Law Librarian Blog

LexisNexis Adds Data Sources for Colorado Practitioners

Source: LexisNexis

CBA - The Orange Book: Colorado Estate Planning Forms

An compilation of estate planning forms designed and written by the Orange Book Forms Committee of the Colorado Bar Association Trust and Estate Section.  Covers powers of attorney, appointment of guardian, client letters and questionnaire, and various types of wills and trusts.

Library:  COLO | File:  CBAEPF

CBA - The Orange Book Handbook: Colorado Estate Planning Handbook

Provides understandable advice, practical insight, and helpful guidance, written with the practicing attorney in mind.

Library:  COLO | File:  CBAEPH

CBA/LN - The Practitioner's Guide to Colorado Domestic Relations Law

Written by Colorado family law attorneys to address case law and court rules to state and federal legislation, and more.

Library:  COLO | File:  CBADR

CBA - Rights and Obligations: Colorado Landlord-Tenant Law From the Perspective of a Tenant Advocate

Topics covered include: eviction; judicial process; obligations of the landlord - remedies of the tenant; obligations of the tenant - remedies of the landlord; and security deposits.

Library:  COLO | File:  CBALTL

Combined CLE Materials from the Colorado Bar Association

Contains the combined materials from the Colorado Bar Association:  CBA/LN - The Practitioner's Guide to Colorado Domestic Relations Law; CBA - Orange Book Handbook: Colorado Estate Planning Handbook; CBA Rights and Obligations: Colorado Landlord-Tenant Law From the Perspective of a Tenant Advocate; CBA - The Orange Book: Colorado Estate Planning Forms; and Colorado Jury Instructions for Civil Trials.

Library:  COLO | File:  CBAALL

Columbia Law School Announces Release of Jailhouse Manual

Students at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review are celebrating the newly released sixth edition of A Jailhouse Lawyers Manual (JLM) and the inaugural edition of the publication in Spanish.

The two-volume JLM is produced to assist prisoners and others in negotiating the U.S. legal system. Among the 45 chapters is information on legal rights and procedures, religious freedom in prison, special issues of female prisoners, and immigration law and legal research.

New sections in the sixth edition - often culled from prisoner feedback - include topics such as the special needs of and juvenile, female, homosexual inmates.

Marco Palau ‘05 and Kathy Banuelos ‘05 served as editors of the Spanish publication. Sarah Stewart ‘05 told the New York Law Journal that the magazine staff was also assisted by 20 private practitioners.

The manual was first published in 1978, when the prison population was a fifth of what it is today. The current price is $45 for inmates and $90 for all others. One thousand copies are sold annually. 

You Can't Touch This - New on LLRX.com for May

From LLRX.com

• Researching Medical Literature on the Internet -- 2005 Update
• Dockets Update
• The Problem of Orphan Works
• Bibliography of Employment Resources for Law Librarians
• The Federal Civil Code of Mexico
• The Government Domain: New Tools For Government Research
• After Hours: Taste of the Nation Comes to Brooklyn / Meet Cuke Skywalker / Mail Order Wine
• Burney's Gadgets for Legal Pros: Making Use of an Idle Laptop / Expand your Laptop's Horizons / Put your Desktop on Laptop
• FOIA Facts: GAO Issues New FOIA Report

Job Postings at Blackwell Publishing

Blackwell Publishing, the world's leading society publisher, continues to grow in North America.  As a result, we have two new exciting job opportunities in our journals division.  If you have the desire and skills to help us grow, along with a strong team and service orientation, then Blackwell may be the place for you.

These posts are based in our U.S. headquarters in the center of Malden, MA.

-- Marketing Specialist - Library Markets --

The Library Marketing Specialist will work with the Malden based Journals Sales Team and the international Library Marketing Team based in Oxford, UK.  The objective of the role will be to deliver marketing activities which raise awareness and sales of Blackwell's collection of online journals in medicine, science, social science and the humanities amongst the library community in the US, Canada and Latin America.

More information.

-- Journals Sales Representative --

The Journals Sales Rep. will work as one member in a global team dedicated to expanding journal sales in the Americas to academic, pharmaceutical, and hospital libraries and consortia. This position will focus on sales through regular site visits and product demonstrations. The postholder will collect and interpret market intelligence through meeting attendance and relationships with customers, as well as report on online sales and market trends.

More information.

Other career opportunities at Blackwell Publishing.

National Indian Law Library's Tribal Law Gateway

The National Indian Law Library’s (NILL) Tribal Law Gateway is a database of the constitutions and codes of the 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States.  The database is arranged alphabetically by tribe name and identifies whether NILL holds a print copy of the constitution, whether a digital copy is available with links to the document if available, and links to that tribe’s contact information.  If NILL holds a print copy of the document, its date of publication and date of receipt is provided, along with a link to the NILL catalog record for the document. A work in progress, one of the goals of the Gateway is to establish a “union list” of these documents at American libraries.  For that reason, assistance in the form of shared information is requested from libraries that collect tribal law.

Source: Cornell Law Library's InSITE for May 23, 2005.

Maryland State Law Library Director Appointed

The Hon. Robert M. Bell, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland and Chair of the Maryland State Law Library Committee, has announced the appointment of Steven Paul Anderson as the new Director for the Maryland State Law Library which is located at the Courts of Appeal Building in Annapolis, MD. Mr. Anderson, who begins his new position on June 13, 2005, will be succeeding Michael S. Miller, who will retire on June 30th after 28 years of service as the Library's director.

Mr. Anderson holds a Master of Arts in Library Science from the University of Arizona, a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law and a B.A. in Political Science and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. He has accumulated significant law library, knowledge management, research, and teaching experience as the administrator of a large Baltimore law firm library and earlier as an associate librarian at the Baltimore County (Md.) Circuit Court Law Library.

Most recently Mr. Anderson has been elected to serve as a member of the American Association of Law Libraries Executive Board, where his term of office begins July, 2005. He has been actively involved in both local and national law library organizations and has written and spoken extensively on utilizing technologies to enhance legal research and the organization and management of legal knowledge.

Fiesta of Books SR-SIS Book Drive

There has already been a great outpouring of support for the Fiesta of Books. But we hope to do more. We are providing books for the libraries of 5 schools in low- income neighborhoods in San Antonio. Please help foster the love of reading for the children of these schools by participating today.

You may participate in the book drive in one of the following three ways:

• Go to Amazon.com, (Click on the "Wish List" link and then search for "AALL" or "Fiesta of Books"). Your donation will be shipped directly to the Book Drive Team
• You can bring your donation with you to the conference and drop it off at the SR-SIS table.
• You can send a donation check made out to AALL to Fiesta of Books c/o Barbara Lah, University of New Mexico School of Law Library, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001. lah@law.unm.edu

Professor Laurence Tribe Suspending Work on Con. Law Treatise

In a two page letter to Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and a thirteen page open letter to readers, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe announces that he has decided to suspend work on the third edition of American Constitutional Law.  A succinct explanation of why is found in the second paragraph of his letter to Justice Breyer included below.  Both letters are available from The Green Bag.

Rather, I’ve suspended work on a revision because, in area after area, we find ourselves at a fork in the road – a point at which it’s fair to say things could go in any of several directions – and because conflict over basic constitutional premises is today at a fever pitch.  Ascertaining the text’s meaning; the proper role and likely impact of treaty, international and foreign law; the relationships among constitutional law, constitutional culture, and constitutional politics; what to make of things about which the Constitution is silent – all these, and more, are passionately contested, with little common ground from which to build agreement.

Lee Peoples, Oklahoma City University Law Library

Public Services Librarian, University of Hawai`i Law Library, Honolulu, HI.

University of Hawai`i Law Library invites applications for the position of Public Services Librarian, Position No. 085624.  See description with requirements and application information at http://workatuh.hawaii.edu/zoom_job.php?4078

University of Hawai`i is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Pence Law Library Dedicated Today

American University Washington College of Law celebrated the dedication of the Pence Law Library, in honor of a generous $2 million gift from Robert F. and Susan Pence. The library was renamed and dedicated at a ceremony at 1:30 p.m. today.

Bob Pence, a 1971 graduate of the Washington College of Law, has been a longstanding friend and benefactor for many projects and programs critical to the life of the law school. He has contributed consistently through the years to such projects as the WCL Capital Campaign, countless scholarship funds, the Student Bar Association Golf Tournament and the Dean’s Discretionary Fund. In 1999, in an attempt to increase alumni giving, he started the Pence Challenge, pledging to match all alumni gifts and pledges up to $50,000. That same year, he committed to match donations to the senior class gift fund, up to $25,000, later raising that pledge to $35,000. The funds were used to endow WCL’s Public Interest Loan Repayment Assistance Program (PILRAP), a fund used to assist graduates who commit to work at least five years in the public interest legal profession to repay their school loans. In 2004, as part of the Equal Justice Foundation Auction, Pence auctioned off an all-expense-paid weekend getaway to Venice, Italy for eight students and their guests.

“This gracious gift to the Washington College of Law is in keeping with a longstanding tradition of selfless giving on the part of Bob and Suzy Pence,” said Claudio Grossman, dean of the Washington College of Law. “A simple ‘thank you’ is wholly inadequate to express our gratitude for the years of generosity that have led to this point. Hundreds of faculty, students, alumni and, ultimately, clients have been beneficiaries of the Pence family’s kindnesses.”

Bob Pence is president of Pence-Friedel Developers, Inc., of McLean, Va., a real estate firm that specializes in developing shopping and retail space. He is also president of Grand Duke Hotels and of the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, his J.D. from WCL, and he is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Italian Literature at Yale University.

GW Law School Names New Dean

Civil Rights Scholar Frederick M. Lawrence Takes Leadership August 1

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president of The George Washington University, has announced the appointment of Frederick M. Lawrence, Boston University professor of law, as the new dean of The George Washington University Law School. Lawrence was selected after an extensive search and will assume his post August 1. Lawrence succeeds Interim Dean Roger Trangsrud who will return to the classroom as the Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law.

Penn State - Dickinson Law Proposal Suit Dismissed

The Patriot News is reporting that Penn State University is moving ahead with plans for a $100 million expansion of The Dickinson School of Law after a judge yesterday dismissed a case that could have halted the project. Cumberland County Judge Edward E. Guido denied all claims brought by three members of the law school's board of governors against their board and Penn State.

Earlier reports on this matter here and here

Noteworthy Recent CBO Releases

1. CBO Report; Remittances: International Payments by Migrants (pdf)

Summary

As one of the most important destinations of world immigration, the United States has emerged as the single largest source of reported remittances—payments sent by immigrant workers to their home countries. Indeed, the
opportunity to send remittances home is one of the important motivations for immigration. Remittances sent from the United States grew sixfold from $4.1 billion in 1981 to $25.5 billion in 2003, when they accounted for about one-third of measured global remittances.

Although remittances are very small relative to the U.S. economy — about 0.2 percent of gross domestic product — they are now larger than U.S. official development assistance. Remittances have become a significant source of funds for some of the developing countries that receive
them; for dozens of countries, they exceed official foreign aid or foreign investment as sources of external funds.

Remittances from the United States are sent largely by low-income migrants to help finance their families’ living expenses at home. In addition, some recipients use remittances for investment purposes, contributing to development in at least some of the countries that send migrants to the United States. Policies that affect migration to the United States are thus also likely to affect remittance flows and the economies of recipient countries.

2.Implications of Demographic Changes for Budget and the Economy
Statement of Douglas Holtz-Eakin, CBO Director,
before the Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives,
May 19, 2005

Vargas on the Federal Civil Code of Mexico

New on LLRX.COM:

Professor Jorge A. Vargas of the University of San Diego School of Law has posted an article with detailed information about the Federal Civil Code of Mexico. The article includes sections on the historical background of the current Code, discussion of the Code of 1928, legal significance of codes in Mexico, salient aspects of the current Civil Code and comments about “Decodification.” Professor Vargas is an expert in the field and his many publications include: Mexican Law: A Treatise for Legal Practitioners and International Investors (West Group, 4 vol., 1998 and 2001). His website Mexican Law includes a synopsis of Mexican legislation, recent developments in Mexican law and links to other Mexican law websites.

Lee Peoples, Oklahoma City University Law Library

Int J Refugee Law -- Table of Contents Alert

A new issue of International Journal of Refugee Law is now available: March 2005; Vol. 17, No. 1

Articles

Women Within the Refugee Construct: 'Exclusionary Inclusion' in Policy and
Practice -- the Australian Experience by Susan Kneebone
Int J Refugee Law 2005 17:7-42.

A Critical View of the Protection of Refugees and IDPs by the Inter-American System of Human Rights: Re-assessing its Powers and Examining the Challenges for the Future by Clara Sandoval
Int J Refugee Law 2005 17:43-66.

UNHCR's Contribution to the Development of International Refugee Law: Its Foundations and Evolution by Corinne Lewis
Int J Refugee Law 2005 17:67-90.

Armed Conflict and the Displaced by Karen Hulme
Int J Refugee Law 2005 17:91-116

Ontology is Overrated

For a very good analysis of tagging and ontology, see Clay Shirky's Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags .

And if you enjoy the article you may want to bookmark Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet.

Google Scholar Database Includes Records from 100+ Libraries

Google Scholar users will now see records of the print and electronic holdings of over 100 participating libraries according an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 100 Colleges Sign Up With Google to Speed Access to Library Resources by Jeffrey R. Young reports that the new service includes catalog records and direct access to materials in library databases for authorized users. The article is critical of Google Scholar for not providing information on what materials are indexed, what date ranges are included and what meets the definition of “scholarly.” This type of information is routinely available to databases users and librarians to help them make an informed selection of an information resource. To participate in the program libraries must join OCLC Open Worldcat or a similar program. More information is available from Google Scholar’s support for libraries link

Lee Peoples, Oklahoma City Univ. Law Library

______________________

Editor's Note: This is Lee's first post. He is joining the Law Librarian Blog as a contributing editor. Welcome aboard Lee.

Lee's web profile.

AAUP At Odds with Google Over the Google Print Project

The AP is reporting that the Association of American University Presses are expressing deep concern about Google's plan to scan books into their Libraries For Print project.  The work is being done with university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan.  The Association wants to make sure that their copyrights are not compromised in the process.  The article seems to indicate that Google is ignoring the trade group in the project.  More details are in the story on Yahoo News. 

Gary Price's SearchEngineWatch blog reports on the letter to Google from Peter Givler Executive Director of the Association of American University Presses, in which Givler contends that Google Print "appears to be built on a fundamental violation of the copyright act." In addition to Gary Price's summary of the issue, he offers links to new articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Business Week that discuss the matter.

Details about the Google Libraries For Print by Google.

Mark Giangrande, DePaul Law Library

RSS Feed for US Congressional Reps

The ResearchBuzz reports "Plogress ( http://www.plogress.com ) was designed 'to provide current information on what our representatives are doing in Congress!.'  ... It's updated every morning and comes with RSS feeds."

Check it out and don't forget to subscribe to the weekly email update service provided by the ResearchBuzz.

Ron Jones, Univ of Cincinnati Law Library

AALL ALL-SIS Presents Is the New Bluebook New?

Critics have described The Bluebook as "a maze, a thicket, a mutant mass of legalisms run rampant."   The 18th edition of The Bluebook is hot off the press.  Does this new edition clear up any citation confusion? What are the latest changes?  How does it compare with the ALWD Citation Manual?  For answers to these questions plan to attend: 

Is the New Bluebook New?, 18th Ed.
by Tracy McGaugh, Assistant Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law.
Tuesday, July 19th from Noon – 1 pm, Location TBA.
Presented by the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section.
AALL Annual Meeting in San Antonio

Prof. McGaugh has asked that attendees bring their 17th editions for cathartic Bluebook fun.

Professor McGaugh's areas of expertise include legal writing, trial and appellate advocacy and legal education.  Since 1999, she and co-authors Professor Christine Hurt, Marquette University School of Law, and Professor Kay Holloway, Texas Tech School of Law, have published the Interactive Citation Workbook for both The Bluebook and the ALWD Citation Manual.  She frequently lectures on educating the new generation of law students.  She is also the featured speaker at this year's Middle Manager's Breakfast.

Thanks to Lee Peoples, Chair of the ALL-SIS Program Committee and Associate Director for Faculty, Research & Instructional Services, Oklahoma City University Law Library, for the information.