing market in adult readers.

Online readers also report reading books. 84% of adults who read literature (fiction, poetry, or drama) on or downloaded from the Internet also read books, whether print or online - and nearly 15 percent of all U.S. adults read literature online in 2008.

Read the press release and report at: http://www.nea.gov/news/news09/ReadingonRise.html

Introducing "Obama's People"
Source: The Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

Inauguration Day is almost here. Along with a new president, a whole new group of powerful cabinet members, lawmakers, White House staff and presidential advisers will be making their mark on the news and the direction of the country. An easy way to get acquainted with them is by visiting the New York Times online, where you will find "Obama's People,"a gallery of 52 engaging photos with brief biographies taken from a special inauguration issue of the New York Times Magazine. This special photo portfolio is memorable in capturing the style, personalities and backgrounds of key members of the new administration--from the incoming Attorney General to the White House trip director. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look.

Link to the article here.

From the NYTimes Paper Cuts blog comes this amusing story about unusual items left in books:

A few weeks ago in the Book Review, Henry Alford wrote about strange things found stashed (and smashed) inside books, from money and photographs to baby’s teeth, insect corpses and pieces of superannuated bacon.

Bacon. Really?

Out in the blogosphere, there seems to be a lot of skepticism about the bacon bookmark meme — or “urban legend,� if you prefer. The most detailed discussion I could find, a 2006 essay on the aptly named site Bibliobuffet, mentions numerous sightings of errant breakfast meat in libraries from Florida to Nebraska (the earliest known bacon-in-books sighting was in an Omaha library) to Washington State and beyond, but no first-hand accounts from librarians, let alone testable lab samples of “book jerky.�

Read more at the Paper Cuts blog.

In an opinion issued on Tuesday, a panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals set aside the assessment of penalties against a major telecommunications firm, AT&T. Among the issues in the case was whether the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission maintained the authority to penalize misconduct by a regulated party after the sunset date of the Commission’s penalty statute, but as to conduct which occurred before the statute expired.

Read more about this case here.

The panel’s complete analysis is accessible here.

Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2009 edition
Source: Free Government Info blog

The 2009 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States is now available from two sites:

The 2009 Statistical Abstract. PDF and Excel

Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2006-2009. PDF only.

Are Federal Record-keeping Laws Out of Step With Modern Communications?
Source: Free Government Info blog

All the President's IMs: Are Federal Record-keeping Laws Out of Step With Modern Communications?, by MICHAEL C. DORF, FindLaw, Jan. 12, 2009.

Dorf argues that our federal record-keeping laws are out of step with the ways in which people now communicate.

January 26 Conference on Internet Privacy
7:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m., Humphrey Center

The Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy will host "Today's Online Privacy Challenges: Innovation and Liberty" on Monday, January 26, at the Humphrey Institute. This conference will give policymakers and the public an up-to-date look at web innovation and its effect on individual liberties. Experts from business; the University of Minnesota; Washington, D.C. think tanks; and the Minnesota State Legislature will explore the benefits, risks, and values at stake in evaluating corporate and government Internet privacy policies.

Registration begins at 7:45 a.m., and the program starts at 8:30 a.m. The conference is free, but RSVPs are requested to cstpp@umn.edu. Visit www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/stpp/MinnesotaPrivacySymposium.html for more
information.

Timely with the news of recent Salmonella outbreaks, the Government Accountability Office recently identified Food Safety as one of 13 urgent issues facing the next President and Congress.

There appear to be three guides that should be of help in this area:

Agriculture (University of Colorado at Boulder Government Publications Library, 2008)

Food Supply (University of Colorado at Boulder, Government Publications Library, 2008)

Government Documents on Agriculture (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last modified 1/29/2008

The UC Boulder guides on Agriculture and Food Supply have some overlap. In addition to safety in food supply, the Food Supply guide has links to famine related resources and food and nutrition. The Agriculture guide has links to Agricola, the premier agricultural database and to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

Read more about these guides, and the Guide Exchange project, at: http://freegovinfo.info/node/2287

Here are a few selected resources of interest from this week's Internet Scout Project:

The Pew Center on the States: Trends to Watch
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/trends.aspx

Change is afoot in the United States, and the Pew Center on the States has created their "Trends to Watch" site for policymakers, public officials, and members of the public at large. The backbone of the site is found in the overview they offer related to eight major economic, technological, social and environmental trends and issues likely "to be profound determinants of the prospects of states in the next 10 years." These issues include migration patterns ("The Big Sort"), political participation ("Demand for Democracy"), and climate change ("Green Wave"). Visitors can click on each of these eight major trends and issues to retrieve thematic and interactive maps, data tables, and press releases. Additionally, visitors can view state by state comparisons, and compare all of the 50 states via handy and easy-to-read charts and graphs. The site is well-designed and easy to navigate, and visitors can also sign up for electronic newsletters and their RSS feed.

Papers of the War Department, 1784-1800
http://wardepartmentpapers.org/

After a traumatic and devastating fire in 1800, many historians though that the early files of the United States War Department were essentially lost forever. Thankfully, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University recently completed a decade long project to locate all of these records and place them online here. The collection is a very important one, because during this time period the War Department was responsible for Indian affairs, veteran affairs, and naval affairs. The project was begun in earnest by Ted Crackel in the mid-1990s and it involved visits to over 200 repositories and consulting over 3,000 collections in the United States, Canada, England, France, and Scotland. Now, visitors can browse through 55,000 documents, and also perform detailed searches, complete with links to digitized images of each document. Interested parties can also browse the collection by year or person of interest. In short, this is an extremely valuable project that will be of interest to those with a penchant for American history, and early American military history in particular.

The Fathom Archive
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/

The University of Chicago's Fathom project consisted of a site whose goal was to bring accessible online learning resources to people around the world, whether student, professional, educator, or lifelong learner. And they succeeded, via a consortium of fourteen educational and cultural institutions committed to that very goal. This site contains the full archive of the Fathom project, which is part of the University of Chicago Library's Digital Collections. To see the list of the members of the consortium, click on "History of Fathom", in the middle of the homepage. After that, click on "Browse the Archive" at the top of the homepage to browse all of the works by title or author. The topics cover a broad array of material, from capital punishment to human cloning to studies of race and ethnicity.

One Life: The Mask of Lincoln
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/lincoln/

In time for both Lincoln's 200th birthday and Barack Obama's inauguration, this small exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery explores the still-mysterious nature of the 16th U.S. president, through portraits selected from the Gallery's collections. Examples include a small-size copy of an Alexander Hesler photograph; Lincoln with "tousled hair" which was produced in 1860 so it could be cut out and worn as a campaign pin; an engraving of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation; a drawing of Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln; and the famous cracked plate portrait, one of the last images made of Lincoln, taken in February 1865 by Alexander Gardner. The audio tour provides answers from David Ward, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, to some persistent Lincoln questions, such as "Why is this portrait cracked?" which refers to the Gardner portrait, or "In what way did Lincoln try to manage the explosiveness of the Emancipation Proclamation?" which refers to the engraving of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2009. Internet Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, are preserved on all copies.

Stalking Case Could Expand Harassment Protections
Run Date: 01/08/09
By Rich Daly
WeNews correspondent

A case linking gender violence and workplace stalking is under Supreme Court review and could determine if stalking by a non-employee qualifies as sexual harassment. Advocates say the case also highlights a lack of protection for victims.

WASHINGTON (WOMENSENEWS)--The Supreme Court is slated to give a final review Friday in a case that probes the legal boundaries between stalking and sexual harassment.

Dawn V. Martin v. Howard University, et al., has serious implications for workplace safety nationwide, according to legal advocates, and spotlights the lack of any federal protections for victims of stalking who face retaliation from their employers when they complain about it.

The specific issue raised by the case is whether someone can make a sexual harassment claim against the employer under federal-worker protections if the harasser is not an employee. Martin, an attorney, brought the case after she was stalked by a homeless man while she was working as a law professor at Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Her teaching contract was subsequently not renewed.

The case arises during National Stalking Awareness Month, when advocacy groups will be publicizing data from the Washington-based Stalking Resource Center finding that 1 in 12 women and 1 in 45 men will be stalked during their lifetime. Eighty-seven percent of all stalkers are men, and among stalking victims on campuses, 80 percent know the perpetrator.

Read more: http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3880

Survey Gets Law-School Students' Thoughts on Laptops, Writing, and Ethics
By STEVEN BUSHONG
Chronicle of Higher Education Wed Jan 7, 2009

An excerpt:
Law-school professors are fed up with students using laptop computers in class to surf to Facebook, eBay, everything but LexisNexis. And some have even banned the distracting machines. But results from a new survey show that an outright ban might not be such a good idea.

The 2008 Law School Survey of Student Engagement, released today, suggests that, when used wisely, laptops can actually enhance student engagement. The survey found that class-related laptop use correlates highly with reported gains in several areas, including critical and analytical thinking.

Read the rest of the article at: http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/01/9153n.htm

View the whole survey report at: http://www.lssse.iub.edu/index.cfm

Here is the list of new titles the Law Library acquired in December 2008. The list is on the library's home page.

December Acquisitions

Found this interesting and unique website about the daily routines of people. Here is Benjamin Franklin's day from Daily Routines:

Source: CulturalOffering.com

From HR Web Cafe comes ten useful resources for you to explore. Happy New Year!

Photo by travelingwild via Flickr

Quicken Online recently eliminated their $29.95 a year fee and the online version is now free. Users can consolidate and manage bank and credit card accounts, get bill reminders, view a 10-day forecast to project the impact of upcoming expenses, and even get text messages when they're overspending. It allows users to budget better and to see where their money is going.

Healthy Dining Finder aims to provide consumers with a centralized resource for identifying the healthier choices and corresponding nutrition information from restaurants nationwide. Developed in collaboration with the National Restaurant Association (NRA) and with partial funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the site aims to provide U.S. diners with information that, in many cases, is not available anywhere else.

Fuelly is a free site that allows you to record and analyze your mileage and to see how much money you could save with small driving changes. You can see how your mileage compares with EPA estimates and the mileage of other drivers using Fuelly. The free site also offers tips and a discussion forum.

BillShrink is a free, personalized savings service for everyday services like wireless and credit cards. The site's goal is to save users time and money through highly-personalized analysis of complex service usage and then finding the best wireless plans and credit cards based on that usage. The site can also automatically repeat the analysis on a regular basis as usage changes or as better product offers come to market.

Greenzer is a free shopping engine designed to make environmentally conscious shopping easier. Browse, compare and shop thousands of greener products from dozens of merchants selected for their commitment to environmentally friendly practices and products.

Child Care Aware is a program of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA). The service offers information on various child care options and what to look, as well as a local search tool.

Aging Pro - bills itself as the best one-stop destination for a comprehensive set of caregiving tools, resources, community support information and access to professionals in aging on the Web. It is a resource for caregivers, professionals, and people planning their future.

Campus Explorer is a free online resource with information on more than 6,000 colleges and institutions of higher learning. It claims it will provide everything one might want to know, from tuition to average temperature and boasts direct partnerships with schools so that users can be put directly in touch with admissions officers.

See the other resources at: HR Web Cafe