Law Librarian Blog

Man Offers to Sell Wife for $50

CNN is reporting that a Brazilian man has offered to sell his wife for about $50 via an Internet auction site because he says "I really need the money." The site complied with Brazilian authorities demand for the removal of the ad, which may (or may not) have been a (bad?) joke. [JH]

Green Technologies: An Innovation Agenda for America

From the press release:

"The report, "Green Technologies: An Innovation Agenda for America," recommends more funding for energy research and innovation, with more visibility and more strategic thought at the federal agency level. It also proposes federal tax policy reform to provide consistency and certainty to consumers and the marketplace. In addition, TechNet supports a technology-neutral Renewable Portfolio Standards and a market-based greenhouse gas emissions system."

Google rises at Yahoo's expense

Interesting article from CNet News:

"Two years ago, Yahoo and Google, the two biggest search companies, were about the same size. Now Google is twice as large and growing fast.

While a wide range of factors--from personnel decisions to luck--played a role, most pundits think it came down to Google's smart moves in advertising and technology and Yahoo's bad bet on an online media empire run out Santa Monica, Calif."  [RJ]

Politicians and Their OPOs (Web Gurus)

Check out the Washington Post's Meet the OPOs: Online Political Operatives, Such as Mindy Finn and Stephen Smith, Want New Media to Send a New Message, in today's editon. [JH]

UC Irvine Law School Receives $1 Million Gift to Support the Law Library

The Joan Irvine Smith and Athalie R. Clarke Foundation has made a $1 million gift to the new School of Law at the University of California, Irvine. This, the law school’s first leadership gift, will support the establishment of the law library’s core collection. Read more about it.

If anyone from the Clarke Foundation can spare a dime, please contact me. [JH]

Professional Reading: Information Pollution, Knowledge Overload, Limited Attention Spans, and Our Responsibilities as IS Professionals

Emory University's David Bray has deposited Information Pollution, Knowledge Overload, Limited Attention Spans, and Our Responsibilities as IS Professionals in SSRN. Here's the abstract to this very interesting work: 

[This work discusses] information pollution and the problems associated with this phenomenon. I detail how information pollution arises, what challenges it brings for us as IS professionals, and future avenues of research and development that might remedy this problem. Specifically, the average knowledge worker – someone who is part of the growing information economy - loses 2.1 hours a day to interruptions associated with multi-tasking. If those workers make an average of $21 an hour, that adds up to $588 billion a year, more than the gross domestic product of Argentina. Another recent study finds knowledge workers experienced interruptions approximately once every 10 minutes and it took an average of 23 minutes for them to return to their original task. What can we do as IS professionals to address information pollution? This paper seeks to provide answers and stimulate future endeavors.

Google Expands Personalization with iGoogle

From PC Magazine:

"Google Inc. is stepping up efforts to allow its users to personalize how they search the Web, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all approach to search it already offers.

Officials told reporters at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday of moves to allow users to share their own writings, photos, lists and other creative efforts, as well as to give consumers personalized views of the Web through use of their geographical location and search history."

See also:

• iGoogle It Is!, PC World
• Google Gets Personal With iGoogle, InformationWeek
• Google expands personalization with iGoogle, CNN

[RJ]

Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking Comes to China

South Texas law prof Dru Stevenson calls attention to Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking Comes to China, an article by Jeffrey Lubbers published in the latest issue of Administrative and Regulatory Law News (at page 5) in one of the newest blogs in the Law Professor Blog Network, Administrative Law Prof Blog. Check out Stevenson's post and the Lubbers article. [JH]

Conflict of Laws Bibliography

Check out Symeon C. Symeonides, Conflict of Laws Bibliography: U.S. Sources, 2005-2006, 54 Am. J. Comp. L. 789 (2006) [Westlaw]. [JH]

CRS Report on School and Campus Security

SCHOOL AND CAMPUS SAFETY PROGRAMS AND REQUIREMENTS IN THE ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT AND HIGHER EDUCATION ACT
CRS Publication Date:  04/27/2007
Document No.:  RL33980
Author(s):  Rebecca R. Skinner and Gail McCallion, Domestic Social Policy Division

Abstract:  Safeguarding the security of students as they pursue an education is a paramount concern of federal, state, and local governments, as well as the school districts, schools, and institutions that enroll these students. Both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA; P.L. 107-110), and the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) contain requirements regarding crime and student safety. The ESEA also includes specific programs that support efforts to prevent school violence. While the HEA does not authorize specific programs to address campus crime and security issues, Section 485(f) of Title IV of the HEA contains statutory requirements related to campus crime and security, known collectively as the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act). Institutions must comply with these requirements to participate in the federal student aid programs and other programs authorized by Title IV (e.g., Pell Grants). Unlike K-12 education, there are limited federal funds available through ED to support institutions of higher education in addressing campus crime and security issues. This report discusses these provisions and programs as they apply to elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher education. It begins with a description of programs and requirements included in the ESEA, which is followed by a discussion of relevant requirements included in the HEA.

CRS Reports can be obtained from www.GalleryWatch.com. Individual reports are available from www.pennyhill.com. [RJ]

Opening: Reference Librarian, UCLA School of Law

The UCLA Law Library is seeking candidates for the Reference Librarian position.

Responsibilities: Under the general direction of the Director, Reference and Research Services, Reference Librarians provide a very high level of in-depth reference and research assistance to the UCLA Law faculty. This level of commitment offers the librarian an opportunity to work closely with a number of different faculty members. Reference Librarians also participate as supervisors in the library’s faculty research assistant program to help monitor faculty projects and provide guidance and expertise to students. Reference Librarians teach legal research classes, including Advanced Legal Research, Legal Information Resources for the Information Studies graduate students, and other workshops and classes given throughout the year. Reference Librarians also conduct library orientation programs, prepare research guides, and perform reference desk service, which may include staffing the reference desk one evening per week and on occasional Saturdays. Reference Librarians may be assigned an area of concentration or to a project that varies according to library needs and the Librarian's individual talents and interests.

Required: Master’s degree in library and information science (or equivalent) and J.D. required. Relevant work experience in an academic law library OR professional legal experience required. Other substantial, related experience, degrees, or skills will be considered. Demonstrated competence in delivering legal research services and knowledge of legal bibliography and scholarly research. Firm commitment to law librarianship and to a high level of service for faculty and students in a demanding academic environment.

To Apply: Candidates applying by June 30, 2007 will be given first consideration. For full information on required qualifications, for the full posting, or for application procedures, please see: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2188.cfm

Professional Reading: Q. Who Benefits from Our Devotion to Bibliographical Orthodoxy?

A. LexisNexis and Westlaw according to Ian Gallacher, Assistant Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law.

I think all law librarians know that but Gallacher article also presents an interesting argument for open source law achieved by neutral citation. See Cite Unseen: How Neutral Citation and America's Law Schools Can Cure Our Strange Devotion to Bibliographical Orthodoxy and the Constriction of Open and Equal Access to the Law, 70 Alb. L. Rev. 491 (2007)[Westlaw]. [JH]

From the article's introduction:

In this Article, I will examine the undesirable effects of [our] devotion to citation form, paying particular attention to the unintended, but real, effect the present citation system has in impeding free and open access to the law. This effect ... is becoming more significant as the cost of legal information in book form rises. It appears increasingly likely that, sooner rather than later, the only method of retrieving, studying, and using the common law will be through the vast commercial databases maintained by West and LexisNexis.

This Article will review the history of legal citation, discuss how citation rules affect our ability to cite to court opinions, and scrutinize some proposed alternatives to present citation practices and the reasons those alternatives have not, as yet, become standard. I will not be engaging in a comparative critique of the ALWD Manual and The Bluebook; that discussion has been conducted elsewhere, with the balance of the debate favoring the ALWD Manual. Nor will I criticize The Bluebook's tendency to change the way it requires authors to use signals such as See or Cf. That issue has also been engaged by other scholars and, while thought-provoking, is tangential to my purpose here.

In this Article, I will conclude that the American legal system's present citation practices have the real, if unintended, consequence of solidifying two for-profit companies' preeminent positions as the provider of American legal information, and that America's law schools should act to correct this situation and make the law freely available to all.

Search Engine Tutorial from Pandia

The Pandia Goalgetter is a short and easy search engine tutorial. It covers

• What is the Internet anyway?
• What kind of search services should you use?
• Internet directories
• Search Engines
• Metasearch Engines
• Search utilities
• The best search engines and directories
• Advanced Internet Searching - as easy as ordering pizza
• Boolean Operators
• Proximity: the NEAR-operator
• Case Sensitivity
• Nesting (Brackets)
• Truncation or wildcards
• Search Engine Maths; the easier way
• Field searching
• Error codes
• Menu based searching
• Pandia's 17 Recommendations for Internet Searching

Great resource for teaching Internet searching to law school students. [JH]

Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death

Interesting story from Wired.com:

"The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update."  [RJ]

Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the April 16, 2007 issue of InSITE:

• National Consumer Law Center
• Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
• POCLAD: Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
• Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center at Northeastern University
• RTK Net: the Right-to-Know Network

National Consumer Law Center
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) helps consumers, their advocates, and public policy makers use powerful and complex consumer laws on behalf of low-income and vulnerable Americans.  The website is broken down into different sections for attorneys and non-professionals.  For non-professionals, there are pages covering low-income and consumer justice initiatives, such as “Predatory Small Loans,” “Sustainable Homeownership,” and “Debt Collection Abuse.”  These initiatives offer summaries of the major points of law, as well as pamphlets, brochures and other free publications to help consumers.  For attorneys, there are sections offering detailed information regarding NCLC publications, as well as the capability to keyword-search through all NCLC manuals.  The site also provides samples of the NCLC’s litigation and work product in areas such as “Auto-finance Discrimination” and “Private Child Support Collection Agencies.”  In addition, there is a “Testimony and Comments” section, which contains statements from NCLC experts on issues such as consumer fraud, debt collection, and energy assistance programs. [BWK]

Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
Created in 1990 in Warsaw, Poland, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is an affiliate of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and is responsible for promoting human rights, democratic traditions, and tolerance throughout participating states.  Visitors to the ODIHR website can find official ODIHR publications (beginning from September 1999), broken down by topic (such as “Elections” and “Human Rights”).  Visitors can also browse the site by issue (“Democratization,” “Roma And Sinti Issues”).  Each section contains an overview of the issue; a news feed on the topic; official documents related to the concern; important meetings, seminars, and other activities; and information about pertinent ODIHR projects.  Each main issue page is broken down into sub-issues as well, covering more specialized concerns such as “Freedom of Religion or Belief” and “Gender Equality.”  Many documents are available in PDF as well as HTML, and some are available only in languages other than English, primarily Russian.  [BWK]

POCLAD: Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
The Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD) is a branch of the Council on International and Public Affairs (CIPA).  It was created to promote CIPA’s idea of democracy by fighting corporate personhood.  The POCLAD website is oriented towards educating the public-at-large as much as it is to assist already-engaged political activists.  To this end, the site is easy to navigate, containing links to the organization’s FAQ, its activities, a nice collection of political cartoons, articles and statements, and the group’s Resources and Publications.  Unfortunately, many of these are for sale and not available for free on the website.  What is available for free includes a “Model Legal Brief to Eliminate Corporate Rights,” which was drafted to “to assist communities organizing to challenge the United States government's gift of constitutional powers to property organized as corporations.”  While many POCLAD publications are available in PDF, the brief is in HTML only. [BWK]

Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center at Northeastern University
The Racial Profiling Data Collection Resource Center is a project of the Institute on Race and Justice (IRJ) at Northeastern University.  The IRJ is dedicated to examining questions on race and justice facing urban communities.  The Resource Center provides data on Community and Civil Rights initiatives and describes the process of data collection.  Of interest is the section entitled “Jurisdictions Currently Collecting Data,” which is a state-by-state list of individual jurisdictions which collect data, either voluntarily or through legislation, consent decrees, or settlements.  The Resource Center details the history of the racial profiling controversy, offering a glossary and timeline.  The Resource Center has also produced maps of legislation and litigation concerning racial profiling, offering not only detailed summaries of the legal activity but quick and effective visual snapshots of progress in various regions of the United States.  Researchers will be interested in the site's “Interactive Data Tables,” which allows users to parse the data extracted from various traffic stop study reports. [BWK

RTK Net: the Right-to-Know Network
Begun in 1989 in support of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), the Right-to-Know Network (RTK NET) is a service provided by OMB Watch (reviewed in vol. 4, no. 19 of InSITE).  RTK NET is dedicated to providing free and robust access to numerous environmental databases. With the information available on RTK NET, visitors can identify specific factories and their environmental effects, and assess the people and communities affected.  The environmental databases available include the Emergency Response Notification System (ERNS), Accidental Release Information Program (ARIP), and Risk Management Plans (RMP), among others.  Users may also search all the databases simultaneously.  The site's "Resources" section covers fact sheets and data sets for the included databases as well as links to additional information about environmental concerns (e.g. drinking water contaminants).  The RTK NET Help documents and the "Help" section exhaustively cover the use and scope of the Networks databases.  Finally, visitors to the RTK NET site may quickly search the EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for toxic pollution by city and state. [BWK]

InSITE contributors: Julie Jones, Research Attorney, Brandy Kreisler, J.D., M.L.S., Matt Morrison, Research Attorney, Jean Pajerek (editor), Head of Technical Services & Information Management, all current or former members of the professional staff at Cornell Law Library.

About InSITE: InSITE highlights selected law-related Web sites in two ways: as an annotated publication issued electronically and in print; and, as a keyword-searchable database. The law librarians at Cornell evaluate potentially useful Web sites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary and subject access to them.

Digital versions of this information can be accessed via:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived issues on the web: Click InSITE at www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library

2. E-mail subscription. Send the following request: SUBSCRIBE InSITE-L <YourFirstName> <YourLastName> to: listproc@cornell.edu

3. Readers can subscribe to the new InSITE RSS feed at http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/RESOURCES/insite.htm

The contents of InSITE and any recommendations therein are the opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of Cornell University. InSITE is copyright protected by Cornell Law Library, © 2007 Cornell Law Library. Permission to republish InSITE issues on Law Librarian Blog has been granted. For permissions, contact Jean M. Pajerek [jmp8@cornell.edu].

Cornell Law Library URL: http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library

Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides

Interesting article from the National Journal:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal."  (sub. req.)  [RJ]

LSAC Research Grant Proposals for Empirical Research on Legal Training and Legal Practice Due by Sept. 1

Proposals for empirical research on legal training and legal practice for the Law School Admission Council's Research Grant Program are due by September 1, 2007.

Contact: Lillian Worthington, Law School Admission Council, P.O. Box 40, Newtown, Pa. 18940-0040
Phone: (215) 968-1198
Fax: (215) 968-1169,
Email: lworthington@LSAC.org
Website: http://members.lsacnet.org/

Energy and the Environment: Myths and Facts

From the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Energy and the Environment:

"The Center for Energy Policy and the Environment at the Manhattan Institute released a new report by senior fellow Max Schulz, entitled “Energy and the Environment: Myths and Facts.” Sound policy decisions require a well-informed citizenry. But how well-informed are we regarding our energy needs and natural environment? The Manhattan Institute, along with Zogby International, polled 1,000 Americans about basic facts relating to energy policy. The findings revealed that many widely held beliefs are, in key ways, inaccurate. In this new report, Max Schulz examines the public perception of energy and the environment; by separating fact from fiction, we present the true story behind America’s energy myths."  [RJ]

Opening: Acquisitions Librarian, Florida Coastal School of Law

The Florida Coastal School of Law Library & Technology Center (LTC) is seeking knowledgeable, service-oriented applicants for the position of Acquisitions Librarian.  The LTC provides access to approximately 220,400 volumes and volume-equivalents in a variety of print and non-print formats, and has an acquisitions budget of over $1,114,000.  Florida Coastal is a private law school, fully accredited by the ABA. 

Description: The Acquisitions Librarian reports to the Associate Director of the Library & Technology Center.  The position’s primary responsibility is for the daily operations related to ordering and receiving materials for the library’s collections.

Duties:
• Assist in developing and/or refining policies and procedures as related to acquisitions.
• Train and supervise library assistants on acquisitions procedures.
• Prepare and place orders for library materials, ensure timely receipt of orders, and process invoices promptly.
• Maintain statistics and prepare acquisitions-related reports.
• Participate in collection development and the library-faculty liaison program.
• Participate in Reference Desk rotation.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:
• MLS from ALA-accredited library school
• 5+ experience in law library acquisitions
• Experience with Innovative Interfaces’ Millennium system
• Strong service orientation, with excellent oral and written communication skills
• Strong interpersonal skills, and ability to work both independently and in a team atmosphere
• Attention to detail
• Supervisory experience preferred

Compensation: Salary range = $45,000 - $49,000 annually, dependant upon qualifications. Full benefits package. 

To Apply: Currently accepting applications.  Will accept applications as long as position remains unfilled.  Send letter of application, resume, and the names and contact information of three references to Martha Smith, Associate Director, Florida Coastal School of Law, Library & Technology Center, 8787 Baypine Road, Jacksonville, FL 32256.  Electronic applications can be sent to msmith@fcsl.edu. 

Bush Vetoes Iraq War Supplemental

Here's the transcript of last night's televised speech. [JH]