Recently in Resources Category

The Supreme Court Database website is available at: http://supremecourtdatabase.org.

The database, originally created by Harold Spaeth of the Michigan State University College of Law, currently contains 247 pieces of information for each case, roughly broken down into six categories:

(1) identification variables (e.g., citations and docket numbers);
(2) background variables (e.g., how the Court took jurisdiction, origin and source of the case, the reason the Court agreed to decide it);
(3) chronological variables (e.g., the date of decision, term of Court, natural court);
(4) substantive variables (e.g., legal provisions, issues, direction of decision);
(5) outcome variables (e.g., disposition of the case, winning party, formal alteration of precedent, declaration of unconstitutionality); and
(6) voting and opinion variables (e.g., how the individual justices voted, their opinions and interagreements).

The new website makes this data much more accessible to researchers with various levels of expertise. A user-friendly interface allows for simple analysis by novices, while the site also contains downloadable formats for analysis in a variety of statistical packages.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, the contributors have begun the process of coding all cases from the court's first decision in 1792 to 1952, and will be regularly posting updates of this back-dating project over the next four years.

iPhone App Provides Law School Rankings

Law School 100 is 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 app won't blow their budget. The cost is just 99 cents," writes Robert Ambrogi in Picking a Law School? There's an App for That. Also a useful tool, I guess, for admissions staff trying to convince college students to apply to their law school.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

GCN's list of "great" .gov web sites this year includes GPO's FDsys.

• Great .Gov Web Sites SPECIAL REPORT: "10 sites that take online government to the next level" by Joab Jackson, Government Computer News (Jul 27, 2009)

Other sites GCN lists include: data.gov, The California Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Transit.511.org, the U.S. State Department, the State of Utah, and Science.gov.

While the description of FDsys in the GCN article has no new information for those who have been following its development for years, its presence in the list is notable and important for at least two reasons. First, it is the only one of the ten that emphasizes permanence and long term access.

Second, it is revealing to see the technologies that GCN lists for each site. Every site on the list is noted for use of technologies that provide good access and rich content. These include the current batch of usual suspects, from Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, to RSS and Cascading Style sheets; from Wikipedia and Twitter, to Google keyhole Markup Language and ArcGIS. But only FDsys also includes technologies that are specifically designed for long-term preservation and for authenticating content: The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System, and "Digital signatures."

Now if we could just combine that with digital deposit into FDLP libraries, we'd be able to multiply the technical guarantees of long-term free public access to government information by the number of participating FDLP libraries.

Source: Free Government Info blog

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) "now features two new videos on the site (www.nlrb.gov): 'Introduction to the NLRB Public Website' and 'How to Use CiteNet,' the Agency's electronic legal research database."

• The announcement (pdf)

• Introduction to the NLRB Public Website ("demonstrates how to find published decisions and administrative memoranda, how to ask questions via the website or to speak to a person, as well as how to use E-Gov, the Agency's on-line services such as E-Docket, E-Filing, online forms, and E-FOIA requests."

• How to Use CiteNet (CiteNet is a free public service offered by the Agency to assist labor law professionals and the public with their legal research needs.)

Source: Free Government Info

Free Demographics Data for 2009
http://www.FreeDemographicsData.com

FreeDemographicsData.com is your source for statistics about Cities, Counties, Zip Codes and the United States. Find free, updated US Census data and comparisons. Lookup statistics about 2009 demographics, population, income, gender, housing value, household size, education and more. This has been added to Internet Demographics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

Source: Marcus P Zillman blog

Here are some new resources/events for those interested in state laws or the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act:

Summary of new laws effective Aug. 1: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/0809nlrelease.pdf

See also, new laws effective July 1: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/0709nlrelease.pdf

Summaries of all new laws from the 2009 session: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hinfo/Newlaws2009-0.asp

COGI-tations: A program of the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information

Minnesota's Government Data Practices Act : A Primer
Hint: It's Not as Complicated As You Think!

Presenter: Don Gemberling
"Godfather" of Minnesota data practices

Minnesota's data practices law is based upon openness to information by and about state and local government. Advocacy groups, citizen journalists, concerned citizens, bloggers and all concerned about access to government activities need to know their rights. Elected and appointed officials need to understand their responsibility to assure access. Don Gemberling knows the law and can clarify it for those who may be intimidated, confused or overwhelmed by a straightforward law based in the assumption of transparency.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their government information horror stories
for analysis and feedback.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.

Midtown Commons, 2314 University Ave West, St. Paul (just East of Raymond)
Minnesota Council of Nonprofits conference room, Suite 20

COGI-tations are public forums sponsored by the Minnesota Coalition on Government Information. All COGI-tations are free and open to the public.
Minnesota Coalition on Government Information www.mncogi.org

From the Internet Scout:

Typography for Lawyers
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/

This is an intriguing website that focuses on typography as a means to make legal documents look better aesthetically, and arguably, more professional and more persuasive. The founder of this website is a typographer-turned-lawyer, and he gives ample examples to back up his theory that presentation is tantamount. Visitors unfamiliar with typography can learn about it by clicking on the links "What is Typography?" and "Why is typography important?"

Once visitors have digested that, they can take actual lessons in typography, from basic to advanced. Some of the topics covered are "Straight Quotes and Curly Quotes", "How to Pick a Font", "Condensed vs.Squished Fonts". The website's author mentions in "How to Use This Website", that he does not include all the lessons that would usually be in a typography course or treatise, but rather he includes only those that would be useful to a lawyer. For the disbelieving lawyers out there who think the courts restrict what fonts can be used in their court system, go to the link "Appendix: Court Rules Regarding Fonts" to read official court rules regarding font, for the 50 states and the federal system.

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.

If you listen to the radio or watch TV you have probably seen some ads about the government's "Cash for Clunkers" plan. If you are considering trading in your older car for a new one you might be interested in learning a bit more about the program before you go to the the car dealership.

The law.
Now the source from the US Congress for legislative actions is a database called Thomas. There is just one problem, if you search the database for "cash for clunkers" you will get a bill (H.R. 2640), but if you look at the last major action you will see the bill was sent to committee, but it has not been passed. Now we know this bill has been passed, so where is it? Well, it turns out that this bill was not passed on its own, instead it was made part of an omnibus bill, H.R. 2346 Making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes. The section we are interested in is Title 13 the "Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Program," it is 10 paragraphs long and basically lays out how much people can get and a few basic requirements. It is still a bit vague, but does have one interesting requirement "Directs the Secretary to make Program information available on an Internet website and through other means."

The web site.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has created a web site on this program at the easy to remember location of cars.gov. Here we get yet another version of the name "Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS)," but this site has a lot of good basic information. You can find information on the roll out (or when exactly you can get the rebate), how it will work, and other FAQs.

Finding a fuel efficient car.
If you want to do a little prep work check out the web site, fueleconomy.gov. Not only will you find the fuel efficiency of your new car, but you will also get to check out what the EPA fuel efficiency is on your current car.

For even more info about consumer laws, check out our consumer law research links on the Law Library's website.

Source: Gov Pubs Library-UC Boulder

STAFF AT U LIBRARIES HAVE CREATED AN INTERACTIVE DIGITAL ARCHIVE: "MEMORIAL STADIUM 1924-1992."

In less than two months, the sights and sounds of on-campus football will return to the University of Minnesota with the opening of TCF Bank Stadium. While a stadium in the heart of campus will be a new experience for some fans, many others recall the rich history of Memorial Stadium, the home of Golden Gopher football for 57 years. Gopher fans can now relive many of these memories through an interactive digital archive "Memorial Stadium 1924-1992." It can be viewed by going to http://brickhouse.lib.umn.edu.

To watch a video highlighting the exhibit go to http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/Multimedia_Videos/memorial_stadium.htm The "Brickhouse," as fans affectionately called it, was built in 1924 and stood for nearly seven decades until its demolition. For more information, read "Brickhouse redux"

Developed by the University Libraries, "Memorial Stadium 1924-1992 " features historical photos, game footage, programs, correspondence, reports and blueprints from the University Archives. The collections were scanned by the Libraries' Digital Library Development Lab and uploaded into Omeka, a free, open source, interactive Web-based publishing platform that allows visitors to the site to share their own recollections of Memorial Stadium.

"Watching enthusiasm grow as TCF Bank Stadium came to life these past three years inspired University Libraries staff to explore how the rich archival resources and the digital technology expertise of the Libraries could be channeled to capture, share and honor the history of Memorial Stadium from an institutional perspective," said university archivist Beth Kaplan. "From the start we knew we wanted to capture personal perspectives as well. It's our hope that visitors to the site will be inspired to share their own stories, photos, even audio or video clips to transform this into a dynamic and living archive."

Built in 1924 to pay tribute to the men and women of Minnesota lost in World War I, Memorial Stadium stood for nearly 70 years, hosting not only Gopher football but also track and field, the marching band, cheerleaders, commencement, research experiments and even a production of the opera "Aida." The Golden Gophers had a stellar record in Memorial Stadium, including six national championships and 12 unbeaten seasons at home.

Among the many features of the exhibit include live game footage of 28 Golden Gopher football games -- highlighted by a 1953 "Game of the Week" television broadcast in which All-American Paul Giel leads the Gophers over Michigan and sets a Big Ten record by handling the ball 53 times on offense. It also includes full-length programs from numerous Gopher football games and letters from community and university leaders debating a move to the newly built Metrodome.

In conjunction with the online exhibit, selected materials will be installed and available for viewing from July 20 through September 26 in the Andersen Atrium Gallery of the U's Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Ave. S., Minneapolis. For directions and exhibit hours go to http://special.lib.umn.edu/hoursdir.phtml

Were we smarter 100 years ago..? The 1909 Copyright Act Hearings

James Boyle has been rereading the legislative history of the 1909 Copyright Act. He has come to the conclusion that 100 years ago we were smarter about copyright, about disruptive technologies, about intellectual property, monopolies and network effects than we are today. At least, the legislative hearings were much smarter. The hearings he's looking at took place in 1906 -- thanks to the wonder of Google books you can read them yourself...

Source: LISNews

Copyfraud : Poisoning the Public Domain is an introduction to some of the ways that content providers (websites, publishers, etc.) abuse copyright protections when they use public domain materials. A couple of minor points, however:

*The act of assigning a copyright to something already in the public domain is the issue; taking a Project Gutenberg text, formatting it, and publishing it is of great benefit to people, as long as one doesn't claim protection that doesn't actually exist for the material.

*The Creative Commons Public Domain Tools is not a license, nor is it an attempt "to become the arbiter of public domain licensing", but a way to allow people to have an easy and effective way to display that a work belongs to the Public Domain.

Source: Libology via LISNews

Selected James J. Hill Digital Scans Now Available Online

Digital scans of 1,047 selected correspondence, clippings, and reports from the James J. Hill papers are now available on the web. These files, in pdf format, are accessible through an online inventory, which lists a description of each item and provides a link directly to each digital version.

The digitized material comes from the General Correspondence series and the Northern Pacific Reorganization materials within the James J. Hill papers, and cover topics including the attempted merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads between 1893 and 1905 and the debate among Hill and other financiers over a potential loan to England and France during World War I.

These digital files came to the Minnesota Historical Society along with the Hill Family Collection, and we're pleased to make them available to users. The original documents can be found in the James J. Hill papers, an inventory of which is also available online.

Selected digital items from the James J. Hill papers
Full inventory of the James J. Hill papers
Source: MN Historical Society blog

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library.

Today we highlight Dangerous Games: the uses and abuses of history by Margaret MacMillan (Modern Library, 2009). A 2008 edition is available at Wilson Library at Call Number D13 .M33 2008.

View a description of the book, an interview with the author and more at the Modern Library website.

This book "reveals how a deeper engagement with history in our private lives and, more important, in the sphere of public debate can guide us to a richer, more enlightened existence, as individuals and nations." Check it out!

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) allows you to compare bilbiographic and full text databases. There are four main functions on the site:

1. Compare Journal Title Lists


2. Compare key features of database platforms


3. Compare e-Book platforms


4. Compare charts and statistice (dashboards) of each database

So, for example, with respect to number 3, if you compare NetLibrary to ebrary, you will learn that ebrary lets you export citations to Endnote, while NetLibrary will not. However, ebrary allows you to search by LC Subject trees, while Netlibrary does not. There are more than 70 categories that they compare in the e-Book platform section. It is a great service when trying to compare usability of different platforms!

Similarly, their comparison of journal titles in databases quickly provide venn diagrams of overlaps in coverage. For example, of ABI/Informs 3,984 titles, 1,796 also appear in Business Source Premier (which has a total of 12,978) titles. If you are using an ERM, chances are that your ERM can do this for you as well. For those of you not using an ERM, this is an very handy collection development aid that mimics some pricey proprietary software.

The site also informs you when the title list for each database was last updated, and lets you set up alerts for when those updates take place. Contributers are a little sparse but the big names of Proquest and Thomson Reuters are both there, along with others. It would be nice to see this grow - wouldn't it be fun to compare Lexis to Westlaw?

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Current Legal Topics from the Law Library of Congress: Habeas Corpus Rights in Thirteen Countries

Under the concept of habeas corpus as developed in Anglo-American jurisprudence, persons who are deprived of their liberty have the right to challenge through judicial inquiry the legality of their arrest or detention.

The right to challenge one's arrest or detention is now incorporated in international human rights standards. This right may be exercised through the extraordinary process of habeas corpus in the countries which belong to the Common Law system, or through the normal procedural process, including appeals and motions for retrial in the civil law countries.

This report from the Law Library of Congress analyzes the right available to persons in Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Kingdom, and Yemen to challenge the legality of their arrest or detention.

Read the report at: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/habeas-corpus/index.php

Roles of public library technology in supporting E-government highlighted in new issues brief

CHICAGO - In the fourth of a series of reports regarding technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is highlighting how public library technology supports public access and use of e-government information and resources. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study (www.ala.org/plinternetfunding).

"U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services" describes the increased use of online government information and services, the critical role of public libraries in helping provide access and assistance using these resources and the challenges that must be addressed to improve e-government at the local, state and federal level.

"Public libraries often are the only organizations within a community that can help individuals interact with government agencies and access e-government services," said ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels. "As more and more government information and services are becoming only available online, there is an urgent need for governments to collaborate with public libraries to provide e-government services that best meet community needs."

Among the findings from the national study are:

• 71 percent of libraries report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their community;
• 80 percent of libraries report providing as-needed assistance with e-government services;
• 61 percent of libraries report providing access to government information is one of the most critical Internet services they provide; and
• Public libraries offer a number of training classes and/or as-needed assistance on a range of topics, particularly Internet use (92.8 percent), general computer skills (91.3 percent) and online Web searching (76.9 percent).

Library staffs are encouraged to use these briefing papers as educational tools with community stakeholders, including elected officials, funders and program partners, as needed to raise awareness of the specific - and sometimes unique - concerns of libraries around technology deployment. Staff may also use this format as a template for providing local data and examples related to a given topic.

The briefing reports are not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to share key findings from the largest and longest-running study of Internet connectivity in libraries. The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and ALA, continues work begun in 1994 by John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure. The study assesses public access to computers, the Internet and Internet-related services in U.S. public libraries, as well as the impact of library funding changes on connectivity, technology deployment and sustainability.

For more information or to download a copy of the issue brief, please visit http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/ors/plftas/Issues_Briefs.cfm. The research team also invites feedback about future topics and additional tools that would be useful in raising awareness around library technology needs. Please write Larra Clark at lclark@ala.org with comments.

The University of Wisconsin Law Library is very pleased to announce the release of the J. Willard Hurst Collectionwhich details the career of the man commonly identified as the father of modern American legal history.

The collection primarily spans the years 1932 through Hurst's death in 1997. The bulk of material dates between 1946 and 1980 when Hurst was a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he developed the field of American legal economic history through his scholarship and teaching. The collection provides insight into the evolution of Hurst's view of legal history and his role in developing a community for legal historians.

The collection includes Hurst's personal outlines and notes; course texts; publications; publication reviews; research notes; correspondence (incoming and outgoing letters); personnel records; photographs; audio recordings; and typewriter. Correspondence, topical outlines and notes, and audio recordings compose a bulk of the collection.

In anticipation of high research demand, the majority of materials in this collection have been digitized and are freely available on the UW Law Library website. Researchers may browse the collection by series; search the detailed finding aid; or view the complete finding aid in PDF. The complete collection, including those materials which have not been digitized, is available at the UW Law Library.

If you have any comments about the collection, please contact bjshucha@wisc.edu.

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education by Alonso, Anderson, Su & Theoharis (NYU Press, 2009). Call number: Wilson Library LC 5131.O87 2009

Taking a closer look at how Brown vs. Board is being applied to modern urban schools, this book examines the stories of youth who are interested in a rigorous education, but are failing, through no fault of their own. Youth are finding a lack of commitment on the part of government and school administrators to finding resources to support the notion that anyone who wants a good school can have one. The book also criticizes the popular opinion that the opportunities found through Brown are being lost because minorities have developed a "culture of failure" and "cool pose culture." By sharing the point of view from youth, in their own words, this book goes beyond the typical sociological case study text and engages the reader, inviting an identification with the frustrations these youth are feeling in their quest for a better education and future.

A supplemental website is at http://www.ourschoolssuck.org/.

Legal, 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 sites for legal, factual, and general research for attorneys, law students, and law librarians. The list includes sites for primary authorities, both federal and state, as well as links to other types of information such as names of possible expert witnesses and biographical and background information about individuals.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Four Recently Released Research Guides from the Library of Congress:

Now online:

+ Civil War: Selected Resources

+ Lost Titles, Forgotten Rhymes: How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author

+ Illinois State Guide

+ Presidents of the United States: Resource Guides

Source: ResourceShelf

There has been a lot of buzz the last several days about two new search engines - Bing, from Microsoft, and Google Squared.

Bing
Here's a good description of Bing from SearchEngineWatch

More than just a rebranding of Live Search, Microsoft is repositioning Bing as a "decision engine," with a goal "to provide customers with intelligent search tools to help them simplify tasks and make more informed decisions," according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

Bing's "decision engine" will begin by focusing on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

If you'd like to see how Bing stacks up against Google, check out this Google-Bing Search utility which allows you to compare search results from both engines side by side. (hat tip to MakeUseOf.com)

Like Google, Bing also offers a 411 phone service. From Lifehacker:

Bing 411 (1-800-246-4411) and its obvious Google counterpart, GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), both offer voice searching of businesses around a certain city or town, and both can connect your call or send you a text message with more details...

What Bing offers to set it apart are two features for users without data-connected smartphones. One is turn-by-turn directions from wherever you are, and you can even save a "home" and "work" location with the service to save time, entirely over the phone... The weather service is fairly in-depth as well, providing to-the-minute temperatures and offering extended forecasts for where you are or where you're going.

Google Squared
The search engine is a bit different animal. According to Google, "Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed."

This one is easier to see than explain. Here are the results from a search supreme court justices. It's pretty nifty, but it's certainly not perfect. See this review at Jenkins Blog.

Source: WisBlawg

JD Supra Unveils 'Law Centers'
The document-sharing site JD Supra has launched a new feature that makes finding and following information on specific topics much easier. The new addition is a series of Law Centers that organize documents by topics and areas of interest. These topics are arranged under four main categories -- Business, Personal, Government and Law Practice -- with various subcategories under each.

Within each section are featured news articles along with the latest articles and legal documents posted to JD Supra that relate to the topic. Contributors are also highlighted. Each section also has its own Twitter feed where you can follow new additions. (Here, for example, is the feed for the Labor & Employment section.)

JD Supra founder Aviva Cuyler said that the new feature "makes the content much more accessible, and also allows visitors to see the latest cases and analysis on timely legal issues in their areas of interest at a glance. This also allows us to really showcase the contributors who are providing content on particular subjects."

You can see other posts written about JD Supra collected here.

Source: Robert Ambrogi's LawSites

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century by the Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR Publication No. 142, 2008). Call number: Wilson Library Quarto Z675.R45 N53 2008 Available online: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub142/pub142.pdf

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations.” –George Bernard Shaw

This report focused on the need for change in research libraries, a call for collaboration between information workers (librarians, administrators, faculty, and information technology experts), and a strategic approach to keeping up with the research needs of library users. Especially appreciated was the chapter on “Groundskeepers, Gatekeepers, and Guides: How to Change Faculty Perceptions of Librarians and Ensure the Future of the Research Library” which called for more collaboration between librarians and faculty, yet recognized that there is often a misunderstanding about the role of the library and librarian among university administration and sometimes faculty. The author goes on to call for curricular changes that are especially designed for assisting future academic librarians maintain the rigorous scholarship needed to succeed in research libraries, while proposing ways research libraries can stimulate their hiring and development of librarians who can reach out to faculty and “harness, guide, preserve, and complement the knowledge produced by the scholars, teachers, and students who use the collection.”

Announcing an Exclusive Publishing Agreement with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr.

Beacon Press is partnering with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. in a new publishing program, "The King Legacy." Beacon will print new editions of previously published King titles and compile Dr. King's writings, sermons, orations, lectures, and prayers into entirely new editions, including significant new introductions by leading scholars. This partnership brings together the legacy of one of the most important civil rights and social justice leaders in the world with one of the oldest and most respected independent publishing houses in America.

The first three titles in the King Legacy series will be published on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2010:

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. The classic story of nonviolent resistance in America, the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956.
The Trumpet of Conscience. Five lectures delivered by Marting Luther King Jr. in 1967 that reveal his most introspective reflections and last impressions of the movement.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community. King's analysis of the state of American race relations and the movement after a decade of U.S. civil rights struggles.

Martin Luther King Jr. Resources
-The King Center
-The King Legacy Series on beacon.org
-Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University
-The University of California's The King Papers Project
-Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection
-"Don't Sleep Through the Revolution," Dr. King's Ware Lecture, delivered May 18, 1966, at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly

Thomson Reuters Replaces WestBlog with Legal Current Blog

From the announcement:

"The new blog, Legal Current, will introduce you to key voices - ours and others - from across the global legal marketplace, and will showcase many of the bright minds behind the technology, innovation, content and trends shaping the legal industry worldwide. We’ll share the unique perspectives of our authors and insiders, and provide new channels for feedback."

Source: Law Librarian blog

Kudos to HeinOnline, Cheryl Nyberg and Carol Boast

AALL has selected HeinOnline’s Subject Compilations of State Laws Database for the 2009 AALL Best New Product Award. HeinOnline converted Cheryl Nyberg and Carol Boast's Subject Compilations of State Laws publication into an online, searchable database.

Read the announcement here.

Source: Law Librarian blog

New Legal Tools (Database) from the International Criminal Court
From a UN Pulse Blog Post:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has developed a new set of Legal Tools for researching international criminal law and cases. The Legal Tools are essentially an electronic library of 40,000 searchable documents available to the general public. Click here for an overview of the included databases.

Go to Overview

Source: ICC (via UN Pulse) via ResourceShelf

A searchable database of Minnesota Department of Human Services fair hearings appeals is available. The decisions go back to July 2001.

The following information was taken directly from the DHS website:

The Appeals and Regulations Division of the Department of Human Services (DHS) conducts fair hearings when applicants or recipients appeal delays in their applications or denials, reductions, suspensions or terminations of financial assistance or social services.

Applicants who have applied for or are getting financial help, Medical Assistance, Food Stamps or social services may request a fair hearing if:
• The county agency does not act quickly enough and the applicant thinks it has gone beyond the legal time limit.
• The county agency decides the applicant cannot get help.
• The county agency providing the applicant with assistance or services reduces or stops them.
• The state agency denies the applicant a specific medical service.

A human services judge, who has not been involved in the decision the applicant is appealing, will look at the facts in the case. He or she will look at the evidence and hear arguments by the applicant and the county agency. Every effort is made to get all information needed to arrive at a fair decision based on the law. The hearing may be conducted by telephone unless the applicant objects.

Source: Govt Relations Committee of MALL

The Law Library of Congress launched a new website on the United States Constitution. The site combines various items from the Law Library of Congress in one centralized location.

The website includes sections on Constitutional Interpretation, Executive Privilege, Military Tribunals, Presidential Inherent Powers, Presidential Signing Statements, Second Amendment, State Secrets Privilege, War Powers, War Powers Resolution, and Additional Constitutional Resources.

Source: Law Library of Congress: News & Events blog

U of M Libraries and Minnesota Office of Higher Education team up to form one-stop access to online library services

Minitex, an information and resource sharing program of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education and the University of Minnesota Libraries, has launched a new portal, MnKnows – Dig Deeper @ Your Library (www.mnknows.org) to give Minnesotans one-stop access to statewide library services.

Leveraging state, local and federal funds to supplement the resources of local libraries, MnKnows (read as "Minnesota knows") functions through the cooperation of libraries, school media centers and cultural heritage organizations throughout the state. Visitors to MnKnows.org will find a variety of resources available to satisfy most information needs:

-Find books, CDs, DVDs, articles and more through the MnLINK Gateway and have them delivered to a local library.
-Search trusted information resources in the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM) to find online articles and electronic books on a vast array of topics.
-Discover photos, documents and maps related to Minnesota history through Minnesota Reflections.
-Get real-time answers from a librarian 24/7 at AskMN.
-Use the Research Project Calculator to create sensible timelines for student's homework.

When visitors wish to dig deeper at their local library, MnKnows.org provides a link to the Minnesota Library Directory, which lists public, academic, and other libraries in a specified area. The directory is maintained by State Library Services, a division of the Minnesota Department of Education.

New Videos From the Federal Depository Library Program

From the Announcement:

GPO staffers recently took to the streets of Washington, DC to interview the public and find out how much they know about the FDLP. Three new videos are now available from the Desktop:

What is a Federal depository library?
Can you name a Federal Government publication?
What comes to mind when you hear the word “library”?

We encourage you to spread the word about the FDLP by sharing the videos on your library’s Web site, various social media sites, social networking sites, or in presentations.

These videos not only evidence the need for strong promotion of the FDLP, but they also provide a fun and different way to teach the public about it.

View and Download the Videos Here.

Source: GPO via ResourceShelf

Law Day USA: A Reminiscence by the Author of the First Presidential Proclamation

In 1958, President Eisenhower proclaimed the first Law Day a "day of national dedication to the principle of government under law" [text] following up on a suggestion by ABA President Charles S. Rhyne. See The Original Creation and Future Impact of Law Day: Law Empowering People to Be Free from 1958 to the New Millennium, Address by Charles S. Rhyne at Law Library of Congress Law Day Celebration, May 1, 2000.

From the Address:

... I drafted a U.S. Presidential Proclamation, which made its way from John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, to Sherman Adams, Chief of Staff to President Eisenhower, and stopped there.

It had seemed such a sure thing that Dulles had affixed his signature, authenticating the President's signature, before the Proclamation was presented to Eisenhower. Dulles then left on a trip. Because Dulles was so respected, not only by Eisenhower but by the world, I wanted his signature on the Proclamation rather than some assistant's.

Time passed. May 1 was fast approaching and I had heard nothing, so I went to see Governor Adams. He pulled the Proclamation out of his desk and gave it back to me saying "the President will not sign a proclamation praising lawyers."

I strode down to the Oval Office and handed it to President Eisenhower himself. As he stood there reading it, Adams burst in yelling "Do not sign that paper praising lawyers!"

The President held his hand up for silence until he had read the entire document. Then he said "Sherm, this Proclamation does not contain one word praising lawyers. It praises our constitutional system of government, our great heritage under the rule of law, and asks our people to stand up and praise what they have created. I like it and I am going to sign it." And he did.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Constitutional Interpretation and War Powers Resolution Sections Added to the U.S. Constitution Website

The Law Library of Congress is proud to present two new articles focusing on U.S. constitutional issues. Both articles are available in their entirety in PDF on our U.S. Constitution web page, which includes one book, twenty-four articles, and six statements to Congress.

Constitutional Interpretation
Louis Fisher, "Interpreting the Constitution: More than What the Supreme Court Says," Extensions, Fall 2008. In a democratic society, questions of constitutional law require a political dialogue that involves all three branches of the national government, all fifty states, and the general public. If the meaning of the Constitution depended solely on unelected judges, popular sovereignty would be undermined and replaced by judicial, hyper-technical interpretations increasingly alien to the public. There is no historical support for the view that judges are better positioned to safeguard minority and individual rights. Mutual respect among the branches and between the branches and the public provide continuing legitimacy and life to the Constitution.

War Powers Resolution
Louis Fisher, "The Baker-Christopher War Powers Commission," 39 Pres. Stud. Q. 128 (2009). In July 2008, the National War Powers Commission recommended the repeal of the War Powers Resolution and its replacement with the War Powers Consultation Act. Co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher, the commission report promised "equal respect" to the legislative and executive branches. In fact, it greatly strengthens the President's capacity to initiate war and weakens congressional and public control. Instead of addressing the framers' fear of placing the war power in the hands of a single executive, the report claims that the U.S. Constitution is "ambiguous" about war powers and that federal courts "for the most part" have declined jurisdiction over war powers cases. Both assertions are false.

See http://www.loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/constitutional_law.php for more info.

100 Law Related Twitter Feeds
Online Best Colleges has compiled a list of the Top 100 Twitter Feeds for Law Students. It is an interesting list of feeds from various legal folks and organizations, including law students, firms, attorneys, academics, law librarians, and more.

Whether these are, in truth, the "top" law related Twitter feeds is hard to say, but it is a useful list for those are interested in listening in on or engaging in conversation with other law-minded people. Despite being billed as '"for law students," this list could have a much wider audience.

Source: WisBlawg

LexisNexis Officially Launches Martindale-Hubbell Connected

LexisNexis has officially launched Martindale-Hubbell® Connected. In beta development since June 2008, the network launched with 3,000 members and six alliance partners - the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, Lex Mundi, the Council on Litigation Management, Pro Bono Net, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and TerraLex.

From the press release:

Martindale-Hubbell Connected combines the largest global resource of legal contacts - more than one million lawyers and law firms around the world - with social networking technology to create a dynamic, authenticated network enabling corporate counsel and private practice attorneys to uncover new relationships and trusted referrals, share information and insights, and to identify their connection to firms, corporate legal departments or other lawyers.

What a mouthful!

At launch, the network is open to any private practice attorneys and corporate counsel. Law profs and students, law firm marketing directors, paralegals and other "qualified legal professionals" (law librarians?) will be invited to join the network later this year. There is no fee to join, and all members have access to the site's basic features and functions.

Source: Bob Ambrogi, Martindale's Networking Site Comes out of Beta via Law Librarian Blog

GPO Launches FDsys

I am pleased to announce the launch of FDsys, GPO's new Federal Digital System, an innovative tool to enable Americans and people worldwide to search and access the documents of the U.S. Government. FDsys is a one-stop site on which to find current, authentic, published information from all three branches of the U.S. Government.

I am especially pleased with our new Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, which includes releases from the White House Press Office and remarks made by the President. FDsys also offers search capabilities to find documents released by Members of Congress and congressional committees, using only keyword and date information.

Bob Tapella
Public Printer of the United States

More info about FDSys: http://www.gpo.gov/projects/fdsys.htm

April 22, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Education "The Wired Campus Blog"
Law Reviews Create Web Magazine Offering Condensed Articles

Lawyers study for years to develop the patience to wade through dense legal tomes on such topics as the “takings clause,” but what about the rest of us?

A coalition of publications at a handful of prestigious law schools is looking out for curious laypersons who might be interested in the debate over intentionalist and textualist interpretations of the law, but don’t have the time to wrestle with a 78-page document brimming with footnotes and legalese. The new online magazine The Legal Workshop offers visitors the chance to browse brief summaries of articles appearing in the influential law reviews (composed by the authors of those articles), written in plain language.

The idea is to open up the content of law reviews to a wider audience and to make legal debates influential and relevant beyond academic cloisters. “As a profession,” Michael Montano, an editor of the Stanford Law Review, told the Web site Legal Blog Watch, “we owe it to the public to produce work that is relevant to society as a whole.”
–Steve Kolowich

What is CaseMap?
According to Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian at Cleveland-Marshall:
It's a research log tool provided by LexisNexis. Sue explains that LexisNexis CaseMap allows one to create tables of the actors, documents, evidence, pleadings and legal authorities, link them and create reports. CaseMap also works with LexisNexis' TimeMap and TextMap. Sue links to David Thomson's (Denver) CaseMap as a Tool for the Research Log Function: Finally, a Technology that Can Help us Teach Better [SSRN] for additional information.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

An excerpt from the MN Legal History Project website:

The objective of The Minnesota Legal History Project is to increase knowledge of and research into the legal history of the State of Minnesota. It will do so by making available previously published articles and by publishing new or original studies of Minnesota’s legal past.

The Minnesota Legal History Project will publish studies of subjects that relate in any way to the legal history of the State of Minnesota, including the state constitution, state courts, Indian treaties, tribal law and courts, significant litigation, the development of specific areas of the law, memoirs and biographical sketches of individual lawyers, judges and their support staffs, and law firm histories, among others.

The Minnesota Legal History Project is an experiment. With experience and over time, it will be redesigned to better meet the needs of its audience and to fulfill its ambitions. Suggestions for improvement are welcome and patience is advised.

The Minnesota Legal History Project is a private, noncommercial endeavor. It has no affiliation with the State of Minnesota.

U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
http://indian.senate.gov/public/

In 1984, the U.S. Senate voted to make the Committee on Indian Affairs permanent, and the basic mission is "to study the unique problems of American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native peoples and to propose legislation to alleviate these difficulties." Visitors can learn a bit more about the Committee and its members in the "About" section. After reading through the brief introduction there, users can click on sections that cover "Hearings", "Investigations", "Issues", and "Legislation". The "Issues" section is perhaps the most informative, as it includes summaries that provide a basic outline of primary issues affecting different Native American groups, such as gaming, reservation roads, and tribal law. Visitors can also offer their own comments on these affairs and view a list of relevant links.

From the Scout Report:
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.

Military Law Review [pdf]
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military-Law-Review-home.html

The Library of Congress' Research Center of Military Legal Resources contains, among other publications, the Military Law Review. The Military Law Review has been published quarterly since 1958, and is meant to be used by military attorneys in their work and "'provides a forum for those interested in military law to share the products of their experience and research.'" Visitors should also note that most of the issues from 1958 to 2008 are available for general perusal. Each issue of the journal contains both articles and book reviews. An article in the Winter 2008 issue, entitled "Crossing the Line: Reconciling the Right to Picket Military Funerals With the First Amendment", is a very accessible article about the constitutionality of state and federal funeral picketing laws. Visitors interested in learning about the school that provides military legal education, and where the Military Law Review is published, should click on the link "The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School (JAGS), U.S. Army, Charlottesville, Virginia", in the first paragraph on the homepage.

From the Scout Report
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.

"Ever wondered what Louisa May Alcott looked like? That's her at left; it's her portrait in the New York Public Library's digital authors collection. Look how she had to perch sideways on the couch in order to accommodate her bustle. And how upright she sits! Did they ever slump in her day? Did they wear pajamas? My goodness, how could a woman write all corseted up like that? Of course, we can't learn much from looking at authors' photos, but that doesn't stop me from being curious. There's Edmund Wilson, on the right, the esteemed critic. And I think he looks like a terrible bore — the fact that he's the one who donated this picture to the library doesn't recommend him, does it?"

Read more at the LA Times blog about the NY Public Library digital authors collection

Here are some resources of note on the topic of Women in the Law:

The Fairer Sex: What do we mean when we say we need more female justices?
By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate blog

It's almost an article of faith among Supreme Court watchers that President Obama will fill the bench's next vacancy—and perhaps the one after that, too—with a woman. The current court's sole female member, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has said she is "lonely" there, and even if she's not the next to step aside and another women joins her, that's still just two out of nine. Americans seem quite certain that isn't enough. Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on learning in 2005 that John Roberts would take her place, declared him "good in every way, except he's not a woman." Americans concur. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken just before Roberts was appointed, 80 percent of respondents said it was a good idea to replace O'Connor with a woman, and 13 percent said it was "essential." And with women claiming a large share of responsibility for Obama's victory over John McCain, the demand for a more gender-balanced court is stronger than ever.

"Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging," a paper by Christina L. Boyd and Andrew D. Martin and Lee Epstein: http://epstein.law.northwestern.edu/research/genderjudging.pdf

Surveying sex discrimination suits resolved by panels of judges in federal circuit courts between 1995 and 2002, the researchers examined whether male and female judges decide cases differently, and went on to look at whether the presence of a female on a panel of judges affects the behavior of her male colleagues.

ABA Commission on Women in the Profession
19th Annual Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Awards Luncheon
Sunday, August 2 - Noon to 2:00 p.m. - Chicago, IL (ABA Annual Meeting)
2009 Honorees:
--Linda L. Addison, Partner, Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. and co-founder of the Center for Women in Law at the University of Texas; in Houston, TX and New York, NY
--Helaine M. Barnett, President, Legal Services Corporation and first legal aid attorney to serve as president of the Legal Services Corporation; in Washington, DC
--Hon. Arnette R. Hubbard, Judge, Circuit Court of Cook County, IL and champion of human rights through the exercise of the right to vote; in Chicago, IL
--Hon. Vanessa Ruiz, Judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the first Hispanic judge to serve on D.C.'s highest court; in Washington, DC
--Loretta A. Tuell, Partner, AndersonTuell, LLP, lawyer and legislative advocate on behalf of Indian tribes; in Washington, DC

Women & the Law -- Directory of Online Resources
from AcademicInfo

Minnesota Women Lawyers

Founded in 1972, Minnesota Women Lawyers is an association of more than 1,200 lawyers, judges, law students and other professionals. MWL’s goals are to support the professional and leadership development of women lawyers, to advocate on behalf of women lawyers within the legal profession, and to support social action initiatives to end discrimination in the justice system and promote equality of women in society. Minnesota Women Lawyers’ programs, projects, and activities are guided by our organizational values:
-The legal profession and society benefit from promoting and valuing diversity in all its forms.
-Women lawyers face common challenges and can teach and learn from one another.
-A strong community of women lawyers is essential to the legal profession and the administration of justice
-MWL celebrates the individual and collective achievements of women lawyers and law students, and supports them throughout their careers.
-MWL advocates for the full equality of women in society and promotes initiatives to eliminate all forms of discrimination.
-The practice of law is enriched when lawyers fully participate in the lives of their families and communities.

Women & the Law web links from the Law Library's website

From Shorpy blog: Washington, D.C., circa 1922. "Pauline Floyd, 24, youngest lawyer ever admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court."

Academic Earth is making available "full video courses and lectures from the world's leading scholars." A number of disciplines are represented, including law. At the moment, only two courses are linked to from the law site: Introduction to Copyright Law by Professor Keith Winstein from MIT, and Climate Change: Law and Policy by Professor William Collins of the University of California at Berkeley. The first of Professor Winstein's lectures deals with the basics of legal research and citation, among other subjects. Obviously, this site is a work in progress, but it's well worth returning to periodically to see if new content has been added.

Source: Out of the Jungle Blog

Bar Admission Requirements in All States
The National Conference of Bar Examiners and the ABA publish a book titled "Comprehensive guide to bar admission requirements". It's in the Reference Collection in our library at call number KF302.A15 C66. Ask for it at the Reference Office, or, if you would rather read a PDF version, you can do that here.

Source: bkallusky's blog via Moritz Legal Info Blog

The iLibrary of iCongress
As essential printed content is increasingly available on-line through Google Books, Open Library, and other digitization projects, the Library of Congress has announced initiatives to upload more of other forms of media as well. Macworld and others report on the library's plans to post film, video, image, and audio materials on iTunes, Flickr, and YouTube, among other sites. Says Macworld:

Among the items Web surfers can expect on iTunes and YouTube are 100-year-old films from Thomas Edison's studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the library's holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of President Abraham Lincoln's pockets on the night of his assassination.

The articles also mention that the US General Services Administration has forged agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv that will allow other federal agencies to participate in new media, with more agreements to come. Says Library of Congress Director of Communications Matt Raymond: "Our broad strategy is to 'fish where the fish are,' and to use the sites that give our content added value."

These initiatives should provide more access to resources in the public trust, and even some useful content for arts education, promotion, and context. And they continue the trends set by our first YouTube president (well...not on YouTube anymore).

Source: The Artful Manager

TREC Legal Track Making Progress on E-Discovery Searching
The work of the Legal Track of the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC Legal Track) is improving search techniques for electronic discovery, according to Jason Krause’s article, “In Search of the Perfect Search,” ABA Journal, April 2009. Krause reports that researchers in TREC Legal Track have identified the following techniques that appear to yield search results better than those realized by litigators working independently and using traditional Boolean techniques:

• “[L]awyers need to work with opposing counsel to identify good search terms and to negotiate proposed Boolean search strings.” A hypothetical example of such a negotiation is available at http://abajournal.com/files/booleanexample-1.pdf ;

• Lawyers should “use sampling—testing to see whether the search engines are finding documents known to be relevant. That means deploying what e-discovery experts call iterative feedback loops. These involve a team of lawyers and other in-house experts conducting searches in stages, and conferring with counsel and experts from the opposing party to determine whether the process is working”; and

• Lawyers, when designing “a search, [] should identify the data types and then prove that the search tool they’re using works with those data types.”

[Robert Richards via Law Librarian Blog]

Blog Considers Future of Legal Information
Source: Robert Ambrogi's LawSites

If you don't know what is meant by "legal informatics," I suggest this quote as an oversimplified definition: "Everywhere, more and more courts, legislatures, and agencies are putting information on the Internet in more and better ways using improved technologies." The quote is from Thomas R. Bruce, cofounder and director of the trailblazing Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. It appeared on his blog recently, part of a thoughtful, longer post about the need for legal information professionals throughout the world to be more directly engaged in a conversation about mapping the future of legal information.

If there is to be such a conversation, it will have to confront a variety of difficult topics -- access, transparency, standards, technology, government policies, IP laws and about the roles of government and private commerce. It is a conversation the LII hopes to help move forward with its launch last week of a new blog, VoxPopuLII. Bruce describes the blog this way:

Our new guest blog, VoxPopuLII, is designed to help the conversation along with biweekly posts from folks you may not have heard from before. They’re from all different tribes in all different places on the intellectual and global map. We’ve asked for their big ideas — and if you’ve got big ideas of your own, I’d invite you to get in touch with me about writing something for us. And of course we invite your comments and suggestions about what you find there.

The first post in the series, What is a Legal Information Institute?, comes from Kerry Anderson, deputy director and head of IT for the Southern African Legal Information Institute. The blog promises to be host to a conversation well worth following.

Law Librarian Group Calls for Ending Publication of Law Reviews in Print Format
Print publication of law reviews is back in the news. Paul Lomio recently reported on Legal Research Plus that the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship calls for all law schools to stop publishing their law reviews in print format and to rely instead on creating definitive versions of their journals in digital formats and making the law review articles readily accessible in online respositories by using a standard set of metadata to catalog each one. The list of signitories to the Statement, all directors of some of the nation's major academic law libraries, is printed below the text of the Durham Statement.

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship
February 11, 2009

Objective: The undersigned believe that it will benefit legal education and improve the dissemination of legal scholarly information if law schools commit to making the legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print. To accomplish this end, law schools should commit to making agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats, rather than print, the preferable formats for legal scholarship. If stable, open, digital formats are available, law schools should stop publishing law journals in print and law libraries should stop acquiring print law journals. We believe that, in addition to their other benefits, these changes are particularly timely in light of the financial challenges currently facing many law schools.

Rationale: Researchers – whether students, faculty, or practitioners – now access legal information of all sorts through digital formats much more frequently than in printed formats. Print copies of law journals and other forms of legal scholarship are slower to arrive than the online digital versions and lack the flexibility needed by 21st century scholars. Yet, most law libraries perceive a continuing need also to acquire legal scholarship in print formats for citation and archiving. (Some libraries are canceling print editions if commercial digital versions are available; others continue to acquire print copies but throw them away after a period of time.)

It is increasingly uneconomical to keep two systems afloat simultaneously. The presumption of need for redundant printed journals adds costs to library budgets, takes up physical space in libraries pressed for space, and has a deleterious effect on the environment; if articles are uniformly available in stable digital formats, they can still be printed on demand. Some libraries may still choose to subscribe to certain journals in multiple formats if they are available. In general, however, we believe that, if law schools are willing to commit to stable and open digital storage for the journals they publish, there are no longer good reasons for individual libraries to rely on paper copies as the archival format. Agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats will ensure that legal scholarship will be preserved in the long-term.

In a time of extreme pressures on law school budgets, moving to all electronic publication of law journals will also eliminate the substantial costs borne by law schools for printing and mailing print editions of their school’s journals, and the costs borne by their libraries to purchase, process and preserve print versions.

Additionally, and potentially most importantly, a move toward digital files as the preferred format for legal scholarship will increase access to legal information and knowledge not only to those inside the legal academy and in practice, but to scholars in other disciplines and to international audiences, many of whom do not now have access either to print journals or to commercial databases.

Call to Action: We therefore urge every U.S. law school to commit to ending print publication of its journals and to making definitive versions of journals and other scholarship produced at the school immediately available upon publication in stable, open, digital formats, rather than in print. We also urge every law school to commit to keeping a repository of the scholarship published at the school in a stable, open, digital format. Some law schools may choose to use a shared regional online repository or to offer their own repositories as places for other law schools to archive the scholarship published at their school.

Repositories should rely upon open standards for the archiving of works, as well as on redundant formats, such as PDF copies. We also urge law schools and law libraries to agree to and use a standard set of metadata to catalog each article to ensure easy online public indexing of legal scholarship.

As a measure of redundancy, we also urge faculty members to reserve their copyrights to ensure that they too can make their own scholarship available in stable, open, digital formats. All law journals should rely upon the AALS model publishing agreement as a default and should respect author requests to retain copyrights in their scholarship.

Richard A. Danner, Duke Law School
Taylor Fitchett, University of Virginia
Margaret A. Fry, Georgetown University Law Center
Paul M. George, University of Pennsylvania School of Law
Claire M. Germain, Cornell Law School
S. Blair Kauffman, Yale Law School
J. Paul Lomio, Stanford Law School
Harry S. (Terry) Martin III, University of Texas Law School
Kent McKeever, Columbia Law School
Jim McMasters, Northwestern University School of Law
John G. Palfrey, Harvard Law School
Radu Popa, New York University Law School
Judith M. Wright University of Chicago Law School

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Legal Planet is an environmental law and policy blog launched by UC Berkeley and UCLA in January. This collaborative effort highlights the efforts of the following Centers:

Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (Berkeley Law)

Climate and Energy Policy Institute (Berkeley Law)

Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment (UCLA Law)

Environmental Law Center (UCLA Law)

Global Commons Project (Berkeley Law)

Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate (UCLA)

The Judge as an Author/The Author as a Judge
Ryan Witte's The Judge as an Author/The Author as a Judge [SSRN] starts with the premise that an appointment to the federal bench is a life-long publishing deal. Recognizing that some judges stay faithful to the rigidous framework of judicial opinion writing, some don't -- some judges summon their inner novelist or poet to add life to the pages of the print and online reporting system. From the abstract:

The use of humor, poetry, and popular culture in judicial opinions is not without its criticism. This paper is divided into two main topics; the first discusses the judge as an author. The section will begin with an examination of the audience of judicial opinions and an outline of the different styles of judicial opinion writing. The section will also examine the advantages and disadvantages of using literary tools to advance the law.

The second section addresses the role of the artist as a judge. This section will study a small segment of judges who, in addition to the law, maintain an outside career as an author or artist. Judges who fit into this group include authors of books, operas, and magazine articles, and their opinions are often written in a manner which reflects their experience. This section will also discuss the advantages (and potential drawbacks) of having these unique judges deciding cases dealing with a wide range of author's issues, including copyright and free speech, both substantively and stylistically.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

"Rex Gradeless" at Social Media Law Student has identified some law schools and academic law libraries that are using Twitter feeds to communicate with students. Mr. Gradeless reports that the feeds are used to inform students about snow delays, on campus events, website updates, and student accomplishments. Law professors are even jumping on adding announcements to these Twitter pages.

See the list of Twitter feeds at the Law Librarian Blog.

Here are selected new resources from LLRX.com:

Guide to International Refugee Law Resources on the Web
This updated research guide by Elisa Mason directs readers to some of the key texts and resources available on the Web that can help shed light on, and provide a context for, many of the issues currently being deliberated in the refugee law arena. The guide covers international and regional instruments, human rights and humanitarian law, international bodies (especially the UNHCR), national legislation, case law, and periodicals.

Criminal Law Resources: Social Networking Online and Criminal Justice
The activities of users and the information being posted on social networking sites are having wide ranging effects on the administration of justice, law enforcement investigation, prosecution and defense. Ken Strutin's guide provides a snapshot of many of the novel and varied uses of social networking evidence in the field of criminal justice.

Knowledge Discovery Resources 2009: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation
Marcus P. Zillman's compilation is dedicated to the latest and most reliable resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. This wide ranging selection of resources provides specialized tools, applications and sources relevant to researchers from many disciplines

The U of MN Law School has added a business law concentration to its degree programs. For more information, see http://www.law.umn.edu/current/concentrations_businesslaw.html

In addition, this initiative on Business and Public Policy has recently been announced by the Brookings Initiative:

Brookings Institution: Initiative on Business and Public Policy [pdf]
http://www.brookings.edu/projects/business.aspx

The focus on the Brooking Institution's Initiative on Business and Public Policy is to provide "analytical research and constructive recommendations on public policy issues affecting the business sector in the United States and around the world." The Initiative is primarily concerned with working in the areas of financial reform and competitiveness. Scholars, policy analysts, and others can click through the site to look at their latest policy briefs, op-ed pieces, and conference proceedings. In terms of thematic offerings, visitors shouldn't miss the "Fixing Finance" series of papers, which include documents such as, "The Origins of the Financial Crisis" and "Regulating Insurance After the Crisis". Also, visitors should look through the "Top Topics" area and sign up to receive their periodic Economic Studies Bulletin via email.

This review was part of the Internet Scout Project.
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.

At this point most everyone has heard of LibraryThing, the most popular social cataloging website online, and perhaps even of the Amazon-owned Shelfari, but here are a few websites for book lovers that you may not have heard about. Read the whole post at iLibrarian.

Among the favorites on the list:

GoodReads : http://www.goodreads.com/
GoodReads is a robust social cataloging site in which members can create lists, write reviews, form groups, create trivia questions about titles, and converse in forums.

Rob Richards, LLB contributing editor, has published "Cost-Effective Research in U.S. Bankruptcy Law" in the Spring issue of PLL Perspectives at 7. (updated web version (March 7, 2009)). The article provides suggestions for quick and inexpensive ways to locate relevant U.S. bankruptcy law and facts.

Source: Law Librarian blog

Here is a new product from Versuslaw. It’s another option for online access to free case law. http://mn.findacase.com

See description here: http://www.findacase.com/company/facnetAbout.aspx

Source: Government Relations committee, MN Assn of Law Libraries

Children's Rights: International and National Laws and Practices [pdf]
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/child-rights/index.php

In the 20th century, the children's rights movement came into full flower as both the League of Nations and later the United Nations declared that children need safeguards and protections separate from those of adults. This
authoritative collection created by The Law Library of Congress provides access to the various laws and policies that help protect children in sixteen nations, including Israel, Japan, Mexico, and Russia. For each nation, visitors can read the domestic laws and policies that affect child health and social welfare, education and special needs, child labor and exploitation, and juvenile justice. It's a good idea to start off by reading the introduction by Dr. Rubens Medina before diving into these materials. Dr. Medina offers a nice overview of the development of children's legal rights, and after reading this essay, visitors should click on the "Country Reports" area to learn about the specifics of children's rights and safeguards in different countries around the world.

Enhancing Education
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/enhanced/
Educators who are interested in incorporating new technologies into their classroom experience often wonder where to start. They may want to start by visiting the Enhancing Education site, which is maintained by staff members at the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. The site is organized a bit like a weblog, as there are different posts organized into subjects that include "Noted", "Solutions", and "Primers". The "Noted" postings highlight interesting technologies that may be of interest to educators, and the "Solutions" entries are composed of a quick "how-to" that addresses a broad range of technologies and approaches to classroom learning. Finally, the "Primers" posts cover the basic elements of a compelling new technology or idea, including incorporating a weblog into the class or peer editing. Visitors can also view the top ten tags on the site, or take a look at the most recent posts.

Neighborhood Effects on Crime and Youth Violence: The Role of Business Improvement Districts in Los Angeles [pdf]
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR622.pdf

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a tool used by concerned members of the business community and politicians to enhance a commercial retail area's economic fortunes. As it turns out, they may also improve the social
environment of their neighborhoods as well. Published in 2009, this study commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was completed by the RAND Corporation. Throughout its 139-pages the study takes a critical
look at how these BIDs have the potential "to reduce a youth's risk to neighborhood violence" and generally improve the social environment. The study was based on research performed in Los Angeles and the report itself is divided into six chapters. The study notes that the activities of BIDs can help increase informal social control, reducing visible signs of disorder and blight, and provide enriched employment opportunities.

Mapping the African American Past
http://maap.columbia.edu/

The Mapping the African American Past (MAAP) project, produced by a team of researchers and specialists at Columbia University, offers a marriage of African American history and geography in New York City. The project was funded by JPMorganChase, and it allows users to navigate through sites of importance to the African American community throughout the city's past. New visitors may wish to start by watching the short film, "Introduction to MAAP", and then move on over to the "Place in Focus" feature. Here they can learn about places like Five Points, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and the home of David Ruggles. They can also use an interactive map to toggle through places associated with certain time periods, such as the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Additionally, the site also contains lesson plans that address topics that include African American community and culture and "Building New York". The site is rounded out by a series of podcasts which cover all 52 locations featured on the MAAP website.

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.

The Inverted Iconoclast
by Krishna Andavolu, Obit Magazine
MARCH 5, 2009

An excerpt of the review:
Anti-death-penalty activists often lament the company the United States keeps by its continued use of capital punishment. Do we really want to be like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, China, Iran or Libya, nations that also execute people? Aren’t we, as a highly developed country, more akin to Great Britain, France or Australia, countries that have abolished the death penalty long ago? And shouldn’t we be ashamed that countries like Cambodia, Rwanda and Haiti have abolished capital punishment before we have?

What is clear, is that America’s relationship to the death penalty is unlike anywhere else in the world. It is an “ongoing crucible for the deepest-held ideas about what is just in America,” according to Ted Schillinger, director of the compelling new documentary Robert Blecker Wants me Dead.

Schillinger’s film, which follows the relationship between Robert Blecker, a vociferous, hyperactive proponent of the death penalty and Daryl Holton, a death row inmate in Tennessee, attempts to isolate capital punishment’s ethical core from the mille feuille layers of nuance that surround the practice.

Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, is a self-avowed retributivist, a category that denies easy compartmentalization--as much as it denies easy pronunciation. Simply put, he believes in a 3rd way: fewer people should go to death row, but the worst of the worst, the most heinous transgressors of human law, should be killed.

He is an iconoclast, one of the few pro-death penalty voices in the legal academy and a zealot who articulates what would seem to be a basic ethical and jurisprudential premise: the punishment should fit the crime.

But Blecker’s beliefs are more psychologically complicated than that. Citing the Ancient Greek legal scholar Solon, Blecker refers to the anachronistic concept of “blood pollution,” the poisoning of humanity by the presence of evil-doers. In scene after scene of barnstorming rhetoric of retribution, he describes his very emotional response to killers--hatred and anger--and circumscribes a truly Manichean worldview of good and evil.

Read the whole article at http://www.obit-mag.com/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5300

Extract Text from Images & Scanned PDF Manuals Online
Source: Digital Inspiration

If you are on a budget, the built-in OCR engine of Google Search is almost a perfect option for converting scanned PDFs to text - just put all your scanned PDF images onto a public website and wait for Google spiders to convert them into editable digital text.

Obviously there are two drawbacks associated with the original idea. The PDF conversion process is not real time and second, you need access to a public web server where you can upload the PDF images so that Google bots can find them.

If you aren’t willing to wait that long and need to perform instant OCR without downloading any of the software tools, try OCR Terminal - it’s an online Optical Character Recognition service where you can upload scanned images, multi-page PDF documents or even screenshots and convert them into searchable text documents.

The conversion results, as you can noticed in the screenshot above, are pretty accurate and it also preserves the document formatting and layout. You may download the extracted text as RTF or a Word Document.

Read more at Digital Inspiration.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), in the Library of Congress, provides research services for Congressional committees and members of Congress. CRS reports are known for their depth and quality, and they can be excellent resources for legislative history or policy research. Recent reports include:

Free Trade Agreements: Impact on U.S. Trade and Implications for U.S. Trade Policy, January 13, 2009;

Pay Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: A Legal Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc., January 13, 2009;

Tax Cuts for Short-Run Economic Stimulus: Recent Experiences, January 9, 2009;

Wilderness Laws: Permitted and Prohibited Uses, January 7, 2009.

The CRS works exclusively for Congress and does not release its reports directly to the public, but members of Congress are allowed to share reports with the public. Despite efforts by interested organizations and members of Congress, these reports have been difficult to obtain—until now.

WikiLeaks, a non-profit dedicated to government transparency, recently obtained and released 6,780 CRS reports dating back to 1990. WikiLeaks also shared the reports with OpenCRS, a project of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Thanks to these two organizations, you can find in-depth and high-quality reports relevant to your research.

Source: Ross-Blakley Law Library blog

The Organized Lawyer. Kelly Lynn Anders.
Carolina Academic Press, 2008, softcover, 155 pages. Call number: On Order at the Law Library
Corresponding website: http://theorganizedlawyer.com/

With innumerable responsibilities and countless demands on their time, developing and maintaining an organized workspace is a low priority for many lawyers. In her new book, The Organized Lawyer, Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Washburn University School of Law Kelly Lynn Anders rejects the premise that workplace organization is unimportant, articulating instead the many personal and professional benefits that attorneys derive from an organized workspace, and the dangers they face in ignoring or minimizing the importance of office organization. Written with the needs of lawyers in mind, in this brief 155-page work, Anders invites readers to identify their individual “organizational style,” and to use this information to make decisions about office layout, desk arrangements, storage, filing systems, and personal organizers. Attorneys who apply these suggestions can expect improvements in the functionality of their workspace.

Read the rest of the review here.

The Library of Congress has announced the online release of the Stern Collection of Lincolniana, including Lincoln's incredible letter to General Hooker, placing him in command of the army. If you want to read it, go to:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/stern-lincoln/index.html

Click on Lincoln's letters and then click the box at the very left of the first manuscript. Then click on "view text" and then scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see the entire letter transcribed.

"Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage"
(Grand Central Publishing) by Jeff Benedict

The court case was Kelo v. City of New London, and the heroine of the story is the redheaded lead plaintiff, Susette Kelo, who bought the pink cottage of the title as a means of escaping an unhappy marriage.

On a notepad after the closing, she wrote: "I know I have never been happier in my life than I am now, sitting on the porch rocker watching the water go by."

Jeff Benedict, an investigative journalist and author, uses journals, e-mails and other personal documents as well as court transcripts and interviews to present a detailed behind-the-scenes account of the battle over Kelo's and several neighbors' property, after officials of economically struggling New London determine that it had to be razed.

...

Her pink house is still standing — but moved and erected elsewhere in town as a monument to the bulldozed neighborhood's lost cause. Another monument that Benedict points out: More than 40 states' legislatures have rewritten their eminent domain laws to prevent a repetition of the Kelo case.

Read more at: this book review or this article.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will chair a new Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues, her office announced Feb. 5. It will be the first Senate subcommittee to include a specific, global focus on women.

Boxer said the subcommittee would address the "overlooked issue" of violence against women.

"Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes," Boxer said.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof praised the subcommittee's formation on his newspaper blog.

"Issues like trafficking and maternal mortality and sexual violence finally seem to be getting some traction ..." he wrote. "The new Senate subcommittee reflects all this progress and presumably under Senator Boxer will accelerate it."

Boxer also introduced the International Women's Freedom Act of 2009 on Jan. 13 [HR 606]. Sponsored in the House by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill would establish a State Department office on international women's rights headed by an ambassador-at-large and a federal commission reporting to Congress and the president on international women's rights.

Sources: Women's e-news, ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship blog

HUP's First New Journal in 30 Years, The Journal of Legal Analysis, is Now Online

The Journal of Legal Analysis, a new open-access law journal co-published by HUP and the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School is up and running. The inaugural issue's articles include

*Adrian Vermeule's Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory Abstract,
*Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati and Eric A. Posner's Are Judges Overpaid? A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate, and
*Edward L. Glaeser and Cass R. Sunstein's Extremism and Social Learning.

Check out a description of the publication model on the Harvard UP Blog.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

ABA Guide to Legal Issues for Distance Learning and Copyright

Distance Learning and Copyright: A Guide to Legal Issues explains the disparate treatment between what is permissible in face-to-face teaching situations versus distance learning; in forms educators and attorneys about the legal responsibilities of teaching distance learning courses; and helps educational institutions avoid unwanted copyright infringement liability. This practical guide covers

-The basics of copyright law
-The "instructional exemptions" in the Copyright Act
-Locating authors and orphan works
-Negotiating effective licensing agreements
-The ownership of electronic courses
-The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
-The TEACH Act
-The future of distance learning

The book's appendices such as the educational fair use guidelines for classroom photocopying, music, electronic reserves, library lending and preservation, multimedia presentations, and television broadcasts; sample copyright permission letters; the text of the TEACH Act and a flowchart comparing the current classroom and distance learning rules.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library.

Today's book is The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses by Chandler Burr (Random House, 2003).

Even if you're not interested in perfume, this book will grab your attention. It chronicles the efforts of Luca Turin, a biophysicist, to construct and defend a theory of how humans perceive smells. A major plot thread is Turin's submission of an article to the journal Nature, and the political, turf-warfare peer review process he endures. Chandler Burr makes the science accessible, explaining how Turin's experiments refuted the prevailing shape theory of smell (i.e., that humans recognize molecules by their shape). Anyone with illusions about the purity of science should read this book.

John Grisham's The Associate: EW Exclusive Excerpt

The author's new legal thriller isn't in stores until late January '09, but over the next four weeks, you can read the first four chapters in advance at EW.com.

EW.com's exclusive excerpt of John Grisham's The Associate began Dec 19 with Chapter 1. Check back each Friday through Jan. 9 to see another chapter of the legal thriller, which hits bookstores on Jan. 27.

Read the excerpt here: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20247180,00.html

Here are several recent new or updated legal resources of note:

Cuddihy's Definitive Analysis of the Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure provides the bulwark for police regulation and many other government functions in the United States. One of the most controversial rights in the Bill of Rights, this amendment is also among the most frequently adjudicated provisions of constitutional law. Yet its meaning has remained deeply contested, and the story of its origins is largely unknown. William J. Cuddihy now provides the definitive analysis in his just released The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602 - 1791 (Oxford UP, January 2009). Daniel J. Solove (George Washington University Law School) writes, "it's an absolutely essential volume for any scholar of constitutional history, criminal procedure, or the Fourth Amendment."

Legislative Resources Online: How Does GPO Access Measure Up to Other Government Websites and Fee-Based Websites?
The GPO has conducted a comparison of legislative information available on GPO Access to that available on selected, relevant Government Web sites and non-Government sites. This analysis compares two separate source bases of Government information to what currently resides on GPO Access. The first includes legislative resources available on external, free Government sites that provide resources to the public at no cost. The second includes legislative resources available on non-Government, commercial, fee-based Web sites.
Analyses and comparisons were executed on four Government Web sites including GPO Access, the House of Representatives Web site, the Senate Web site, and THOMAS. The commercial, fee-based Internet services evaluated were CQ.com, HeinOnline, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, and Westlaw.
Read more at the Law Library Blog

2008 Supplement to the U.S. Constitution
Providing analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, as well as annotations of cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, the 2008 Supplement [Senate Document 110-17] is now available from the GPO.

Judges and Neroscience
Judges are now being educated about neuroscience. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in conjunction with the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists (NCLS) has recently begun holding seminars on Neuroscience and Law aimed at educating judges and increasing the linkages between the scientific and legal communities. Read more at http://www.abanet.org/scitech/emergingnews/judsci.html

A New Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct
By way of an Order issued December 18, the Minnesota Supreme Court promulgated a revised Code of Judicial Conduct that will take effect on July 1, 2009. Read more at Within the Scope blog.

100 Free DIY Legal Resources on the Web

A list of 100 online legal resources, compiled primarily for the lay user.

The list is divided into: Search Tools, Glossaries and Legal Terms, Legal Blogs, Government Resources, Forums and Social Media, Articles and Guides, Podcasts and Videos, Databases of Lawyers and Legal Help, Open Courseware, and Miscellaneous (which includes the UMN Law Library subject guide!)

Source: Kelly Sonora via e-Justice blog

From Michael Hancher, Professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of MN, comes news of this article, timely for the season:

“Grafting A Christmas Carol�?
Michael Hancher
SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 48, Number 4, Autumn 2008, pp. 813-827
HTML Version | PDF Version (1155k)

Abstract: The piracy of A Christmas Carol that provoked Charles Dickens to sue (at considerable cost) for copyright damages in the Court of Chancery appeared as a two-penny issue of an ephemeral magazine called Parley’s Illuminated Library. Although it was long thought to be lost, this pastiche survives in a bound volume of that journal among other quoted and “reoriginated�? works. This essay characterizes the unusual textual mixtures that make up that volume, and notices especially the hybrid qualities of Dickens’s “reoriginated�? Carol.

Images via Cowgirl Hall of Fame

- ---Front Page Story Posted Tuesday December 9th at LIS News.
A timid, hair-wrapped-in-a-bun, pince-nez-wearing spinster (with a cardigan sweater). Is that the image you have of a librarian from 100 years ago? Hell no, they were gun-toting, horseback-riding, walk-2-miles-to-work-in-a-blizzard type of woman. Those were the kind of librarians who settled the West. Fascinating bit of history via the Chicago Tribune. Around the turn of the 20th century, graduates of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (then called the Illinois Library School) headed to places like Texas, North Dakota, Idaho and Oregon. Lisa Renee Kemplin, senior library specialist at the University of Illinois, looks through Ida Kidder's 1908 letter from Salem, Ore., at the Archives Research Center in Urbana. The letter and other documents catalog UI librarians' trips to the West 100 years ago.

Source: COSWL Cause
ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship

Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) is circulating draft legislation called the Organ Donor Clarification Act. The bill would make clear that federal law does not forbid states from sponsoring non-cash incentives for organ donation. Such incentives might include tax credits or health insurance for living donors, or funeral benefits for deceased donors.

Read the whole article at The Britannica Blog

Tracking and text of the bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-487

1L Survival Wiki
Check out the How to Survive Your First Year of Law School wiki.

Top 10 CALI Legal Research Lessons, Fall Semester 2008
1. Introduction to Secondary Resources by Brian Huddleston.
2. Legal Research 101: The Tools of the Trade by Sheri Lewis.
3. How to Find Case Law Using the Digests by Brian Huddleston.
4. Anatomy of a Case by Brian Huddleston.
5. Updating/Validating Case Law Using Citators by Rebecca Trammell.
6. American Law Reports by Kimberli Morris.
7. Periodicals Indexes and Library Catalogs by C. Andrew Larrick.
8. Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies by Sarah Gotschall.
9. Legal Research Methodology by Wendy Scott & Kennard Strutin.
10. Finding Statutes by Kit Kreilick.
Source: All Time Lesson Runs Since 2008-08-01.

New Member Pictorial Directory: 111th Congress Now Available
New from GPO: "Published biennially by the Joint Committee on Printing of the U.S. Congress, the Congressional Pictorial Directory provides a color photograph of each member of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It also includes information about a Member of Congress' length of service, political party affiliations, and Congressional district. Also contains pictures of the President, Vice President, and House and Senate officers and officials. Files are available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) only."

2008 Financial Crisis Primer
Check out Chicago-Kent's 2008 Financial Crisis Primer. The Primer "brings together some of the best and most accessible materials related to the crisis. It provides resources such as articles on the failure of regulation, the Congressional testimony of key players, editorials on the government's bailout of banks, books on previous financial debacles, and the voices of people who have lost homes in foreclosures."

Search All Law School Web Sites at Once
If you want to search law school sites collectively, try Search All Law Schools on the CALI webpage. Possible uses? Research tuition figures, law professors, academic concentrations and law school clinics. Thanks to Marianne Alcorn and Beth Difelice of the Ross-Blakely Law Library. The all law schools search was created using Google Custom Search.

State and Local Government Links
The Library of Congress’ Newspaper & Current Periodical Research Center provides links to state and local government web sites.

Free Access to English Reports, 1220-1873
Free access to the English Reports from 1220-1873 is now available from the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII). The English Reports database contains 124,882 cases and the full text of the Reports are searchable. Users are then provided with the original image of a case when it appears in the search results, sorted in likely order of relevance (date ranking may also be used). The cases are may also be browsed by year or alphabetically.

Sources: Law Librarian Blog, WisBlawg, Virtual Library Cat's Eye View

The following "Tech Tip" is from the December WI State Law Library newsletter. You can read the newsletter in whole at: http://wsll.state.wi.us/newsletter/0812.html

Testing your “readability�? by Heidi Yelk

Did you know that both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect have built in “readability�? tools? These tools analyze your document and return information such as the grade level, difficulty, and the percentage of passive voice sentences. Readability tools are touted as a way to improve writing for clarity and comprehension.

To access the readability function in MS Word, go to Tools and select Spelling and Grammar. Click on Options and check the box “Show Readability Statistics.�? After running spell check, readability statistics will be displayed.

I don’t have access to WordPerfect, but my research indicates that its readability tool provides more analysis and a better display of results. In WordPerfect, you can compare your document to the readability of another document. Writing samples of Hemingway and the Gettysburg address are pre-loaded for comparison. See Determining Reading Levels in WordPerfect 10 for step-by-step procedures.

Both MS Word and WordPerfect utilize the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test and grade level rating. See this Wikipedia entry on the Flesch-Kincaid test for more information about that formula.

From the Government Relations Committee of the MN Association of Law Libraries comes news of this resource:

A database in MN to search for marriage licenses in MN. Some counties go back to the 1800s. Others have no data yet.
http://www.mncounty.com/Modules/Certificates/Marriage/

Info on dates of coverage by county: http://www.mncounty.com/CountyInfo.aspx

From LJXpress (Library Journal):

Reference Backtalk: Crash Course in Copyright
If copyright is so jumbled, it confuses even lawyers, what are librarians to do when faced with tackling copyright questions? Cheryl Miller Maddox provides four online resources that shine a light on copyright.

What Makes Justice Stephen Breyer Tick?
The Supreme Court justice talks about what guides him on the bench.

Posted on BigThink: http://www.bigthink.com/features/920

Professional Reading: Problems with Current English-Spanish Legal Dictionaries
Posted on Law Librarian blog
R. De Groot (University of Maastricht) and Conrad Van Laer (University of Maastricht) has deposited The Quality of Legal Dictionaries: An Assessment in SSRN. From the abstract:

"In this article, the quality of the different bilingual legal dictionaries between the languages of the Member States of the European Union will be assessed. In order to do so, some general remarks will be made first about problems with translating legal terminology. Based on those remarks, criteria for reliable bilingual dictionaries will be formulated in the next section. Finally, these criteria will be applied on the available bilingual dictionaries containing the legal language used by one or more EU Member States. To illustrate this, we have attached an updated bibliography encompassing about 200 recently published bilingual and multilingual legal dictionaries in the European Union.

The bibliography in the Annex will be the evidence for our final conclusion that most legal dictionaries must be classified as a word list, which implies here that they are of dubious quality. To date, few legal dictionaries have attempted to meet our criteria. Dictionaries that are based on comparative legal research, on the other hand, offer advantages that render them useful to professional translators."

FAQ: Where can I find a law dictionary?
based on the post on the Ross-Blakley Law Library Blog

If you are logged in to LexisNexis or Westlaw, you can quickly get a definition.

On Westlaw, there is a Definitions search box in the left column on the Law School tab. Enter your term and Westlaw will retrieve all definitions of that term. You can also search the full text of Black’s Law Dictionary by searching the BLACKS database.

On LexisNexis, there is a Legal Dictionary search box in the top banner of most pages. You can also search the Legal Dictionaries, Combined (LGLDIC) file, which includes Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, The Law Dictionary, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, and Modern Dictionary for the Legal Profession.

The Law Library has four copies of the most recent edition Black’s Law Dictionary at call number KF156 .B53 2004, three in Reserve and one in the Reference Office. (Older editions also available) You will also find A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage, Modern Dictionary for the Legal Profession, and several other legal dictionaries and thesauri in the Reference Office or Reference Collection.

Need help finding a law dictionary? Ask a librarian.

The President of the United States has the power under the Constitution to issue Executive orders. These orders are have been used by Presidents throughout the history of the U.S. and since about 1907, are numbered consecutively. The text of Executive orders appears in the daily Federal Register as each Executive order is signed by the President and received by the Office of the Federal Register. The text of Executive orders beginning with Executive Order 7316 of March 13, 1936, also appears in the sequential editions of Title 3 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Both the Federal Register and CFR can be found at www.gpoaccess.gov and in hard copy in the library. Executive orders from the early 1980's on can be found on Westlaw and Lexis. Executive orders are also posted on the White House web site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/orders/. Executive orders have the same force and effect as laws passed by Congress.

Presidential Proclamations are usually ceremonial in nature and sometimes are issued as statements of policy (for example, the Emancipation Proclamation). Proclamations are also numbered consecutively in a different series than Executive Orders. Presidential Proclamations can be found in the same sources as Executive Orders.

Presidential Signing Statements are statements issued concurrently with the President's signing of a law passed by Congress. While some are merely laudatory statements about a law being passed, increasingly they include the President's interpretation of the law as well as how the executive branch will be directed to administer the law. Signing statements are available on the White House web site, at www.gpoaccess.gov (Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents) (back to 1993).

Posted 11/24/08 on bkallusky01's blog (Hamline Law School)

The Law Library now subscribes to International Investment Claims (IIC). IIC is a new module in the Oxford Reports on International Law database. Access is available to all users within the Law Library and Mondale Hall. U of M Law faculty, students and staff also have remote access with their U of M Internet ID and password.

The IIC module contains awards and decisions arising out of international investment arbitrations, and related enforcement or review decisions from national courts. The collection at launch includes over 300 arbitral awards, decisions, and determinations issued under the auspices of various established arbitral bodies. Also included are reports awards and decisions of ad hoc international arbitral tribunals, such as those dealing with claims presented under the NAFTA or under the arbitration rules of the UNCITRAL. Determinations on insurance contracts made by the US OPIC are also reported.

Questions? Contact the Reference Office: law-ref@umn.edu

Today, November 11, is Veterans Day. Here are a few resources on the topic:

From the US Dept of Veterans Affairs: http://www1.va.gov/opa/vetsday/

From the Library of Congress: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/nov11.html
and http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/modern/veteran_1
and http://www.loc.gov/vets/

Take a Veteran to School Day: http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=54799

Famous Celebrity Veterans: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20112

Here are a few new or updated legal resources of note:

Chief Justice Roberts on Legal Research and Analysis
John G. Roberts Jr., Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, spoke recently at Drake University Law School about how changes in technology have affected the way cases are decided. He recognized computer-assisted research as a powerful tool “for locating potentially relevant material,�? but he went on to say:

Finding the law is now not such an important or elusive skill. With the push of a button or two, everyone has every case, for example, that cites a particular regulation or employs the critical legal terminology.
…
But law students and lawyers must continue to focus on what is relevant and what is not. With so much more raw material available at the push of a button, courts, especially mine, increasingly prize shorter and more coherent briefs. We judges can access raw data too, and what we look for from lawyers is help making sense of it all.

New Fact Sheets from the State Department
The U.S. Department of State has issued a flurry of fact sheets including:
Financing for Development
U.S. Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals
Promoting Food Security Worldwide: A U.S. Commitment
United Nations Management Reform
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United States' Response to the Darfur Crisis
The United States' Commitment to Human Rights

Waiting to Be Drawn

What: Exhibit: Waiting to Be Drawn: Political and Editorial Cartoons Focusing on Presidential Election Years
Where: T. R. Anderson Gallery, Wilson Library
When: Through Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Free and open to the public.

This exhibit marks this year’s Presidential campaign and election through a selection from the thousands of editorial cartoons from the collection of Jerry Fearing, long-time editorial cartoonist for the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press. This group of material is one of the newest additions to the remarkable collections of the Archives and Special Collections department of the University of Minnesota Libraries.

The Law Library now subscribes to International Law Reports. This database reports (in English) the decisions of international courts and arbitrators as well as judgments of national courts. Coverage includes all significant cases of public international law from 1919 to the present day.

Campus-wide access and remote access for U of M affiliated users at: http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/internationallawreports

*Access Note: click on the "Continue" button located in the "Sign In" box to access the database.

continuum: The Magazine of the University of Minnesota Libraries has just released issue 7, Fall 2008. You can view the issue, and past issues, online at: http://www.lib.umn.edu/publications/continuum.html or pick up a free copy at the Law Library.

Three articles of note in this issue:

Out of the Box and Into the Archives
A recently opened collection celebrates the life of eminent Minnesotan Max Lowenthal

The Conservation of a University
The University Digital Conservancy is capturing the scholarly culture of the University

Curating Cultural Heritage
Two of the Libraries’ many special collections strive to save the heritage of a culture and the cultural arts

The RAND Institute for Civil Justice has released an annotated bibliography covering its analytical research. "The ICJ facilitates change in the civil justice system by analyzing trends and outcomes, identifying and evaluating policy options, and bringing together representatives of different interests to debate alternative solutions to policy problems."

Subjects include:

Alternative Dispute Resolution
Areas of Liability
Bankruptcy
The Business of Law\
Corporate Ethics and Governance
Employment Law
Entrepreneurship
Health and Safety in the Workplace
Insurance Law and Regulation
Litigation, Jury Verdicts, and Damages
Mass Torts and Class Actions
Terrorism Risk Management Policy
Tort Reform
Trends in the Tort Litigation System

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Several new and updated resources regarding the United Nations have recently been announced. Here is a summary of three:

United Nations Yearbook
For anyone who has been in an United Nations Depository, you have probably seen the rows of red books, with UN Yearbook stamped on the spine. If you have been doing research on the actions of the members of the UN or particular resolutions it is probable that you have even used these books with their tiny type. Well, now you don't need to be in the library to use these wonderful resource, the United Nations has digitized them from 1946-2005. (Note: 2005 is the most recent edition; it takes 3-4 years to write one of these volumes.)

The United Nations Yearbook online lets you search across all the yearbooks or just one. You can also browse the volumes. You will find in here the work done by various countries to modify resolutions before the United Nations. Want to know who voted which way? You can find it here. When researching the UN and how it works this is one of the best source of information.

Source: GovPubs Library Blog at UC-Boulder

United Nations Television
Check out the UN on YouTube:
United Nations Television has launched a channel on YouTube. The channel broadcasts programmes from the 21st Century and UN in Action television series.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) is an agency of the United Nations established to assist Member States with issues concerning illicit drugs and international crime. UNODC’s online legislation legal library provides full text of drug control laws and regulations adopted by countries in support of international drug control treaties. It includes legislation adopted since 1948.

Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

A quick update on Voter Registration at U of MN Campus Libraries:
The previously reported registration drive ended last Tuesday Oct 14, the deadline for sending completed registration forms to the MN Secretary of State office. 1086 forms were completed at campus libraries. That's 264 more than were received in 2004 -- a 32% increase!

FindLaw Special Edition: Elections 2008 is an election portal with resources that provide authoritative election information, specifically as it pertains to the legal world, including:

-Election commentary from FindLaw legal specialists
-Featured late-breaking Reuters politics videos.
-Extensive voting rights and voter information section, including:
-Introduction to Federal Voting Rights Laws
-Voting and Civil Rights: History and Law
-FAQ: Voting Rights and Discrimination
-State-by-State Voter Registration Information

The Law Library now provides access to more international law content online!

Two new modules available in the Oxford Reports on International Law Database:


Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law ('ICL')
ICL focuses on decisions from a range of international criminal courts and tribunals, and covers decisions from the four main international criminal tribunals: International Criminal Court; International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. ICL also includes decisions from post-WWII military tribunals such as the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the follow-up trials held under Control Council Law No 10. In the future, Oxford anticipates the inclusion of decisions from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia as they become available, and an increasing amount of case law from the International Criminal Court as more Situations and Cases come on stream.

Oxford Reports on International Human Rights Law ('IHRL')
IHRL covers international decisions on human rights from a variety of global and regional courts, including selected cases on the European Convention on Human Rights, and final decisions from the four UN Committees which are able to deliver views in individual cases (Committee Against Torture; Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; and Human Rights Committee).Oxford anticipates that coverage within IHRL will extend shortly after launch to include decisions from the Inter-American system, and decisions under the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.

Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law
The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law is a fully updated online edition of the Encyclopedia of Public International Law published in print between 1991 and 2001 under the general editorship of Rudolf Bernhardt. The online edition went live in August 2008 with over 450 articles. New material is added quarterly and the project is expected to reach completion in 2010. The online edition will include search functionality and click-through cross references to other Encyclopedia entries as well as related content in the online service Oxford Reports on International Law.

If you have any questions about these resources, feel free to contact the Reference Office at your convenience: Email law-ref@umn.edu or call 612-625-4309.

International Monetary Fund has released a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Take the time to increase your own awareness of domestic violence and its effect on millions of victims.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence provides resources and information about what you can do to help.

The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), provides information and resources for victims. Includes a link to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Violence Against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned National Crime Victimization Survey.

Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women - A statewide membership organization working to end violence. The member programs of the coalition include local, regional, and statewide organizations advocating on behalf of battered women and their children.

Sources: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog, and MN Legislative Reference Library

Magazine Chooses “5 Sites That Will Boost Your Political Awareness�?

PC World has named its “5 Sites That Will Boost Your Political Awareness.�? Included on this list are some of my favorite Web sites that I bet are familiar to many of you, too. Here is their list:

FedSpending.org, a searchable database of federal government spending which uses information found in both the Federal Procurement Data System and the Federal Assistance Award Data System. FedSpending.org, created by AALL’s 2008 Public Access to Government Information (PAGI) Award winner OMB Watch, is the model for the Office of Management and Budget’s USAspending.gov.

OpenCongress, which allows you to track bills, votes, issues, and members of Congress and share information through StumbleUpon, Facebook, and e-mail a friend. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter, a collaborative project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly. The Web site allows you to fact-check candidates’ speeches, TV ads, and interviews.

Project Vote Smart, which publishes the biographies, voting records, and other details about all presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative candidates. It also provides information about the officials in all three branches of government and at the state and local levels.

OpenSecrets.org, which lets you follows the money in politics. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) launched the Web site following the 1996 elections. OpenSecrets.org was recently redesigned to allow easy searching of candidates, industries, PACs, news and analysis, and more.

This list is part of PC World’s “100 Incredibly Useful and Interesting Web Sites,�? which includes other categories such as “9 Sites to Help You Survive the Recession�? and “7 Great Sites About Music and Literature�? (which includes Portland’s Powell’s Books). You might not agree with all of the picks, but it makes for a fun and interesting read!

Source: AALL Washington Blawg

Hague Academy Collected Courses Online / Recueil des Cours en ligne
The Hague Academy is a prestigious international institution for the study and teaching of Public and Private International Law and related subjects. The work of the Hague Academy receives the support and recognition of the UN. Its purpose is to encourage a thorough and impartial examination of the problems arising from international relations in the field of law. The courses deal with the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, including legislation and case law. All courses at the Academy are, in principle, published in the language in which they were delivered in the Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law.

This resource is available to all University of Minnesota Twin Cities faculty, students, and staff, and to all patrons within the Law Library.

AILALink

AILALink Online, published by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, is a fully searchable, web-based immigration law library. The site includes a wealth of immigration resources including primary material; leading AILA publications, such as Kurzbans Immigration Law Sourcebook and AILA’s Asylum Primer; immigration forms; and links to hundreds of immigration-related websites. Boolean and citation search options are available.

This resource requires a password. Law School faculty, students, and staff, and patrons within the Law Library should contact the Law Library Reference Office (612-625-4309) for access information.

The National Organization of Bar Counsel is a good resource for finding information on legal ethics and professional conduct rules in the different states. The web site provides links to state disciplinary procedure rules, state ethics opinions, professional conduct rules, and state rules for admission. It is a great starting place for legal ethics research.

Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View Blog

On Sept. 19 the President signed into law S. 2450 creating FRE 502, a new rule of evidence entitled: “Attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine; limitations on waiver.�? It is intended to provide an consistent standard for the privilege for the application of the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. For the text of the rule, discussion/analysis and important links such as the "Statement of Congressional Intent", check out the Federal Evidence Review.

Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View Blog

The Office of Legal Affairs Treaty Section has rolled out a redesign of the United Nations Treaty Collection (don't forget to update your presentations). While the content remains free, the Collection has been refined to offer a variety of advanced search features including: Popular Name Search; Title Search; and Participant Search.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & INNOVATION RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
Chicago-Kent College of Law
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Chicago-Kent-Law-STI.html

The Chicago-Kent College of Law Intellectual Property and Technology Research Paper Series contains papers and abstracts from members of the Chicago-Kent College of Law community focusing on a broad range of topics partially or wholly touching on issues in the areas of intellectual property, internet, technology, and telecommunications law.

LEGAL STUDIES RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
Georgia State University College of Law
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Georgia-State-LEG.html

Georgia State University College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series contains legal scholarship in all subject areas from members of the GSU College of Law. The College of Law is committed to promoting legal scholarship and service that enriches the academy and the legal profession.

Saint Louis University School of Law
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Saint-Louis-LEG.html

The Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Studies Journal features abstracts and papers produced by the faculty at the School of Law. The faculty of Saint Louis University School of Law is an exemplary and accomplished group of scholars, recognized as experts in their fields and committed to sharing their expertise in a variety of national and international publications.

PUBLIC LAW & LEGAL THEORY RESEARCH PAPER SERIES
William & Mary Law School
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/WilliamMary-PUB.html

The William & Mary Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper Series provides abstracts and full papers of its faculty's legal and interdisciplinary scholarship. The College of William & Mary is located in Williamsburg, VA.

From Robert Ambrogi's LawSites blog comes news of this unusual new resource:

"A newly launched blog is the first I've seen to focus on the topic of furniture law. The Womble Carlyle Furniture Law Blog comes from the Intellectual Property Group at the law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice in Winston-Salem, N.C. The blog will focus on IP and patent issues that affect the furniture industry, covering case filings, court decisions and legislative affairs. The blog's authors are Jack B. Hicks, a patent attorney in the firm's Greensboro office, and Jacob S. Wharton, an IP attorney in the Winston-Salem office. Upon first look, the blog appears solidly built and nicely finished."

News and Notes from Westlaw:

West Survey Builder
The 50 State Surveys (SURVEYS) and 50 State Regulatory Surveys (REG-SURVEYS) databases vastly improved the speed and efficiency of multi-jurisdictional research when they were released on Westlaw®. West Survey Builder now takes speed and efficiency to the next level. You can build customized surveys based on the jurisdictions and precise legal issues you choose.

Survey Builder allows you to choose jurisdictions and legal questions by making selections on a search template. You do not need to type a search or know state terminology. Just use the template to select jurisdictions, a topic, a subtopic, and one or more legal questions. Nor do you need to access a separate statutory and regulatory version—each West Survey Builder document covers statutes and regulations.

West Survey Builder builds you an easy-to-read chart in a question-and-answer format: Each jurisdiction’s legislative and regulatory requirements are summarized in plain English and displayed under the appropriate legal issue. KeyCite status flags, where applicable, and links are provided for cited documents.

To access Survey Builder, click Survey Builder in the left frame of the 50 State Surveys tab. For additional information and a flash demo go to: http://west.thomson.com/surveybuilder

West Survey Authority
The West Survey databases and Survey Builder are great when you need to compare the statutes or regulations of several states, but what if you need to look beyond statutes and regulations? Survey Authority can take you further.

Survey Authority contains surveys that pull together a wide range of materials on your issue, including statutes, regulations, administrative materials, state attorney general opinions, state contact information, American Law Reports annotations, treatises, law reviews, and forms for the 50 states, U.S. territories, and the federal government. Links to all sources are in one convenient survey document.

You no longer have to worry that different states have different taxonomies and naming conventions. Just choose a topic using the Survey Authority Table of Contents. West experts have carefully selected topics and sources for frequently researched subject areas, including corporations, subprime lending, intellectual property, and privacy.

To access Survey Authority, click Survey Authority in the left frame of the 50 State Surveys tab. For additional information and a flash demo go to: http://west.thomson.com/surveyauthority

ALR: Its index stands alone
For those of you who regularly use the American Law Reports (ALR) index to retrieve ALR annotations by topic, life just got easier. On August 27, the comprehensive index to American Law Reports (Second through Sixth series) and ALR Federal (First and Second series) was released on Westlaw® as a stand-alone database: ALR Index (ALRINDEX). Now you can find all the annotations on the point of law you are researching more quickly and efficiently.

The ALR Index indexes the entire ALR system currently in print. With the new ALRINDEX database in Westlaw®, you can retrieve portions of the index without having to use a citation field restriction (e.g., ci(index)). In addition, ALRINDEX allows you to search the index using the Natural Language search method for plain English searches that will retrieve relevant documents.

Note: index references to ALR First series will be available when the revised ALR index is released on Westlaw® in October.

Streaming media bring court transcripts to life
For a rich, thorough understanding of court proceedings and oral arguments, turn to Court Transcripts on Westlaw®. West’s Court Transcripts databases contain verbatim transcripts of thousands of trial and appellate proceedings and, NOW, include streaming media (video or audio) for selected documents. As a result, your attorneys are better positioned to:
-research, assess, and prepare expert witnesses
-understand how other attorneys have successfully presented evidence and arguments
-anticipate a specific judge’s demeanor, tendencies, and areas of interest
-formulate a litigation strategy
Streaming media is displayed in the left frame. You can follow the written transcript in the right frame as the video or sound recording is playing. A “Sync Text�? button allows you to easily and instantly scroll the transcript on the right to the section you are viewing (or listening) on the left. Or for video media, you may maximize the screen to view in full screen mode. In addition, icons displayed throughout the transcript allow you to begin the recording from any point in the transcript or jump to that section if the recording is already playing.

State and Federal Oral Argument and Trial Transcripts (TRANSCRIPTS-ALL) is a multibase of transcripts of selected oral arguments and trials and contains over 70,000 documents. The oral arguments were heard in the various state and federal courts. Transcripts of oral arguments heard in the United States Supreme Court are official transcripts. All other oral argument transcripts are unofficial transcripts derived from video or audio recordings of actual oral arguments. The trial transcripts include opening statements, closing statements, voir dire, lay testimony, expert testimony, motion hearings and other related transcripts. In addition to documents filed in United States District Courts and United States Bankruptcy Courts, states available are California, New York and Texas, with more to come!

Stress Toy in Paradise
If you have wondered how the beloved Westlaw® stress toy has fared since our stress toy video of a few year ago, you can now check on how he(she?) is doing. Check out our new stress toy video “sequel.�? Go to: http://west.thomson.com/westlaw/advantage/stress-toy/default.aspx

Source: Update: West Librarian Relations email

Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.Org, Inc. is at work again, freeing what should be free. He has purchased the Code of Federal Regulations from GPO and is making it publicly available without charge. This is the raw, SGML and images version that GPO sells for over $17,000. Carl says:

Our intent in purchasing this product is to make it available in raw format on the Internet for access by anonymous FTP. We will not charge for access, nor will we restrict usage by the imposition of any license agreements. Since public documents are defined as “public property�? in 44 USC 1119, this deployment of the raw feed of the Code will make it available for all to use without restriction and will allow for-profit and non-profit entities to construct alternative versions of the CFR.

See details here and Public Resource's GPO page. See also this recent article about Malamud's crusade for open access law.

Source: FGI Blog

Jureeka! Creates Links to Cases, Statutes, etc. in Ordinary Webpages

Jureeka! is a new Firefox add-on that looks for legal citations in ordinary web pages and turns them into hyperlinks that lead to a free version of the cited source. You can download it at the Jureeka! blog, but you'll need to register first.

It apparently works for statutes, case law, regulations, federal court rules, international law sources, and more. See source coverage spreadsheet for a complete listing.

Jureeka! also has a toolbar which allows you to search for source material by legal citation and to find HTML versions of PDF pages.

Source: ALL-SIS listserv via WisBlawg

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library.

Today we highlight Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap (Scribner: London; New York: 2008)

This book takes a hard look at gender differences between men and women, using the most recent research in biological, medical, and social sciences. The author (sister of Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker) notes that she had to revise the book to account for new findings during the two years she spent writing it.

Pinker tackles the uncomfortable subject of occupational preferences and choices among men and women. As a jumping-off point, she looks at two classes-- high-achieving women and troubled boys. While Pinker frequently reminds the reader that individual humans may not fit her generalizations, she marshals convincing cross-cultural and biological evidence that male and female brains are wired differently. Women who have the qualifications and skills to accomplish great things in science, engineering, business, and law may find that they derive little satisfaction from those accomplishments. Meanwhile, boys whose early troubles stem from risk-taking, impulsiveness, inattention, and dyslexia may overcome those problems and earn success.

This fascinating book is well-written, well-documented, and compelling. Pinker’s goal is for readers to understand the evolutionary biology that underlies gender differences—not because it determines what men and women must do, but because it can help us make personal and societal choices to help every person find a satisfying life.

For more information, visit the author's website at: http://www.susanpinker.com/book.html

Randy Diamond, Director Library & Technology Resources, University of Missouri School of Law announces
the MU Law Library’s creation of the Lloyd L. Gaines Digital Collection http://law.missouri.edu/library/gaines.html

The collection includes selected family photographs, letters, legal materials and news sources depicting parts of Gaines’ life and his civil rights struggle, with the support of the NAACP, to gain admission to the University of Missouri School of Law in the 1930s. This is the first phase in an ongoing project at the library to further illuminate Gaines’ life and his critical role in civil rights and Missouri history.

For questions or suggestions about this project, contact the MU library at (573) 884-6362 or by email at mulawreference@missouri.edu

Source: ALL-SIS email, 9-16-08

Subject Compilations of State Laws Now Available on HeinOnline!

The Subject Compilations of State Laws is a comprehensive source for identifying thousands of articles, books, government documents, loose-leaf services, court opinions and Internet sites that compare state laws on hundreds of subjects. This new HeinOnline library opens new avenues for historical state subject searching. It provides researchers with instantaneous access to over 18,000 bibliographic records, many with extensive annotations linking directly to articles and other documents residing in HeinOnline. In all, over 9,000 records link to articles, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and Internet sites of publicly available information. Additionally, all records with OCLC numbers link directly to WorldCat!

If you have questions, please contact a reference librarian at 612-625-4309 or email law-ref@umn.edu.

In addition, the following training materials are available:
Video Tutorial - http://www.screencast.com/t/lDIONoTwdc
Quick Reference Guide - http://heinonline.org/HeinDocs/SCSL_QuickRefGuide.pdf
Wiki page specific to Subject Compilations - http://heinonline.org/wiki/index.php/HeinOnlineLibSpec:Subject_Compilations_of_State_Laws

Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century
How should we be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape? In a new report from the Council on Library and Information Resources, librarians, publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists tackle this difficult question. In No Brief Candle: Reconceiving the Research Library for the 21st Century, common themes include "collaboration between librarians, faculty, and information technology experts to articulate strategies and tactical approaches to a rapidly changing environment."

For more, including active links to essays, see:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/09/reconceiving-re.html

Check out this new resource for viewing a snapshot of history: Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog.

One recent post: "University of Michigan library reading room, Ann Arbor, 1901." Detroit Publishing Company glass negative, Library of Congress.

Photo courtesy of Daquella manera

From an unusual source, comes "5 Legal Tips for Peace of Mind" featuring reminders about some common legal processes that are highly recommended:

In short,
1. Execute a will
2. Designate your health care wishes
3. Select the correct beneficiaries
4. Get insurance, even if you rent
5. Separate your business

There are probably many more reminders that could be added, but these are a good start. Read the whole post at: http://zenhabits.net/2008/09/5-legal-tips-for-peace-of-mind/

Source: Andrew Flusche at ZenHabits

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast. (Houghton Mifflin, 1982)

What could be more stressful than the start of a(nother) year of law school? Try being uprooted from your Massachusetts home and moved to the Honduras jungle at the tender age of fourteen. Charlie Fox’s father, Allie, has a dream: to create a paradise by spreading his own idea of “civilization,�? featuring his own underappreciated inventions. Allie’s dream turns increasingly to a nightmare for his family as his descent into madness becomes more pronounced.

The Mosquito Coast can be read and enjoyed in a number of ways: as a classic father-son drama, as a study in insanity, even as an adventure story. Some have read it as social commentary, but I think these readers are missing the point…although Allie Fox does have a lot to say about modern America. However you read it, the one thing it won’t remind you of is law school.

Originally posted by guest blogger Matt Homann, an Illinois lawyer, the author of the [non]billable hour at "The Legal Underground."

In short:
1. Learn to use legal technology now.
2. Learn how most lawyers work.
3. Learn Time Management.
4. Learn the business.
5. Don't be an A**hole.

Read the expanded version at http://www.legalunderground.com/2004/08/tech_tips_for_l.html#more

Here are recent new or updated legal resources to note:

New PSLaw website
A new version of PSLawNet launched in July. It contains several upgrades for public interest law job seekers, including enhanced search functionalities and the ability to flag and store job postings. The new PSLawNet also contains a greatly expanded career resource library with sample resumes/cover letters, information on an array of public interest career paths, and much more. Visit the new site at : http://www.pslawnet.org/.

Westlaw's New Election Law Feature
A new Elections tab has been added to Westlaw. Free during the year's election season, users can customize their Westlaw interface to access information like voter identification, campaign financing laws, and election-related news. "Election-2008"″ content within the Elections tab provides researchers with state and federal court filings relevant to election law, including court motions, memoranda, pleadings, trial briefs, non-expert depositions, discovery and non-expert affidavits, proposed court orders, agreements, verdicts, and settlements.

Another option: Election Law (at) Moritz, a OSU Moritz College of Law - Moritz Law Library joint project, a great resource for election law information and analysis.

State Laws Subject Compilations
Nyberg and Boast's Subject Compilations of State Laws is now on HeinOnline. Subscription options, quick reference guide and video demonstration are available at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/08/nyberg-and-boas.html

IDEA to Replace EDGAR for Company Filings
The Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman recently announced that EDGAR will be replaced with a new system called IDEA offering "investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about public companies and mutual funds." Read more at: http://www.law.wisc.edu/blogs/wisblawg/2008/08/idea_to_replace_edgar_for_comp.html

New Book: Importance of Being Honest
Steven Lubet has written The Importance of Being Honest: How Lying, Secrecy, and Hyposcrisy Collide with the Trust in Law. Lubet is a law professor at Northwestern. Lubet’s book provides short chapters that deal with the issue of honesty in the practice of law. The book is a provacative read for struggling with the ethics of being a legal professional.

The U Libraries have licensed a new accounting standards database, Accounting Research Manager -Audit Public (from CCH), for the U community. http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/accountingresearchmanager
The link is on the Libraries A-Z list on the home page and is also listed on the left side of the Business Library page: http://busref.lib.umn.edu/
At this time, our subscription is for up to 5 simultaneous users.

CCH describes the database as follows:

CCH's Accounting Research Manager® is the most timely and comprehensive online database of expert-written analytical accounting, auditing, governmental, internal controls and SEC information as well as primary source data. Updated daily, it provides current, complete and objective resource for your financial reporting needs.

To keep current, subscribers receive our Weekly Summary, a newsletter highlighting the key developments of the week. It provides links to FASB, AICPA, SEC, EITF, IASB, PCAOB, IIA, COSO, GASB, GAO, and OMB authoritative and proposal-stage literature, plus insightful guidance from financial reporting experts. Get the latest on the changes to GAAP, GAAS and SEC rules. Minimize your research time, while enhancing your results.

If a tab or line on the search form is shaded in gray, it is not part of our subscription licensing agreement with CCH / Wolters Kluwer --and it requires an additional fee. Let us know if there are portions of the database that appear in gray that are needed for your research or teaching.

Source: Judy Wells, Collection Coordinator, Social Sciences and Professional Programs; Business and Government Librarian via Connie Lenz

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein's Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes. (Penguin, 2008).

This little book is a fun, quick read. The authors explain basic philosophical concepts, such as epistemology, and then illustrate them with jokes. Unfortunately, the explanations lack enough depth to most readers; they work better as a reminders to those who have already learned the concepts elsewhere.

Although some of the links between the jokes and the concepts are tenuous, most of the jokes themselves are excellent. For instance:

A Buddhist walks up to a hot-dog stand and says, "Make me one with everything."
He then pays the vendor and asks for change.
The vendor responds, "Change comes from within."

You can find more information about this book at the website: http://www.platoandaplatypus.com/ or a YouTube video of a book talk at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMsQ04IXKok

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Bottlemania: How water went on sale and why we bought it by Elizabeth Boyte (Bloomsbury, 2008).

I admit that I began to read this book looking for compelling reasons to ditch my bottled water habit, and be a little more informed in recommending the same to others. What I found instead was a well-rounded investigation into the state of America's drinking water, both in bottles and from the tap, not to mention drinking fountains and toilets! The book conveys disturbing facts (In 2007, the recycling rate of water bottles was barely 15%) and introduced me to other factors I hadn't even considered (Brita water filters generally aren't recycled in the US, and really don't filter out some of the worst contaminants).

Boyte is an environmental writer, but isn't preachy when she traces the history of some of the bottled water companies' histories and practices. She provides humorous examples from her own life, like trying to devise a test to make sure her daughter is truly drinking enough water during the day, that a lot of people can relate to. The book comes with a companion website, with excerpts, reviews, and the links to more resources that are included in the book. See http://www.bottlemania.net/ for more information on this eye-opening and surprisingly entertaining book.

The Center on Law and Globalization has started a Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) Law Research Centers Paper Series.

Center on Law and Globalization
View Papers: http://www.ssrn.com/link/Center-Law-Globalization.html
Subscribe: http://hq.ssrn.com/jourInvite.cfm?link=Center-Law-Globalization

The Center on Law and Globalization Research Papers Series is a project of the Center on Law and Globalization established by the American Bar Foundation and the University of Illinois College of Law. The series features important and up-to-date perspectives on the impact of globalization on law produced by its directors and associated faculty. The center's work is interdisciplinary and will draw on cases from human rights, development, and health to examine broad issues of norm formation, implementation, and global governance.

Source: SSRN email; Bernie Black, Director, Legal Scholarship Network

Two Excellent Resources for International LL.M Students

As I'm starting to prepare my career services orientation materials for a new incoming class of LL.M students this Fall, I've been combing through helpful resources. If you haven't already, take a look at the following:

Guerrilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams, 2nd Ed., Kimm Walton (2008) [Law Library has older 1995 edition: call number KF297 .W35x 1995]
In her long-awaited second edition, now expanded to a whopping 1,300 pages, Kimm Walton has included a new chapter for International LL.M students. Chapter 20, entitled, "Coming to America: Job Search Advice for International LL.Ms" covers topics including how to target employers who are most likely to hire international LL.Ms, how to draft an effective cover letter, and navigating cultural issues. I recommend this resource both to LL.M students and career service professionals who counsel them.

The Official Guide to Legal Specialties: an insider's guide to every major practice area, Abrams (2000) [Law Library call number: KF297 .A7512x 2000]
Lisa Abrams describes the basics of 30 practice areas, details what students need to know to practice in that area, and incorporates advice from attorneys who describe their career paths and provide insight into their daily work. This is an essential resource for international LL.M students converting their CVs into a US legal resume. It provides clear cut US legal terminology, and useful insights for students seeking to translate their former experiences in a way that a US employer can easily understand. It offers a comprehensive overview of the skill set that students should emphasize in their resumes. I also encourage students to review this guide before they embark on informational interviews and as they prepare for interviews.

--Claudia Melo, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Source: Career & Professional Development Blog

Here are three items related to the Olympics that may be of interest to you.

Photo by Denis Collette via Flickr

University of Minnesota Libraries Exhibit explores development of the Olympic Dream in China
What: University of Minnesota Libraries Exhibit on the YMCA and the Olympic Movement in China from 1895 to 1920
When: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday; August 4 through Sept 29 after Labor Day, Saturdays 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Where: Elmer L. Andersen Library 222 21st Ave S., Minneapolis
Contacts: Marlo Welshons, University of Minnesota Libraries, welsh066@umn.edu, (612) 625-9148
Ryan Mathre, University News Service, mathre@umn.edu, (612) 625-0552

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (8/6/2008) -- The University of Minnesota Libraries will display materials from the Kautz Family YMCA Archives that chronicle the origins and development of the Olympic dream in the Far East by examining the YMCA’s introduction and promotion of athleticism in China. “Reaching for Gold: The YMCA and the Olympic Movement in China from 1895-1920�? is free and open to the public from Aug. 4 through Sept. 29 at the Elmer L. Andersen Library Gallery, 222 21st Ave S., Minneapolis.

Read more about this exhibit and find more links to resources at: http://www.ur.umn.edu/uns-archive/view.php?id=4938

Olympics Justice
While millions of spectators enjoy the 2008 Olympic Games, lawyers are ready in the host city to handle the sports-related disputes that always arise. This is the domain of the Tribunal for the Olympic Games in Beijing, which will operate as an ad hoc division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) through August 24. Disputes involving doping, eligibility and other matters brought by athletes and sports organizations are heard by 3-member panels selected from the twelve arbitrators on the Tribunal--all lawyers, judges and professors with expertise in arbitration and sports law. The panels work fast to provide a hearing and an impartial result, usually within 24 hours. David Rivkin, a litigation partner in the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, is the Tribunal member from the United States. Check out the CAS web site for news and press releases about the disputes, and for answers to "20 Questions about the CAS."
Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

The 5 Best Books on the Olympics
One person's opinion of the five best books about the Olympics: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121823855609625841.html
Source: Execupundit blog

The 1000 Voices Archive is a new online teaching resource for law educators. On Elder Law Prof Blog, Kim Dayton (William Mitchell) writes that this recently launched national collection of video stories was created by filmmakers and communities across the country to put a human face on the policy issues. Could be useful for classroom presentations.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

In the Summer 2008 issue of Dttp: Documents to the People, Kris Kasianovitz has a thoughtful overview of copyright of state and local documents and how that interacts with efforts to digitize such documents.

The article:
Why Care About Copyright? by Chris Kasianovitz. Dttp, v.36, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 12
Gives a history of state/local copyright and argues that for history's sake and on the principle of free access to government information, copyright law ought to be amended to give state and local gov't documents the same public domain status as federal documents.

The article is not yet freely available online (print copy available at UMN Libraries), but some of the history covered is also available on the government copyright page at http://freegovinfo.info/copyright

The whole Summer 2008 Dttp is well worth the read. There is also a freely available web supplement that you should check out at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/DttP_Supplements_v36_n2.

Source: FGI Blog

Web 2.0: The Future of Collaborative Government [Real Player, pdf]
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0,1002,cid%253D208669,00.html?WT.mc_id=USRSS
Many units of government have their own websites, though their quality varies widely. With that state of affairs in mind, the Deloitte Consulting Group and the National Academy of Public Administration teamed up in June 2008 as part of a group conference in order to take a critical look at developing a "road map to help the next administration navigate the work force and organization changes that need to occur to move to a more collaborative model of government." During their group meeting, the participants (which included the global director of public sector at Deloitte Research and the assistant director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) engaged in a discussion about this timely topic, and some of their thoughts and ideas can be found on this site. Visitors can read profiles of those invited to the meeting and then scroll down the homepage to view webcasts from the event and also take a look at several documents which chart the potential future of collaborative government and how this plan might be implemented.

The Hague Justice Portal [pdf]
http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/
Initiated by The Hague Academic Coalition and launched by Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands in 2006, The Hague Justice Portal serves as the online presence of the Hague organizations and their work on issues related to international peace, justice, and security. On the homepage, visitors can get acquainted with their work by perusing the "News" area and also looking over the list of legal events which appears along the
right-hand side of the page. The "International Justice Forum" section contains a series of interactive forums designed to facilitate discussion on topics related to international law, and it will be particularly helpful to legal scholars and journalists. Additionally, legal scholars will want to take a look at the current issues of the Hague Justice Journal, which contains articles on sovereignty, victim participation in the legal process, and other related matters. Visitors should also note that many of the materials on the site are available in French and Dutch.

Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Portraits
http://content.lib.washington.edu/garweb/
Shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War, Union veterans formed the Grand Army of the Republic, or the G.A.R. Through the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age, the G.A.R. was a powerful organization that lobbied the federal government for federal and state Soldiers Homes for invalids, advocated for the creation of Memorial Day, and also provided support for soldier reunions. This digital collection created by the University of Washington Libraries peers into the faces of some of these veterans by offering up this photograph album originally created by the Stevens Post #1 of the G.A.R., based in Seattle. The album contains over 100 portraits, and visitors can browse through them at their leisure. Visitors can zoom in and out on each photograph and they can also use a number of other tools to get the best view of each photograph for their own purposes. Also, while many of the photographs have complete provenance information, some do not, and visitors are welcome to write in with any insights they might have.

If you'd like to know how the Internet Scout team selects resources for inclusion in the Scout Report, visit their Selection Criteria page at: http://scout.wisc.edu/About/criteria.php

What's the Scout Report?
Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2008. 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.
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2008. http://scout.wisc.edu/

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Big Ideas to Big Results: Remake and Recharge Your Company, Fast by Michael T. Kanazawa and Robert H. Miles (FT Press, 2008).

How does a company go from ideas and initiatives to actually seeing results that pay off and last? The authors of Big Ideas to Big Results offer a process that addresses employee commitment to company/institution strategies and initiatives in a way that ensures success. The process (called the ACT process, for "Accelerated Corporate Transformation") aims to simplify the movement from idea to action and commitment. Since the Law Library has been moving forward with its strategic visioning plan/process, this book has easily translated to the local environment from a different point of view and business model.

For more information on the book, the authors, and resources associated with the topics presented in the book (including a blog by the authors), visit: http://www.bigideastobigresults.com/index.html

Professional Reading: Legal Education Going Global
Simon Chesterman (New York University School of Law, Singapore Program) has posted The Globalisation of Legal Education on SSRN. Here's the abstract:

This article examines the evolution of legal education as it has moved through international, transnational, and now global paradigms. It explores these paradigms by reference to practice, pedagogy, and research. Internationalisation saw the world as an archipelago of jurisdictions, with a small number of lawyers involved in mediating disputes between jurisdictions or determining which jurisdiction applied; transnationalisation saw the world as a patchwork, with greater need for familiarity across jurisdictions and hence a growth in exchanges and collaborations; globalisation is now seeing the world as a web in more ways than one, with lawyers needing to be comfortable in multiple jurisdictions.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has created a comic book on copyright. It is called Bound by Law and features the issues surrounding film-making and copyright. It is both entertaining and very informative.

It is a free download in digital version, or a hard-copy version is available for purchase. The comic can be remixed for your own use by downloading individual pages, or you can read it a page at a time (including turning the pages with your mouse), or download the text so you can translate it into another language.

More comics are planned.

Source: OPL Plus blog

STATE LEGISLATIVE HISTORY RESEARCH GUIDES ON THE WEB

State Legislative History Research Guides on the Web compiled by Jennifer Bryan Morgan, Documents Librarian, Indiana University School of Law Library – Bloomington

For Minnesota:
How to Use the Legislative Web Site to Research Legislative Issues
(Minnesota State Legislature)

Minnesota Legislative History Step-by-Step
(Minnesota State Legislature)

But don't forget about our own MN Legal Research Guides at http://local.law.umn.edu/library/pathfinders/minnresearch.html and our Federal legislative history research guide at: http://local.law.umn.edu/library/pathfinders/federallegislativehistory.html

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson (Putnam Adult, Penguin, 2008).

On June 13, 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery published Anne of Green Gables. As part of the 100th Anniversary, a prequel to the classic was released: Before Green Gables. Using bits of information mentioned in the original, Budge Wilson crafted a story that explains the circumstances of Anne Shirley's birth and childhood up to being taken in by the Cuthberts at the start of Anne of Green Gables. From a tragic upbringing, the reader can see the feisty and mischievous Anne emerge.

For more information on this year's centennial celebrations, the books, and the authors, visit:
http://100yearsofanne.com/gables-media.htm or
http://anne2008.com/ or
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/297194 or
http://www.beforegreengables.com/

Here are several recent announcements of new or updated legal resources:

Announcing PolicyArchive
PolicyArchive, billed as the "nation's first free, comprehensive, online archive of public policy research," became available last week. With over 12,000 policy documents from over 220 think tanks, PolicyArchive hopes to become the world's largest online repository of public policy research, reaching up to 20,000 documents by the end of 2008. Read more at: http://deanelawlibrary.blogspot.com/2008/07/policyarchive-launched.html

Cost Effective Legal Research Advice for New Associates and Law Clerks
A recent semi-serious Law Librarian Blog Poll posed the question: what will be the first thing law firm librarians tell summer associates this year? 74.7% responded with "Lexis/Westlaw costs MONEY!" By now, the truth of that advice, the consequences of not realizing how expensive online legal research can be, is sinking into the minds of some "bright young things" who started working at law firms and corporate legal departments this summer. Perhaps it's time to assign them some required reading. Read more, including a text list, at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/07/cost-effective.html

New Blogs Added/Updated on the Law Professor Blogs Network
Career & Professional Development Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/lawcareer/
International Law Prof Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/
Administrative Law Prof Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adminlaw/
Unincorporated Business Law Prof Blog: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/unincorporated_business/

NACTT Launches Consumer Bankruptcy Website
The National Association of Chapter Thirteen Trustees (NACTT) recently launched ConsiderChapter13.org. Produced by NACITT's Academy for Consumer Bankruptcy Education, ConsiderChapter13.org is designed to raise awareness of Chapter 13 and provide resources for legal professionals, financial advisors and consumers. Read more, including the Press Release, at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/07/nactt-launches.html

Professional Reading: The Taxonomy of Interdisciplinary Legal Research
Mathias Siems (Edinburgh School of Law and Cambridge Centre for Business Research) recently posted The Taxonomy of Interdisciplinary Legal Research: Finding the Way Out of the Desert in SSRN. Here's the abstract:

This article identifies four different types of interdisciplinary legal research: one basic and three advanced types. Basic interdisciplinary research uses the same questions as starting points as traditional legal research, however, it also considers other academic disciplines in order to answer these questions. Advanced interdisciplinary research goes further: it can either deal with research questions that are not about the law as such (type 1), or incorporate "scientific methods" into legal thinking (type 2), or combine both (type 3.) This new taxonomy is useful in order to identify the benefits and difficulties of different types of interdisciplinary legal research.

Sources: Law Librarian Blog
Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

From the American Library Association comes news of these two new resources:

ALA Office for Information Technology Policy has released a Digital Copyright Slider for determing copyright permission requirements.

From the site:

Copyright laws are complex and can be very confusing! Is a work in the public domain? Do you need permission to use it? When does copyright expire? Find these answers and more online.

ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom has created IF101--The Vodcast, a video of Intellectual Freedom 101, a panel presented at ALA's Annual Conference in Anaheim as part of ALA's "Conference 101" series of programs. More information is at: http://blogs.ala.org/oif.php?title=if_101&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 or you can view the video directly at: http://blip.tv/file/1082495

Changes to International Law in Domestic Courts
We would like to inform you of some changes to International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC). ILDC has become part of a broader online service called Oxford Reports on International Law. There was no interruption to your access. However, you now experience a new user-friendly interface and enhanced service.

Access
To access International Law in Domestic Courts, visit www.oxfordlawreports.com. Click on View Decisions by Module and select International Law in Domestic Courts. This database may be accessed on computers within the Law School or via the Law School intranet.

If you have any access problems or questions please contact Connie Lenz at 625-4301 or lenzx009@umn.edu.

What is Oxford Reports on International Law?
Oxford Reports on International Law is a new modular service offering broad coverage of international case law from international courts and tribunals, domestic courts and ad hoc tribunals. The re-launched ILDC service will form one of the content modules within Oxford Reports on International Law, and will continue to be updated with the same regularity as before.

New Benefits:
Access to ICJ and PCIJ cases
We now have access to the new Oxford Reports on International Courts of General Jurisdiction module, which includes cases from the International Court of Justice and Permanent Court of International Justice.

The Oxford Law Citator
The Oxford Law Citator provides case report links to important information about all decisions, instruments, and secondary materials that reference a particular case. This is an ongoing project which will offer enhanced linking and referencing throughout the service.

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Faber & Faber; Profile Books, 2006). This title is available at Wilson Library—call number PR6052.E5 U53 2007b.

A short, but entertaining and amusing book, the title has double meaning. A work of fiction, it's about the unexpected reading habits of Queen Elizabeth II. One day she happens upon the travelling library that is stopped at the palace, and out of politeness, takes a book and begins a conversation and book discussion with a palace kitchen worker. She promotes him to be her "library assistant," answering questions about books, retrieving other titles from the London library, and encouraging him to suggest other authors for her to read. Her staff are bewildered by this new-found reading habit and conspire to get her to stop, as well as to drive the library assistant from his post. Soon, reading leads to commentary, parties with authors, and changed demeanor on the Queen's part.

People who work around books, are involved with literacy and reading, or interested with the life of the Queen will especially enjoy this book. It's a quick read and takes a fascinating look at the power of reading.

Photo by Peak of the Summit via Flickr

New on BigThink:
Is climate change a human rights issue? See what experts think with video responses to the question posed by Gus Speth, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean and Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, Connecticut.

Direct link: http://www.bigthink.com/features/581

New e-Magazine from Hennepin County Bar Association

The Complete Lawyer, the publication of the Hennepin County Bar Association, is now available online. The latest issue focuses on ways lawyers, whether they are approaching retirement or just beginning their legal careers, can create an effective strategy to achieve their goals. Check it out!

Source: bkallusky01's blog (Hamline Law)

From the Free Government Information blog comes news of this New Feature: Guide of the Week

Government Information librarians have acquired a lot of expertise. They've written a lot of guides and pathfinders to government information.

The Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of ALA has been collecting these handouts for years so docs librarians wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time they needed to create a handout or give someone a starting point for research. Recently, this GODORT "Handout Exchange" has been wikified at http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Exchange.

The Handout Exchange is divided into four areas:

Guides & Handouts for Depository Management
Subject-oriented Guides and Tutorials
Source- and Geography-oriented Guides and Tutorials
Product-oriented Guides and Tutorials

Because the Handout Exchange links to many resources that could help many people outside the depository community, FGI is proud to start a new "Guide of the Week" column to highlight these librarian generated resources.

The first highlight is from the subject guide page:

Afro-Americans and the Military, 1939-45 (Denise Schoene, Univ. of Michigan, 1997) Last updated 8/6/2004

This guide provides a number of resources to the history of African Americans during this period including:

Books like The Port Chicago Mutiny. Warner, NY, 1989.
Journal articles like "Report on the Negro Soldier". Infantry Journal, #59, Dec., 1946 (UD1 .I43)
Electronic resources like Desegregation of the Armed Services at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm.

See more subjects at: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Subject_Guides

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Today we highlight the Dexter books by Jeff Lindsay.

One Law Library staff member is reading Jeff Lindsay's "Dexter" books. The books have been made into a TV series ("Dexter") on Showtime (and a sanitized version on CBS). The main character, Dexter Morgan, is a police forensic expert for Miami PD, but in his spare time, Dexter is a serial killer. Trained by his late adopted father (also a cop), he kills those who have escaped being properly prosecuted by the criminal justice system. He can sense who these people are, gathers enough evidence to satisfy his inner moral code, and then kills them. Since he is a blood spatter expert, his kills are very clean, and he finds the details of murder scenes exquisite riddles to solve.

The books also feature Dexter's adopted sister Deborah, another cop, and Dexter's attempt at a double life that is what he considers "human" or "normal." He dates Rita and bonds with her two children, who, like him, have been victims of brutal crime as children. In them, he sees himself and takes it upon himself to mentor them in the fine art of vigilantism. These books are oddly humorous in a dark and clever way.

Lindsay has three Dexter books in print, with another arriving this fall:
Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004)
Dearly Devoted Dexter (2005)
Dexter in the Dark (2007)
Dexter By Design (2008)

http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/dexter/ includes info about the author, book excerpts and summaries, and news.

HeinOnline announces the release of their newest research tool, MyHein.

The features of this new tool include the ability to:

--Bookmark articles and search results
--Create tags for your results
--Save search queries to quickly run the same search next time you're logged in

MyHein is considered easy to use with several help guides available. Contact a Reference Librarian for assistance with this feature or set-up, or any other questions with HeinOnline.

New Online Archive of Policy Research Launched
Policy Archive plans to become the largest free online repository of public policy research in the world. At its launch this month, the repository already contains over 12,000 policy documents from over 220 think tanks and other research organizations. It will house up to 20,000 documents by the end of 2008 according to the Project's press release (pdf). See also: Description of the Policy Archive Project (pdf) and List of Current Content Contributors (pdf).

In addition to a site search engine, you can browse by author, funder, publisher and topics.

SCOTUSblog's Statistical Analysis of the Supreme Court Term
SCOTUSblog has published its "Super StatPack" compilation of statistics with charts, lists, and observations about the just-concluded Supreme Court Term. Here's the complete report (pdf).

Source: Law Librarian Blog

From Cornell Law Library’s InSITE:
Interviews of United States Supreme Court Justices
http://lawprose.org/supreme_court.php

This site is put out by LawProse, a “provider of CLE training in legal writing, editing, and drafting.�? While most of the LawProse website focuses on advertising their services and training sessions, this section of the site provides video interviews with eight of the nine current Supreme Court justices, voicing their thoughts on legal writing and advocacy. The videos are available free of charge. Windows Media Player or a Mac WMV plug-in are needed to view the videos. There are also additional archived interviews from judges and lawyers across the country. Those interviews can be found under the heading "Educational Video Clips" and cover a number of different topics, but focus primarily on legal writing and related issues. This site is beneficial to lawyers and law students looking for advice on how to improve their writing skills.

From How Stuff Works blog:
How Supreme Court Appointments Work
http://people.howstuffworks.com/supreme-court-appointment.htm

In this article, we'll find out how Supreme Court justices are nominated, who is qualified to serve and how a nominee is approved. We'll also try to sort out the complicated politics that come into play when a justice is nominated.

Photo by nichole45 via flickr

An occasional feature, "Law Library Staff Recommend..." highlights books that Law Library staff members have read for enjoyment and now recommend that others consider for inclusion on their own reading lists. Summer reading brings out the lemonade and a great variety of book genre, from the latest spy novel to controversial scientific theories and reports, and we are delighted to summarize and share our reading experiences with you. If you have any comments or questions about any of the titles presented in this feature, feel free to email lawlib@umn.edu or stop by the library. Our first installment highlights two staff recommendations: If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind by Vilmos Csanyi and The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind (Hardcover) by Vilmos Csanyi
Written by a Hungarian ethologist (animal behavior scientist), this book offers a fascinating look at the mind of a dog. Csanyi starts by describing wolf behavior, then contrasting it with the behavior of wolf descendants (domestic dogs). He draws on scientific studies of dog behavior to explore their abilities and their cognitive limits; anecdotes of specific dog behavior illustrate his points and make the book more entertaining. This book should appeal to dog owners, dog lovers, and anyone interested in evolutionary biology.

The Pillars of the Earth (Paperback) by Ken Follett
Ken Follett has written many books, but The Pillars of the Earth is his most popular and the title he is most proud of, according to his website: http://www.ken-follett.com/bibliography/the_pillars_of_the_earth.html
The book is an inter-connected tale spanning thirty years in 12th century England, following the lives of certain characters who are trying to build a cathedral. There are kings and queens, knights, maidens, invasions, attacks, poverty, hunger, and a real view of the inner workings of the politics of villages, monasteries, while enduring revenge and curses. It's an intriguing and highly engaging story that urges you on to find out whether the cathedral will ever be built. It's very easy reading, with quite graphic depictions of the brutalities of the times, with characters who are easy to identify with, with just enough complexity to make them interesting, yet are fairly easy to categorize as protagonist or antogonist.

The website for the book includes study and discussion guides, as well as character introductions and more.

BONUS from Law Librarian Blog:
A Very Short Reading List for Incoming 1Ls
There are two classics every incoming 1L should read before starting law school but my sense is that many turn them away because they are not written in a style that resonates with our younger students. I'm referring, of course, to Karl N Llewellyn's The Bramble Bush (three copies on Reserve at KF273 .L58 1951, we also have an electronic version you can access if you are on campus), recently republished by Oxford UP, and Edward H. Levi's An Introduction to Legal Reasoning(KF425 .L48 or two copies in Storage at X-24,994).

In addition to those two works, I always recommend Helene Shapo and Marshall Shapo's Law School Without Fear: Strategies for Success (Foundation Press, 2002) (KF386 .S44 2002 and two copies of the older edition at KF386 .S44 1996). Helene Shapo and Marshall Shapo are law professors who compiled this book of practical advice for their son, a law student. The book discusses in simple terms what law students need to know about law school and how to get the most out the law school experience. The text also discusses the problems law students encounter most frequently and solutions to those problems. Topics covered include briefing a case, precedent and how to use it, balancing competing interests and factors, legal writing, and psychological tips for the study of law.

For the "what should I read" question asked by incoming 1Ls (or admissions directors wanting to send students a reading list during the summer), we librarians can easily compile an extensive bibliography but I lean toward providing a very short guided reading list instead. The above three titles plus Carolyn J. Nygren's Starting Off Right in Law School (Carolina Academic Press, 1997) (KF273 .N97 1997) which melds information about the legal system usually found in legal methods books with information about study skills usually found in books with a "how to succeed in law school" focus is in my opinion sufficient.

See also: The Summer Before Law School? by Alan Childress on Legal Profession Blog and Law Vibe's Top 10 Law Student Books (based on Amazon sales for the last three months).

The name of the ABA Real Property, Probate & Trust Journal has been changed to: “Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal.�?

This change is effective for Volume 43, Issue # 1 of the Journal, soon to be distributed to subscribers. The name change mirrors the change of the name of the ABA Section. The prior cover was blue and gray in color, the new cover is a startling green and more modest blue.

Link to: the journal's website: http://www.abanet.org/rppt/publications/journal/home.html

Link to: the ABA Section on Real Property, Trust and Estate Law: http://www.abanet.org/rpte/home.html

Source: Sara S. Repinski, Acquisitions Librarian, Coleman Karesh Law Library, University of South Carolina School of Law

National Career Development Blog

You may be familiar with Law Professor Blogs, especially since we share many of the Law Librarian Blog posts with you. One of the newest blogs on the site is the Career & Professional Development Blog.

Its contributors are law school and legal employer professionals from all over the country. Susan Gainen, Co-Director of the University of Minnesota Law School Career & Professional Development Center, is one of the two primary Editors, and you will see cross-postings from Vocare.

Link directly to this new blog at: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/lawcareer/

New Report Shows Rising Special Interest Pressure on Midwest Courts

New report from Justice at Stake: "A new report from Justice at Stake, The New Politics of Judicial Elections in the Great Lake States, 2000-2008, shows how the Midwest has become America’s leading judicial elections battleground. Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin are seeing a growing arms race between corporate interests, trial lawyers, ideological groups and political partisans who are committed to bending state judges to their will."

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Introduction to Public International Law Research
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Public_International_Law_Research.htm

Aspiring lawyers and academics hoping to peer into the world of public international law will be glad to learn about this site. Authored by lawyer and researcher Vicenc Feliu, this introduction to public international law research is offered up as part of the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University's Law School. Published in May/June 2008, this thorough introduction includes a host of information about online and offline resources that will come in handy. After reading the introduction, visitors can browse around sections that offer up material on treaties, case law, and relevant journals. Along the way, visitors will also learn about the major players in public international law, such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union.

Source: Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2008. 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.

NEWS FROM THE FIELD--C&RL (College & Research Libraries) News, June 2008--Vol. 69, No. 6
by David Free

Civil Rights resources online
The University of Georgia Libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia recently launched the Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL), an initiative to deliver online educational content on the Civil Rights Movement. CRDL promotes an enhanced understanding of the movement through its three principal components: a digital video archive of historical news film of the Civil Rights Movement, a virtual library portal aggregating metadata from more than 75 libraries and allied organizations from across the nation, and instructional materials to facilitate the use of the video content in the learning process.

The centerpiece of CRDL is a collection of more than 30 hours of historical news film held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. These moving images—about 450 clips—cover a broad range of key civil rights events, including the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957); the Atlanta Temple bombing (1958); Atlanta sit-ins (1960); Freedom Rides (1961); desegregation of the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech (1961); the Albany Movement (1961-1962); desegregation of Ole Miss (1962) and University of Alabama (1963); and the Americus Movement (1963, 1965).

In addition to the news film, the digital library includes related collections of original documentation, such as oral histories, letters, and photographs from libraries, archives, and museums. CRDL is freely available online at crdl.usg.edu.

You can read the whole June issue of C&RL News at: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2008/june08/june1.cfm

Recent News & Notes from Westlaw:

Timely Topics …First Focus
The First Focus website is a quick and easy way to see all available West resources about some of the most compelling and complex legal issues of the day through print, online tools and seminars. Found at http://west.thomson.com/products/first-focus/subprime.aspx, the first subject covered is the subprime mortgage crisis. Coming soon there will also be an option to subscribe to a current awareness email with links to legal analysis, trial court orders and pending legislation that would be delivered weekly.

Webinar Training Sessions
Free Webinar training helps sharpen your Westlaw® search skills, and helps you provide training for others. Anyone with a Westlaw password can join one of these free 30 minute sessions, so feel free to pass this link along to others in your organization. Some upcoming Webinar topics include, Public Records, Family Law, Estate Planning and Quickview+. To view a complete list of upcoming seminars by either date or topic, click here:
http://westapps.west.thomson.com/webinars/default.asp?

Search for Key Numbers tool: Don’t go home empty-handed!
Thanks to the Search for Key Numbers tool (released last November). (To access this tool, simply click on the Key Numbers link at the top of the screen.) It will appear as the first of three key number related options. Formerly, a search conducted here only retrieved related key numbers which had been assigned in the jurisdiction you searched. Now, you can use this tool to retrieve a list of jurisdiction-specific headnotes classified under a key number simply by clicking that key number. But what if no cases containing that key number exist in your jurisdiction? No problem.

As of April 12, 2008, a Search for Key Numbers result contains key numbers from cases in the jurisdiction
you selected plus as many as 10 additional key numbers from cases in other jurisdictions. The key numbers from these cases are in a new section called Additional Results from All Jurisdictions. As with the key numbers from your jurisdiction, you can click one of the additional key numbers to retrieve a list of headnotes and links to the full-text opinions. In addition, a Search for Key Numbers result now contains a ResultsPlus list that includes references to American Law Reports (ALR), American Jurisprudence 2d, and other analytical materials.

Example:
Suppose your client was injured by a foul ball while watching a baseball game in South Carolina and you need relevant opinions on liability. Access the Search for Key Numbers tool (click Key Numbers at the top of any Westlaw page), type "liability for foul ball injuries to spectator" in the text box, select South Carolina as the jurisdiction, and click Search.

You retrieve key numbers from South Carolina cases, followed by several more key numbers from other state and federal jurisdictions. One of these additional key numbers is 315TK109(2): Public Amusement and Entertainment>Injury from game, performance or activity>Balls, bats and pucks. Click the key number to retrieve a list of headnotes and links to the full-text opinions from other jurisdictions. In addition, you retrieve a ResultsPlus list that includes a link to the ALR annotation Liability to Spectator at Baseball Game Who Is Hit by Ball or Injured As Result of Other Hazards of Game.

Two WESTLAW Search Tips:
Q: Our firm just got its first medical malpractice case. Is there a fast way to determine my state’s statute of limitations, as well as any cap on noneconomic damages that my state may have?

A: Try the 50 State Surveys database (SURVEYS). Although SURVEYS allows you to compare the approaches of many states, SURVEYS also provides an easy way to retrieve a summary of a single state’s laws governing a common topic.

In this example, access SURVEYS and run a search such as non-economic /3 damages. Among the documents you retrieve is the Medical Malpractice–Tort Reform survey, which identifies the applicable statutes of limitation (including caps on noneconomic damages) of each state.

Q: KeyRules is a convenient way to gather together all the state and local rules pertaining to a procedure in my jurisdiction. However, the KeyRules document can be pretty long! If I want only the portion that deals with the required documents or the format, is there a fast way to jump just to that portion?

A: Click Section Outline in the left frame of the KeyRules document. The section names (e.g., Documents) are displayed in the left frame, along with short descriptions of each section (e.g., What documents need to be filed?). To display a particular section in the right frame, click the section name in the left frame.

As reported in LPSS News (law & political science section of Association of College & Research Libraries/American Library Association), Volume 23, Number 2, Spring 2008 issue, p. 7:

In fall 2007 (volume 4, issue 1) the Journal of E-Government became the Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP). More changes are afoot, though the journal retains its affiliation with the organized section on Information Technology and Politics of the American Political Science Association.

The scope of the journal has changed in conjunction with the title, broadening from its previous focus on technology in the service of government. The new JITP looks at the influence and impact of technology on political processes as well as government. It reports on how evolving information tools are being used in the political and governmental arenas. The wider scope should expand the relevance of this journal beyond public administration collections and heighten its appeal to readers in political science, public affairs and policy studies, not to mention technology studies. The emphasis has shifted toward academic concerns and veered away from business and industry best practices.

You will be able to read more of the article and the entire issue online at: (issue not online as of June 9, 2008, but keep checking back if you are interested) http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/aboutacrl/acrlsections/lawpolisci/lpsspublications.cfm

Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP): print ISSN: 1933-1681; electronic ISSN: 1933-169X.
JITP can be sampled at http://www.jitp.net . Subscription price is US$45 for individuals and US$325 for institutions. The publisher, Haworth Press, will transition during 2008 to the Routledge imprint of Taylor & Francis and the Informaworld electronic interface.

Transitioning from One-L to Summer Legal Work is a series of 19 podcasts each by a different legal writing professor. The series was produced by Suffolk University Law School's Professors Gabriel Teninbaum and Kathleen Elliott Vinson. The title is a bit misleading since the advice offered is appropriate for all law students working this summer including recent graduates starting their legal careers. Law firm, corporate legal deparment and court librarians may want to share this resource with their summer and new full-time hires.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Thinking About Law and Creativity: On the 100 Most Creative Moments in American Law, by Robert F. Blomquist (Professor of Law/Swygert Research Fellow, Valparaiso University School
of Law): http://abajournal.com/files/100CreativeMoments.pdf
From the Abstract:

"In most cultural contexts creativity is viewed as an unalloyed virtue. Law is different: given the inherently conservative and slow-moving pace of legal evolution, innovation in the law is viewed by many observers as problematic. Yet American revolutionaries, constitutionalists, legislators, chief executives, judges, administrators, scholars and activists have creatively changed the law for over two centuries in mostly positive ways with some admittedly questionable innovations. This article makes a bold new proposal—the articulation and ranking of America’s most creative legal moments—designed to energize and clarify our synoptic thinking about the nature of legal creativity."

Source: beSpacific

Looking for some extremely useful legal career resources? Check out Vocare: blog of the Career and Professional Development Center here at the UMN Law School.
Photo: Ruffneck119

Here is a sampling of recent helpful information posted on the blog:

Reference Q&A:
When you are the reference and you get the surprise call, you have two choices.
(1) Be honest and say that you can’t provide a good reference because you don’t know the candidate well enough to give a fair evaluation.
(2) Lie and give a glowing reference. Murphy's Law says that this will come back to haunt you. And, you'll feel sick about it.
Read more (including a third choice)...

Create an unofficial transcript
Follow these directions from the Registrar. This links to CAREERFILES on the CPDC website.

First steps in an alternative career search: GoldPASS - the University's job resource
Because most law-trained people pay scant attention to what other people do for a living (unless they are Workers' Compensation lawyers), one important early step in a search for an alternative career is to reconnect with other career paths.
The easiest way to begin is to read a lot of job descriptions very carefully, to begin to understand how functions are described and categorized. This helps you to think about those functions and how your own skills and experience can be described to meet hiring criteria in a non-law setting. These are your transferable skills.
Read more...

Vocare is available at: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawcso/vocare/ and is updated regularly.

Here are some new or updated legal resources that have recently been announced:

Overview of State Legislation Related to Immigrants and Immigration
New report from the National Conference of State Legislatures: "This report provides a first look at introduced legislation in 2008 and presents selected examples of enacted laws relating to immigrants and refugees. This process of legislative tracking and reporting is based on a comprehensive and inclusive methodology and captures all state legislation in which immigrants – whether authorized or unauthorized, temporary migrants, aliens and refugees – are affected."

American Lawyer Website Relaunched
AmericanLawyer.com gets a design makeover and enhanced site features. Visitors will have free unlimited access to the website through July to spend time and get acquainted with the dynamic, new and upgraded features that include:
*News and information updated on a daily basis
*Excerpts from the current month's magazine content
*A rich archive of past issues available on demand
*The Am Law Daily News Alert, a new daily newsletter sent to The American Lawyer's email subscriber base

Professional Reading: Using the Law Review Article Type Indicator to Make Publishing Decisions
Does Yale Law Journal review "all manuscripts anonymously, without regard to the author's name, institutional affiliation, prior publications, or pending publication offers" as claimed? Apparently not according to Jack Chin's post on PrawfsBlawg, at least not after the initial screening. Of course, Yale is not alone. Eric Chiappinelli (Seattle) suggests a tool for screening articles in Definite Articles: Using the Law Review Article Type Indicator® to Make Law Review Publishing Decisions (SSRN). Here's the abstract:

Each year close to two thousand law review articles are circulated among about two hundred student-edited law journals. As a result, law reviews around the country spend upwards of three thousand hours a year screening potential articles for publication. This process is exhausting for both authors and editors alike. The core problem in the law review article selection process is the information asymmetry between authors and law reviews. This article presents a tool, the Law Review Article Type Indicator (LRATI) that aims to reduce the information disparity, in turn making the article selection process less time consuming, more fruitful, and generally more pleasant for law review editors and authors. To achieve this end, the LRATI employs four bipolar scales that systematically evaluate both the author and the submission in an effort to ensure that law reviews only publish author's who are "stars" or "keepers", or at the very least "fillers" while eliminating with ease any and all "losers." This article argues that if law reviews implement the LRATI, the selection of law review articles will be quicker, more accurate, and will take place with less rancor and fewer interpersonal conflicts than ever before.

Commercial Law Bibliography
Michael Hillinger's "Commercial Law Bibliography" has been published in the DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal (vol. 5, Fall 2006, no. 1, page 179). Now available in HeinOnline or Westlaw.

New on LLRX.com - Plain Language in Government Communications
The Government Domain: Plain Language in Government Communications: Peggy Garvin demonstrates the impact of the Plain Language in Government Communications Act of 2008 on the accessibility of content posted on e-government websites. — Published May 20, 2008

Sources: Law Librarian Blog, beSpacific

Southern Poverty Law Center: Intelligence Project
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intpro.jsp

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been monitoring the activities of hate groups and extremist activities since 1981. Today, their Intelligence Project continues to track over 800 hate groups across the United States.

First-time visitors to the site can look over the "Top Hatewatch Headlines", which offer brief synopses of current activities within the various groups.

From there, visitors will want to visit the "Intelligence Report" section. Here, they will find the current issue of this magazine, which frequently includes guest editorials, interviews with former hate group members and leaders, and information about how the Center is combating these different groups and their activities.

Additionally, the site also includes an interactive map of active hate groups in the United States.

Source: Internet Scout Project
Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2008. 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.

Success Rate of Law School Graduates on the Teaching Market
Brian Leiter (Texas) has published Success Rate of Law School Graduates on the Teaching Market 2006-2008. This new ranking study is based on data compiled by Daniel Solove (George Washington) and Larry Solum (Illinios).

Study of Experts and Novices Reading the Law
Leah Christensen's (University of St. Thomas School of Law) The Paradox of Legal Expertise: A Study of Experts and Novices Reading the Law has been published in the Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal (2008 BYU Educ. & L.J. 53). The article describes a study that examined how ten legal experts (eight lawyers and two judges) and ten novices (law students in the top 50% of their class) read a judicial opinion and suggests advice for improving the reading skills of law students.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Alina Ng (Mississippi College School of Law) has deposited Authors and Readers: Conceptualizing Authorship in Copyright Law in SSRN. Here's the abstract:

Copyright law recognizes authors as the first owners of copyright. However, there is paucity of literature in copyright analysis of the author and the rights which should be granted by virtue of the very act of creativity in the production of literary and artistic works. This indicates insufficient attention paid to a concept that is so central to a law that primarily aims to encourage authorship for society's benefit. The idea of the author and authorship as a creative process is central to copyright analysis. Deeper analysis of the author and creative authorship will provide insights into how the law can work towards encouraging better author-reader connection and create a more efficient market for literary and artistic works to provide rewards to authors to encourage greater production of works to benefit society. This article proposes that conceptualizing authors as the most important figure for the grant of property rights will facilitate greater production of works that society will be willing to pay for in the market. This paper concludes that copyright is a law to encourage authors to create literary and artistic works for society. The rights granted under the law should encourage creative authorship, rather than a recovery of investment, and that public interests are served best by a law recognizing the creative author over the economic investor.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

From the Law Librarian Blog comes news of two new resources related to Law Reviews:

A group of anonymous law review article editors are publishing the Anonymous Articles Editor Blog. This new blog is offering "tips for law professors on how to increase their chances of getting published (or at least a favorable reading by an articles editor)." More info about this new blog is available at the Adjunct Law Prof Blog.

Leah M. Christensen and Julie A. Oseid have successfully navigated the law review selection process. See their recent article: Navigating the Law Review Article Selection Process: An Empirical Study of Those with All the Power -- Student Editors, 59 S.C. L. Rev. 175-224 (2007) [Available on Westlaw].

From the introduction:

A simple but worthwhile question in this debate is whether this selection process is fair. The fairness and impartiality of article selection is important to new law professors. For them, success in the legal academy may depend on what, where, and how often they publish in the appropriate law journal. New law professors not only face the quantitative expectations of how many published articles are required for promotion and tenure but also the qualitative expectations about what types of articles “count�? for promotion and tenure. The problem is that these qualitative requirements may be left unwritten or unstated. The increased competition for publication space, coupled with the potential bias of the current system towards author credentials, is a disturbing trend for a majority of new professors in the legal academy. If student editors rely upon author credentials as a “proxy�? for quality, then legal academics need to explore this reality more openly.

This study seeks to explore these questions and add to the growing body of empirical research on law review article selection. The study examines how law review editors at all levels of the law school “tier�? system--Top 15, Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, Third Tier, Fourth Tier and Specialty Journals) -- weigh the importance of author credentials, topic, format, and timing of an article submission in making their selection decisions. Although the study found that most editors consider each of these factors to some degree, the data also suggest that the higher ranked journals rely more heavily on author credentials than lower ranked journals. Specifically, editors at higher tiered law schools were highly influenced by where an author has previously published. Further, while not a single editor at a Top 15 school considered an author's practice experience in making a publication decision, a majority of the editors at lower tiered journals rated practice experience as an important factor in article selection. While the study participants almost unanimously agreed that they were influenced by the topic of an article, there were important differences among the law schools concerning the actual topics about which they would be most or least likely to publish. In addition to describing the *181 survey results in more detail, this Article will offer specific commentary from the student editors about their means of selecting law review articles.

Law & Ethics of Human Rights

This new e-journal from Berkeley Electronic Press focuses on human rights law and its intersection with political theory and policy. Each issue centers around one contemporary human rights dilemma that raises major legal and moral questions. The inaugural issue is on multiculturalism and the anti-discrimination principle. Links to all of the BE Press legal journals are located in the Law Library’s Directory of Electronic Resources at: http://local.law.umn.edu/library/ERDirectory.html.

Thanks to Reference Librarian Vic Garces for the tip!

The Office of the Revisor of Statutes has added all the historic Minnesota session laws, from 1849 to 1993, to the Legislature's web site. They are all keyword-searchable.

Since this event happens to coincide with the state's sesquicentennial, Revisor Michele Timmons issued a press release: https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/press.php.

Direct URL to the new access to old laws: https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/laws/

Source: Barb Golden, State Law Librarian, MN State Law Library

Family Responsibility Discrimination (also called "caregiver discrimination") is "discrimination against workers who have family caregiving responsibilities" and it can affect both women and men, parents of children and children of the elderly. The Center for Worklife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law is a great resource for learning about this type of discrimination. It offers information about recent cases, model policies, state and local statutes, reports, summaries and much more.

Source: The Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

Today is Earth Day, which was started on April 22, 1970 in protest over the smog and dirty rivers in the United States (according to the EPA's history page). In addition to any other fun activities you might be enjoying (like riding the bus to work or planting a tree), why not check out a few Earth Day resources from the government:

Earth Day 2008 This page from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides links to events and actions you can take at home, work, school and more.

2008 Photo Contest This contest from the EPA let citizens send in pictures of the environment and the creatures in it and all I have to say is wow! If you want to see a picture that looks like it is out of a fairytale, check this one out!

EarthDay.gov Okay, this site doesn't have the fancy pictures or quite as an in-depth set of resources, but I thought it should at least be mentioned.

Finally, if you want environmental law resources, why not check out the Law Library research guide.

Source: Government Publications Library at the Univ of CO-Boulder blog

GovEngine is a Web portal for uncovering information about federal, state, and local government. Links on the sidebar of the website lead to pages on each of these subjects.

There is also a map of the U.S.A., where one can click a state and then go to a page that contains links to the state's home page and constitution. In addition, there are lists of Web pages that contain further links to sources dealing with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the state in question.

Source: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

Recent news and notes from Westlaw:

Browser Blocking
Starting in March, westlaw.com platforms do not support Web browser versions earlier than the following: Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 7.0, Firefox 1.0, and Safari 1.1. The browsers that are blocked are no longer supported by the companies that created them, and this lack of support can generate problems during development and with issue resolution. Most importantly, these browsers are not receiving security updates, which could lead to a security risk. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Westlaw technical support at: 1-800-WESTLAW (1-800-937-8529).

New Litigation Tab
Now finding litigation resources is easier than ever using the new litigation tab. The new tab organizes materials into logical groups that are easily accessible using the menu across the top. If you already have a personalized litigation tab, you will continue to see that tab; everyone else will only see the new tab.

Hot Topic: Subprime Podcast and New Handbook
Here's a link to a just-released podcast discussion on one of the most important issues this year. The participants are authors of the brand new Mortgage and Asset Backed Securities Litigation Handbook. To access the podcast visit http://feeds.feedburner.com/Westcast. For more information about purchasing or borrowing the Handbook, please contact x-asap@umn.edu.

From the AALL's Washington Blog comes news of this new resource center:

OMB Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting open government, accountability and citizen participation, recently launched its Regulatory Resource Center. The goals of the Resource Center are to educate citizens on how they can become involved in the regulatory process through its Advocacy Center and to inform the public about the workings of the regulatory process through its Policy Library.

The Advocacy Center provides instructions and links to find and comment on rules and file petitions for rulemaking. The Policy Library contains an in-depth explanation of the federal rule-making process, a look at the tools used by regulatory decision makers, a glossary of key terms, and more.

The Regulatory Resource Center serves as a valuable tool for those looking to understand the regulatory process for the first time and for those who want a more in-depth look at the background, rules, and procedures of federal rulemaking!

JSTOR notified users of a new platform upgrade planned for this Friday April 4 with this letter:

We are excited to announce that the new JSTOR platform will be launched on Friday, April 4. The behind-the-scenes process for switching from the existing JSTOR to the new platform will begin around 7:00 a.m. EDT. We will be making changes throughout the day, but the vast majority of users should experience no interruption or downtime. If you do have any difficulties, though, please contact support@jstor.org.

A document describing features of the new platform is included in the JSTOR Sandbox
(sandbox.jstor.org). The Sandbox also has links to tutorials and training materials focused on the new JSTOR interface. In addition, a list of newly scheduled webinars appears at the end of this announcement, with links to online registration.

We would like to thank all of you for your comments over the past few months and your patience more recently as we performed additional testing. As always, your comments have proven to be invaluable. We look forward to your ongoing feedback as we continue adding enhancements and new content to the archive.

The following training webinars are led by JSTOR User Services staff. A phone and a computer with online access are required. To register, follow a link in the list below.

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/507861435

Using the JSTOR Interface
Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/780793020

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/469266764

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/401053120

Using the JSTOR Interface
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/680252260

Highlights of the New JSTOR Interface
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/958097487

These e-resources are now available to all U of M students, faculty, and staff!

CIS Congressional Hearings Digital Collection Retrospective A (added to LexisNexis Congressional)

Gale - newspaper archives
17th and 18th Century Burney Collection

19th Century British Library Newspapers

British Newspapers 1600-1900

19th Century US Newspapers

The Times

The Economist

Also, Women's History Month resources, free from Gale

Waterloo Directory of of English Newspapers and Periodicals

Sources: News from the Libraries and Reference Services blogs

An Advanced Search Syntax Help Guide is available in HeinOnline under the Search tab in any HeinOnline library. This help guides provides detailed instructions and examples for building searches using field names and Boolean operators, as well as details about range, proximity, wildcard and fuzzy searches. The help guide is available in PDF format.

More information about the guide is available at the HeinOnline blog or view the guide at this link.

Photo: A woman voting in Ecuador. International Foundation of Election Systems Photo.

The U.S. State Department has released the 2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

From the Overview:

Universal human rights seek to incorporate respect for human dignity into the processes of government and law. All persons have the inalienable right to change their government by peaceful means and to enjoy basic freedoms, such as freedom of expression, association, assembly, movement, and religion, without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. The right to join a free trade union is a necessary condition of a free society and economy. Thus the reports assess key internationally recognized worker rights, including the right of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, the prohibition of forced or compulsory labor, the status of child labor practices, the minimum age for employment of children, and acceptable work conditions.

Source: bkallusky01's blog

Legal Writing Citation in a Nutshell
by Larry L. Teply

The law library has multiple copies at call number KF245 .T47x 2008 in the Reserve collection or Reference Office.

Book Description: This book is designed to ease the process of learning legal citation, one of the difficult tasks that students new to the law face. It initially focuses on conventions that underlie all accepted forms and systems of legal citation. Building on that understanding and an explanation of the process of using citations in legal writing, the book then discusses and illustrates the particular rules of The Bluebook and the ALWD Citation Manual for citing cases, statutes, and all other major legal sources. Appendixes provide useful comparative information for these two systems of citation.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

The Thomson Corporation is now a sponsor of the ABA Section of Taxation. This means that Westlaw® is now a primary provider of ABA Section of Taxation.

On the Westlaw Tax Tab – which already offered easy access to world-class tax content (including The Tax Lawyer) from a single screen – you will now find links to complete ABA Section of Taxation content:

A Comprehensive Analysis of Current Consumption Tax Proposals (ABA-CONSTAX)
ABA Tax Section Continuing Legal Education (ABATAX-CLE)
ABA Section of Taxation Comments to U.S. Congress, Federal Agencies and U.S. Tax Court (ABA-FTXCOM)
Guide to Nonprofit Corporate Governance in the Wake of Sarbanes-Oxley (ABA-NCCORPGOV)
Sales and Use Tax Deskbook (ABA-SUTX)
State and Local Tax Lawyer (SLTAXL)
The Property Tax Deskbook (ABA-PTD)
Value Added Tax: A Model Statute and Commentary (ABA-VALADTAX)
And more!

ABA Section of Taxation content is just the latest addition to a large, high quality lineup of tax content on Westlaw, including Mertens Law of Federal Taxation; Thomson, RIA and Warren, Gorham & Lamont materials; KeyCite® for Tax and RIA Citator 2d, the two most powerful tax/legal citators; and much more.

© 2007 West, a Thomson business

Contact a Reference Librarian if you have any questions.

Recently, the Deane Law Library blog (Hofstra School of Law) has featured five resources or news that may be useful for legal research needs:

Immigration Policy Center:
The Immigration Policy Center is the research arm of the American Immigration Law Foundation. IPC was established in 2003 with the mission to provide policymakers, academics, the media, and the general public with access to accurate information about the effects of immigration on the U.S. economy and society. The IPC attracts nationally recognized scholars as research fellows and guest authors, and publishes timely reports on the role of immigrants and immigration policy.

Law Library of Congress on Constitutional Law
The Law Library of Congress is offering PDF downloads of books and articles on three of the more contentious subjects in constitutional law: executive privilege, war powers, and presidential inherent powers. All are by Louis Fisher.

Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL), a digital collection of the Tobacco Control Archives at the University of California at San Francisco, contains more than 8 million searchable documents "created by major tobacco companies related to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities." Of particular interest to law students and researchers are links to litigation, legislation, health research, and advertising web sites, and to archive collections.

Supreme Court Justices on Writing and Advocacy
Get insights from the top jurists in the country about what makes for good legal writing and advocacy. On LawProse, Inc, you will find interviews of eight Supreme Court Justices in which they discuss what they find persuasive and what they wish attorneys would avoid. These interviews were done in 2006-2007 by Bryan Garner, editor-in-chief of the last two editions of Black’s Law Dictionary.

"I Do Solemnly Swear . . .": Presidential Inaugurations
"I Do Solemnly Swear . . .": Presidential Inaugurations is available through The Library of Congress’ American Memory database. "I Do Solemnly Swear . . ." provides access to over 2,000 digital files relating to presidential inaugurations from George Washington's in 1789 to George W. Bush's inauguration of 2001.

March is Women's History month. In honor of the women who have made their way in the profession and achieved great things, here are just a few tidbits about inspiring women lawyers and their accomplishments in the profession:

Alice Paul (1885-1977): Lawyer Alice Paul was the founder of the World Woman's Party in 1913 and the author of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. She was quoted as saying, "There will never be a new world order until women are part of it."

Burnita Shelton Matthews (1894-1988): Matthews was a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, appointed by Harry Truman in 1949. She was the first woman appointed to any United States District Court.

Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice O'Connor was the first woman Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Janet Reno: The first female Attorney General of the United States, Reno was appointed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton.

Roberta Cooper Ramo: First woman President of the American Bar Association, inaugurated in 1995.

Geraldine Ferraro: Chosen as the vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic slate by presidential candidate Walter Mondale, Ferraro was the first woman in United States history to be on the presidential ticket of a major party.

Whether you like these women or not, and whether you agree with their politics or not, their efforts and accomplishments, along with those of many other women lawyers, have helped pave the way for advances of women in the profession. But as Justice O'Connor said, "Despite the encouraging and wonderful gains and the changes for women which have occurred in my lifetime, there is still room to advance and to promote correction of the remaining deficiencies and imbalances."

For more information about women's legal history, check out the Women's Legal History Biography Project.

And these other resources:
The Women Lawyers Index

Women's Legal History Web Resources

Source: Legal Ease blog via Stark County Law Library Blog

"A private and nonpartisan initiative, E-VotingBooth.com gives voters a greater voice in the democratic process by inviting them to vote online on any piece of legislation being considered by Congress. Results of these virtual polls are sent to Congress and the president. The site will also allow users to compare their own votes with those of their elected officials, and to hold the officials accountable."

Read more at Government Innovators Network

Direct link to resource: http://e-votingbooth.com/

C-SPAN Indexes Public Domain Videos of Congressional Proceedings

C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle (beta) is an index of the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. The video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available and the video and text are placed side-by-side for users to watch, read, and compare. C-SPAN has placed these recordings in the public domain and encourages users to create direct links to single speeches and pages on other web sites and blogs. The Congressional Chronicle covers the 108th (2003-2004), 109th (2005-2006), and 110th (2007-present) Congresses. Previous Congresses back to 1988 will be added in the future.

Some of the features of the site:

-Clicking on a day shows a timeline of the actions and members speaking for that day with the topic of their remarks from the Congressional Record.

-Clicking on a member’s name will bring up the text of their remarks and allow you to play the video of the speech.

-Each member’s appearances are summarized at the top of this page by the number of days that they spoke on the floor and total time of those speeches.

-There is a search by member and by bill. Other searches will be added in the future including a full text search.

Source: AALL's Washington Blog via Free Government Information blog

Copyright
© 2008 American Association of Law LibrariesTheme: Contempt by Vault9.
Blog at WordPress.com.

From the University of Southern California Gould School of Law comes a new resource on English Medieval Law:
ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LEGAL DOCUMENTS
AD 600 - AD 1535:
A COMPILATION OF PUBLISHED SOURCES.

From the site:

The goal of this project is to create a collaborative database on the published sources of English medieval legal documents, and to provide links to the growing number of online sources currently being developed.

If you are aware of new digitizing initiatives or new publications of medieval legal documents, or if you would like to add, edit, or comment on the present contents of the wiki, please feel free to do so. You may register by clicking on the link on the right of the wiki screen.

For further information, e-mail Hazel D. Lord, Senior Law Librarian, at the Asa V. Call Law Library of the University of Southern California School of Law hlord@law.usc.edu

Direct Link: http://emld.usc.edu/tiki-index.php

As previously reported, a new service is coming to the University Libraries catalog: GET-IT!

Starting Monday the Public catalog at the Twin Cities campus will display a Get-It/Recall button. Patrons can request materials to be delivered to other TC campus libraries by login into the public online library catalog (MNCAT) and requesting a book to be delivered to another TC campus library.

http://www.lib.umn.edu/site/getit.phtml

From the website:

"Get It" consolidates book requesting services previously found in 3 places:

Recall - changing the due date of a book that has already been checked out for earlier pickup at any convenient campus library
Point-to-Point - for delivery of books not checked out, to be picked up at a more convenient campus library than the owning library
Libraries to U - for delivery of books to on-campus faculty/staff offices
An additional service is now being offered with the "Get It" link:

Paging - pulling books from the shelves of a library to be held for users at the Circulation Desk of that same library
To use "Get It" library users must log into Your Account. Users no longer have to fill out web forms; personal information and book information pre-populate. All the user has to do is make a menu choice indicating where s/he would like the book to be sent for pickup!

This includes an on-campus office delivery option for UMTC faculty and staff. Once a book is either returned or found on the shelf, shipping will take place within 48 hours on weekdays; most requests can be done within 24 hours.

Excellence in the Workplace: Legal and Life Skills in a Nutshell
By Kathleen Kavanagh and Paula Nailon

The law library has three copies in the Reserve Collection: KF300 .K38x 2007

Description: This book deals with fundamental lawyering skills (such as analysis, research, writing, oral communication, and time management) as well as with characteristics of emotional intelligence, effective interpersonal relationships, models of professionalism, conflict and stress management, and generational differences. It also offers practical advice for building a successful career (such as creating a career plan, assessing a job offer, negotiating salaries, money management, and work-life balance). Successful lawyers tell us this is the book they wish they'd read when working at summer jobs during law school, or in their first jobs after graduation.

Features And Benefits:

Excellence in the Workplace has 37 chapters dedicated to developing and supporting the success of young legal professionals

The chapters are arranged in a logical order, beginning with preparing for a first day on the job, and progressing to life on the job, managing a budget, and maintaining work/life balance

The book is designed for easy reading and reference for students; additionally, chapters can also be used as teaching modules, individually or as a comprehensive series

The content is comprehensive-- covering a wide range of fundamental skills (such as research, analysis, writing, oral communication, managing assignments, and putting feedback to good use)

It also addresses issues of concern to many students such as overcoming shyness, understanding workplace culture, development of emotional intelligence and "people skills," and management of stress and conflict

The book teaches by example, using student reflections about real-life situations, shared in the form of on-the-job journal entries

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Looking for a specific journal article? Here is a really easy way to get there!

Use the “Citation Linker�? available at: http://tc.liblink.umn.edu/sfx_local/cgi/core/citation-linker.cgi. Simply enter the parts of the citation you know and click Go!

The Citation Linker also helps you find specific journals and books through its search engine.

Thanks to Assoc. Dir. Connie Lenz for sharing.

Resources inspired by Daddy's Girl by Lisa Scottoline

In the LART (Law, Literature and the Arts) Collection, located on the 2nd floor of the law library, we have several books by Lisa Scottoline. One of her most recent, Daddy's Girl, tells the story of law professor Nan Greco's quest to solve the mystery behind the last words of a dying prison guard caught in a riot when Nan is teaching a class at the prison. Scottoline uses the Underground Railroad as part of a plot twist. From the author's website:

The idea for Daddy's Girl came from a long standing fascination Lisa has had with the Underground Railroad, which was very active in Chester County, Pennsylvania, found just over the Mason-Dixon Line. The "central route" or "Eastern Line" of the Underground Railroad began in Maryland and Delaware ran north through Chester County, and traveled farther to Norristown and then Philadelphia.

More resources on the Underground Railroad:
Underground Railroad Freedom Center: http://www.freedomcenter.org/
Underground Railroad Foundation: http://www.ugrrf.org/
Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia: http://www.cwurmuseum.org/
John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum: http://www.undergroundrailroadmuseum.com/
Underground Railroad Flight to Freedom Program: http://www.the-ugrr.org/

More Resources:
NorthStar: Stories of Minnesota's Black Pioneers: http://www.tpt.org/northstar/Resources.html

Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts: http://www.masshist.org/online/abolition.cfm
Description:
The state of Massachusetts played a major role in the American antislavery movement, and for a number of decades, the epicenter of this movement was in Boston. The Massachusetts Historical Society created this website in order to highlight some of the visual materials from their collection that deal with this facet of American history. Visitors to the site can look over digital images of 840 items, which include paintings, sculptures, banners, and broadsides. Items featured within this archive include formal portraits of noted lawyer Wendell Phillips, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and Senator Charles Sumner. Additionally, visitors can also view a ticket to the 1857 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society speech and a diagram of a plan for resisting the fugitive slave law.

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2008.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

Robert Ambrogi notes on his blog LawSites:
"There's something happening here. Just two days after Public.Research.Org published 1.8 million pages of copyright-free federal case law online (see his post), the company that provided it with those cases, Fastcase, unveiled an even larger free library of cases, statutes, regulations, court rules and legal forms. Called The Public Library of Law, it claims in an announcement to be "the most comprehensive free resource for legal research online." This is all part of the company's commitment "to democratize the law," says CEO Ed Walters:

"American law used to be controlled by foreign-owned publishers. Over the past eight years, Fastcase has smashed through those bottlenecks with our premium service for lawyers. Now, by launching the Fastcase Public Library of Law as a free service, we are also empowering non-lawyers to learn about and use the law themselves."

PLOL includes all the federal cases Fastcase provided to Public.Research.Org, plus appellate cases from all 50 states from 1997 forward. In addition, it has statutes from all states, court rules from all states, regulations from selected states, the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations and federal court rules.

What's the catch? None. Users do have to register and agree to the terms of service, but registration is free and the TOS is standard fare. PLOL lacks the bells, whistles and red flags of Fastcase and other commercial research services. But for simple, bare-bones research, you can't beat the price."

PreCYdent is a new search engine containing cases and statutes that are in the public domain. It is free to use, and has a user-friendly search box similar to Google's. PreCYdent is an open source site and currently has 355589 opinions and 2501 statutes dating from 04/01/1759 to 02/11/2008. If you want to try it out, click here.

Source: bkallusky01's blog from Hamline University School of Law

Three of the faculty members at the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University have recently written an Election Law book. It is also available in full-text on the Internet and a print copy will be added to the law library collection.

From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States
By Steven F. Huefner, Daniel P. Tokaji & Edward B. Foley, with Nathan A. Cemenska


Description: From voting machines to provisional ballots to voter identification requirements, the "nuts and bolts" of the country's election systems have generated concern across the political spectrum. Yet in the face of considerable disagreement over what changes should be made, the debate has too often proceeded without an adequate understanding of existing rules and practices. This book helps fill that gap by describing the results of a yearlong study of election administration in five key Midwestern states: Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Not only have these five states historically played a pivotal role in national politics, but they also provide examples of a variety of approaches to election administration. The book's in-depth, comprehensive election administration study offers analysis of what has worked well in these five states and what has fallen short. This groundbreaking study will assist legislators and policymakers as they work to build election ecosystems that are efficient, effective, fair, and accessible to all citizens.

Read the book online at: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/joyce/index.php

Here are some new or updated legal resources that have recently been announced:

Do Legal Origins Have Persistent Effects Over Time? A Look at Law and Finance around the World c. 1900
Author: Aldo Musacchio: Abstract: How persistent are the effects of legal institutions adopted or inherited in the distant past? A substantial literature argues that legal origins have persistent effects that explain clear differences in investor protections and financial development around the world today (La Porta et al., 1998, 1999 and passim). This paper examines the persistence of the effects of legal origins by examining new estimates of different indicators of financial development in more than 20 countries in 1900 and 1913. The evidence presented does not yield robust results that can sustain the hypothesis of persistence effects of legal origin, but it is not powerful enough to reject it either. Then the paper examines if there were systematic differences in the extent of investor protections across countries, since that is the main channel through which legal origin affects financial development, and shows that all the evidence supports the idea of relative convergence in corporate governance practices across legal families circa 1900. The paper concludes that, if the evidence presented is representative, the variation observed in financial development around the world today is likely a product of events of the twentieth century rather than a consequence of long-term (and persistent) differences occasioned by legal traditions.
Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-030.pdf

Merlin Information Systems: Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch, authors of The Lawyer's Guide to Fact Finding on the Internet, introduce Merlin Information Systems, a useful database for skip-tracing, marshalling assets, and backgrounding people. Lawyers and law firms should take note of the special offer at the end of the article. This article originally appeared in the ALI-ABA newsletter, Internet Fact Finding For Lawyers (Jan/Feb 2008).

A Pocket Guide to the Classified Information Procedures Act: Keeping Government Secrets: A Pocket Guide for Judges on the State-Secrets Privilege, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and Court Security Officers is available from the Federal Judicial Center: "Most federal judges come into contact with classified information infrequently, if at all, but when they do, they are faced with the dilemma of how to protect government secrets in the context of an otherwise public proceeding. This pocket guide is designed to familiarize federal judges with statutes and procedures established to help public courts protect government secrets when courts are called upon to do so. The guide provides information about the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), information security officers, and secure storage facilities."

USLaw.com tracks 1,000-plus law blogs including over 40 that cover law libraries and legal research. Check out the Law Blog Directory.

U of M's "EthicShare" Project Pilots a Groundbreaking Approach to Ethics Research

The University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics in partnership with the University of Minnesota Libraries and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering has been awarded a $517,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop and pilot “EthicShare,�? an online Web site and bibliographic database for ethics scholars to discover and share high quality digital articles and other materials—scholarly and popular press articles, multimedia objects, pre-prints, and archival documents.

During the pilot phase, the EthicShare team will develop features for users to rate, comment on, and vet content, allowing EthicShare to establish new forms of editorial control and community participation in the growth and future of the Web site.

“EthicShare is a groundbreaking opportunity for scholars to work together to create a new approach to identifying and sharing the best materials in ethics,�? says Jeffrey Kahn, Director of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics and one of the project’s principal investigators. “The technologies we are putting to work will allow for detailed searching, including the ability to use reviews and quality ratings by colleagues as a way to find and select scholarly materials. EthicShare will also create a way for scholars to share works in progress and collaborate on new ideas.�?

The EthicShare pilot is a continuation of an earlier grant awarded to the University of Minnesota by the Council of Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) with funds from the Mellon Foundation. EthicShare grows out of a planning partnership with Indiana University-Bloomington; Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis; the University of Virginia; and Georgetown University. This phase of EthicShare is bolstered by newly established relationships with the National Library of Medicine (NLM), OCLC, and others.

EthicShare is part of a larger trend towards discipline-specific online communities that support the humanities, social sciences, and the sciences—all fields that play a role in practical ethics scholarship. Recent priorities of American Council of Learned Societies, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, as well as the University of Minnesota, have included strategies to build community and support collaborative exchange among scholars distributed across the globe.

As a partnership between the Center for Bioethics, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the University Libraries, EthicShare is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together a diverse but deep commitment to innovation in the areas of information discovery, scholarly exchange, and dissemination. Wendy Pradt Lougee, University Librarian, and Computer Science and Engineering professor John Riedl, both co-principal investigators along with Professor Kahn, are leaders in the fields of digital library development, and social networking and collaborative filtering, respectively.

Together with Professor Kahn, Lougee and Riedl hope to develop a virtual community for scholars that serves as a model for scholarly research for fields beyond practical ethics.

Thomson West announces the launch of WestBlog.net, a blog devoted to covering LegalTech New York. In conjunction with the new blog, West released a podcast, Legal Blogging: Trends and Tips, in which Robert Ambrogi was one of three guests interviewed by West's Gretchen DeSutter, along with Monica Bay, editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, and Ashby Jones from The Wall Street Journal. West's announcement of the blog says:

"The blog will feature daily reports showcasing the breaking news, products and personalities that make LegalTech New York the legal industry's most anticipated legal technology trade show. Reports will include text, photos and video and audio interviews with executives from West, Thomson Elite and other Thomson businesses, industry influencers, customers and media."

You can find all the West podcasts at this page.

Source: Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites

Through the collaborative efforts of Cornell and UCLA, there is now available a bibliographic database of empirical legal studies and scholarship: the ELS Bibliography. It is available at:
http://www.law.ucla.edu/home/apps/els/

The database is a work-in-progress, and we welcome any comments or suggestions that users may have. The database allows author, title, and subject searching, as well as limiting by year. For more background information on the project, be sure to check the database description.

Empirical legal studies are increasingly important in the legal academy as it evolves to become more interdisciplinary. Moreover, empirical legal scholarship has direct relevance to the discussions of legal issues in today's public and political discourse. Thus, we hope that the ELS Bibliography will be a welcome resource.

Send feedback to: Matt Morrison
Research Attorney and Lecturer in Law
Cornell University Law Library
355 Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca NY 14853-4901
607-255-2487
607-255-1357 (fax)
mmm72@cornell.edu

In the January issue of College & Research Libraries News is a useful list of resources : "Election 2008 resources: Political information online, networked, and in the social world" compiled by Lorena O’English, social sciences reference and instruction librarian at Washington State University’s Holland and Terrell Libraries.

From the Article:
"While ten years ago most people got their political information from candidates or traditional media sources, such as television and newspapers, over the last decade Americans have increasingly been turning to the Internet as a major source for information. In just the last few years, options have gone beyond online providers that are linked to print media to new resources that have been born digital, especially with the rapid growth of Weblogs and the interactivity and user-generated content now available through social networking and Web 2.0 services, such as YouTube and MySpace.

This article highlights a number of sites that may be of use to librarians and library users who are looking to get information not just about candidates but also about the political process in our increasingly online, networked, and social world. Most of these resources include RSS feeds for some if not all of their content, and many include public forums or blog comments from members of the general public. The notion of a commenting culture is alive and well in the realm of online political information."

Read the rest of the article.

Source: C&RL News

Looking for some help using HeinOnline? Check out their blog for tips, enhancements, and other useful resources to make the most of your search! Here's a sample "Tip of the Week" from their blog:

Searching and Using Boolean Operators

Using the One-box and Advanced Search options:

When forming a search query using the One-box and Advanced Search options, you must use Boolean Operators (AND, +, OR, NOT, -) to combine multiple terms and you must capitalize the operators. Additionally, quotations are important when searching for a phrase or multiple phrases. Below are a few tips for building search queries using the Advanced and One-box search options.

Tip #1 - Boolean Operators must be all CAPITALS.
Use AND vs. and, OR vs. or, NOT vs. not. Using lower case operators can greatly impact the quantity and quality of your search results. Example: Input the following search query using the Advanced Search option within the Journals library:

text:"power imbalance" or "power balance in mediation" (choose all titles and leave section types checked to default options)

The quantity of results received is greater than 877,000. Now, modify the above search query to contain OR (in CAPITAL letters) and resubmit the query. The quantity of results received is 1,777.

Read more of this tip here.

Direct link to blog: http://heinonline.blogspot.com/

Source: http://law.hamline.edu/blog/bkallusky01

"The aim of this web site is to make available materials unavailable elsewhere. There is no topic-oriented theme to our content. If we have a theme, it is one of openness, hence our motto: Videre licet."

Most recently added files:

FOIA Logs for US DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division for FY2005–FY2007 - [01-Jan-2008]
FOIA Logs for US DOJ Professional Responsibility Advisory Office for FY2005–FY2007 - [01-Jan-2008]
FOIA Logs for US Trade and Deve