Law Librarian Blog

Revised Federal Depository Libraries Designation Handbook Now Online

GPO has released a revised online version of the Designation Handbook for Federal Depository Libraries. This revised version includes a new section on the designation of libraries as regional depositories. It also includes sections that a library or designator can refer to that outline the complete steps for designation. [JH]

LiveNote Launches West Case Notebook Software

Need to keep all case-related documents in one place? Built on the LiveNote platform, Case Notebook is integrated with Westlaw so that any Westlaw research can be moved into a litigation file within Case Notebook. Check out West's product announcement and this video demonstration of Case Notebook. [JH]

Call for a Volunteer to Join Librarians Without Borders Board of Directors

Librarians Without Borders (LWB) is looking for an individual to serve as a member on LWB's Board of Directors. LWB is looking specifically for someone with experience in developing and monitoring the strategic plan, overseeing financial planning, and managing the Executive Committee. The term of office for a Board of Director is two years. Applications must be submitted electronically no later than September 1, 2008.

An overview of the Association and the Board of Directors application package is available on the website. For additional information about LWB's activities, check out past issues of LWB's newsletter, The Compass Connection. Here's the latest issue: June 2008. [JH]

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 according to WestBlog.

Works for me but Election Law (at) Moritz, a OSU Moritz College of Law - Moritz Law Library joint project, remains the best resource for election law information and analysis. [JH]

The Library Diaries Ends Chapter in Author's Library Career

"Open this book and you’ll meet the naked patron, the greedy, unenlightened patrons, destination hell, the masturbator, horny old men, Mr. Three Hats, and a menagerie of other characters you never dreamt were housed at your public library." That's from the blurb for The Library Diaries (PublishAmerica, June 9, 2008) a fictional account based on a public library employee's on-the-job experiences.

Write the book and you will get fired! That what happened to Sally Stern-Hamilton, a 15-year employee of the Ludington (Michigan) public library who wrote The Library Diaries under the pen name Ann Miketa and did not mention the library by name. [Chicago Tribune]. Here's Sally's iReport account:

After working for fifteen years at a public library in the rural midwest, I wrote a fictionalized account of a woman's experiences working in a public library. My director found the book offensive, probably because it doesn't show the director in the book in such a bright light, but ostensibly I was fired because my little 150 page book might make, "some of our patrons uncomfortable" or "some patrons may not come to the library anymore because of my book."

Thou shalt not criticize the boss in print. Time for Library Director Robert Dickson's termination? [JH]

Live Streams to Follow the Democratic and Republican National Conventions

Check out the live streams listed in Mashable's 20 Tools to Follow the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. [JH]

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Watcha Goina Do?

In this case it would more appropriate to say bad girl but a Wisconsin woman, Heidi Dalibor, was arrested and booked for failure to pay library fines (and failure to appear in court when summonsed on the charges). The grand total to get her out of the clink was around $200 (numbers seem to vary) for unreturned copies of Angels & Demons (a personal favorite of this blogger) and White Oleander.

On the bright side I bet the Graphton Library has more returns on time this month than ever before and the young lady seemed in a pretty good mood during her mug shot.

I will also note that upon showing this to my boss she told me not to get any ideas as I have previously pitched the idea that we take people to Justice Court (what we in Mississippi have as a small claims court). If anyone else proceeds in this manner please let us know in the comments and tell us if there are other successful book/$$$ recovery stories out there. {bb}

ALA Librarian Salary Survey 2008

Mean librarian salary increaded 2 percent to $58,960 in 2008, according to the ALA-APA Salary Survey: Librarian - Public and Academic.  Published by the American Library Association-Allied Professional Association (ALA-APA) in cooperation with the ALA Office for Research and Statistics, the survey shows aggregated data from more than 16,259 individual salaries of ALA MLS librarians. The six librarian positions are directors/dean, associate/assistant director, department head, manager of support staff, librarians who do not supervise and beginning librarians. [RJ]

New ABA Titles

Recently published titles from the ABA include the following. Details below the fold. [JH]

• Analyzing Law's Reach: Empirical Research on Law and Society (compilation by the American Bar Foundation)
• Distance Learning and Copyright: A Guide to Legal Issues by Steven A. Armatas
• Ethical Standards in the Public Sector, 2d ed., by Patricia E. Salkin
• Electronic Evidence: Law and Practice, 2d ed., Paul R. Rice
• Foundations of Digital Evidence by George L. Paul
• The IP Licensing Lawyer's Job: A Survival Guide
• Lay Words for Lawyers: Analogies and Key Words to Advance Your Case and Communicate with Clients by William Drennan

Analyzing Law's Reach: Empirical Research on Law and Society (compilation by the American Bar Foundation)

Publication Date: August 15, 2008
ISBN: 1-59031-896-6
Page Count: 814
Pricing: $89.95

Publisher's Description: Now, for the first time, the ABF presents a collection of the finest, most important articles from ABF scholars spanning the last two decades. Featuring such noted authorities as Steven D. Levitt, co-author of the best-seller Freakonomics, readers will be fascinated with the wealth and depth of information contained in this volume. Presenting the best of empirical law research, this scholarly book presents information on such topics as, neighborhoods and violent crime; detecting discrimination; reconsidering the concept of white-collar crime; the transformation of the urban law practice; law, medicine and family in neonatal care; the behavior of the non-unanimous civil jury; and much more.

Distance Learning and Copyright: A Guide to Legal Issues by Steven A. Armatas

Publication Date: August 15, 2008
ISBN: 1-60442-101-0
Page Count: 498
Pricing: $89.95

Publisher's Description: This book is designed to explain this disparate treatment, inform educators and attorneys about the legal responsibilities of teaching distance learning courses, and help educational institutions avoid unwanted copyright infringement liability. A practical guide for lawyers as well as teachers and school administrators, this book covers a variety of topics, including: The basics of copyright law; the "instructional exemptions" in the Copyright Act; locating authors and orphan works; negotiating effective licensing agreements; ownership of electronic courses; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; the TEACH Act; and the future of distance learning.

Ethical Standards in the Public Sector, 2d ed., by Patricia E. Salkin

Publication Date: August 2008
ISBN: 1-60442-062-6
Pricing: $89.95

This book is essential reading for government lawyers who want an introduction to various topics within the practice of government ethics, particularly at the state and local levels. It provides a clear and concise overview of many of the complexities of public sector ethics, including post-employment restrictions on government employees, whistle-blowing, pro bono work, regulation of honoraria, royalties and travel reimbursements, financial disclosure filing requirements, gift giving, conflicts of interest, and issues in enforcement of local ethics law. This Second Edition also includes a chapter on government attorney-client privilege.

Electronic Evidence: Law and Practice, 2d ed., Paul R. Rice   

Publication Date: August 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60442-084-5
Page Count: 510
Pricing: $120.00

Publisher's Description: Electronic Evidence: Law and Practice explores the range of problems encountered with electronic communications from discovery to trial, and offers practical solutions to both existing and potential problems. It examines the new discovery rules and how they relate to past practices, and fundamental evidentiary issues governing the admissibility of electronic evidence. Particular emphasis is given to the unique problems evolving around the way in which parties are asserting the attorney-client privilege and judges are applying it to e-mail communications.

Foundations of Digital Evidence by George L. Paul

Publication Date: July 2008
ISBN: 978-1-60442-104-0
Page Count: 480
Pricing: $119.95

Publisher's Description: Foundations of Digital Evidence provides you with a legal and practical approach to the new world of digital information. This book has been described as a must have for litigation lawyers, corporate counsel and records managers who want to understand how to appropriately handle the digital information of an enterprise.

The IP Licensing Lawyer's Job: A Survival Guide

Publication Date: July 23, 2008
ISBN: 1-60442-078-2
Page Count: 201
Pricing: $59.95

Publisher's Description: This practical guide will help attorneys new to intellectual property law demystify the intellectual property license. It reviews each of these basic issues and their various sub-issues and provides an outline to assist in reviewing any intellectual property issues.

Lay Words for Lawyers: Analogies and Key Words to Advance Your Case and Communicate with Clients by William Drennan

Publication Date: July 23, 2008
ISBN: 1-60442-096-0
Page Count: 109
Pricing:     $29.99

Publisher's Description: The key words and analogies featured in the book are intended to elicit strong mental--but particularly strong emotional--images or memories in the hearer, to stimulate in the listener a flood of associations with these words in order to effectively communicate with clients, witnesses, and jurors. Each category highlights words that may be unfamiliar to the lawyer and then provides definitions on meanings and examples of common usage. The book is divided into categories for computer terminology; words and phrases by birth year (Matures, Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y); Pan-generational words and phrases; literary references; and sports terminology.

Call for Chapter Proposals for New Book on Collaborative Information Literacy Assessments

In his email to me, Tom Mackey, Associate Dean at the Center for Distance Learning, Empire State College, SUNY, said that he and his co-editor, Trudi Jacobson,  Head of User Education Programs, University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY, would appreciate proposals from an academic law library perspective. As noted below, each chapter must be written by a librarian and a faculty member. One-two page chapter proposals must be submitted by October 17, 2008.  Note the track record; this book will be published! [JH]

Here's the announcement:

We are soliciting chapter proposals for a book entitled Collaborative Information Literacy Assessments, to be published in 2009 by Neal-Schuman Publishers. This book will include chapters co-authored by librarian and faculty teams about successful information literacy assessment initiatives in a variety of disciplines. As a follow-up to our first two books Information Literacy Collaborations That Work (2007) and Using Technology to Teach Information Literacy (2008), this new book will examine collaborative assessment strategies and case studies at the course and program level.

Assessment in higher education is a key concern for faculty, librarians, and administrators, as colleges, universities, and accrediting agencies mandate this process. New courses and programs must consider assessment at the start of project planning, rather than after, and existing programs must be re-examined to incorporate an assessment component. Now that information literacy has been integrated into the curriculum at many institutions, in some cases built into general education programs, assessment of information literacy curricula is a primary concern. We are especially interested in learning about the faculty-librarian partnerships that led to the design of innovative assessment practices. This book will provide a valuable resource for faculty and librarians who want to design or redesign their own information literacy assessment efforts by examining innovative best practices from a scholarly perspective. It will also provide readers with an up-to-date resource that reports on the current state of information literacy and the impact it has had on student learning.

Chapters need to be co-authored by a librarian and a faculty member. Also, each completed chapter should include the following sections:

Introduction
Related Literature
Institutional Context
Disciplinary Perspective
Discussion of the Faculty Librarian Collaboration
Assessment Model
Examination of Assessment Results
Impact on Student Learning
Assessment of the Assessment
Conclusion

This book will be co-edited by Thomas P. Mackey, Ph.D., Associate Dean at the Center for Distance Learning at Empire State College, SUNY and Trudi E. Jacobson, M.L.S., Head of User Education Programs, University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Please send proposals of 1-2 pages to Tom Mackey at Tom.Mackey@esc.edu no later than October 17, 2008. Chapter selections will be made and authors notified by November 10, 2008. First drafts of the completed chapters (25-30 pages) will be due on January 30, 2009. Final drafts will be due by April 20, 2009. If you have any questions about proposal ideas or about the book please contact Tom Mackey via email.

ILTA 2008 Is Underway

The 31st annual educational conference of the International Legal Technology Association is under way. The theme of the four day conference, Global Perspective, Peer Advantage, "conveys that attendees, regardless of size or location, can gain something from adopting a global perspective and gain an incredible advantage from meeting with peers." Check out the conference website and blog. [JH]

I Am - The Library

Howard Dean will call the Democratic National Convention to order today in Denver at 3:00 PM (local). Let the snoring begin, or check out one interesting by-product of the convention. Set in and around the Denver Central Library a few weeks before the convention, Denver Public Library's I Am - The Library documents the everyday ways a public library is used: video clip on The Nation's website, more at the Rocky Mountain PBS site.

See also: The Library is Your Friend (because it provides a place to make a YouTube video). [JH]

Extend Firefox 3 Contest Winners Offer Great Add-Ons for Online Researchers

Mozilla Labs has announced the winners of its Extend Firefox 3. The three grand prize winners in the Best New Add-On go to (1) an open source tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping called Pencil; (2) Tagmarks, a one-click bookmark tagging add-on; and (3) HandyTag which provides a complete set of most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel.

Best Updated Add-On grand prize winners are (1) Read It Later which allows you to save pages of interest to read later, thereby eliminating the cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest; (2) TagSifter for browsing your bookmarks by their tags; and (3) Bookmark Previews which adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar.

See the Mozilla Labs blog post for download links. [JH]

State Supreme Court Bans Sitting Justice From Filing His Dissent

The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered one of its sitting justices not to publish his dissent with the Court's majority decision. Apparently the Court stopped its court clerk from filing Justice Oliver Diaz's opinion into the record. Here's a copy. It was published by Folo, a blog. In the opinion, Justice Diaz writes "A majority vote to censor a justice of the court and prohibit the issuance of a dissenting opinion may be unprecedented in the history of American jurisprudence.”

Is this a first? The WSJ Law Blog thinks it might be. See Justices Tell Colleague Not to Publish His Opinion. Unprecedented? Mitchell Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog, thinks this incident would make an excellent topic for a law review article. Indeed it would. By not being part of the record, Justice Diaz's opinion has no legal status. [JH]

Just Released, Palfey and Gasser's Born Digital

All hell is about to break loose -- the first generation of "digital natives" is coming of age!

That's not the message in John Palfrey and Urs Gasser's Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (Basic Books, 2008) [book's website] but you might not know that from the publisher's blurb: "Our economy, our cultural life, even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed" ... a "portrait of this exotic tribe of young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow" ... "a smart, practical guide to a brave new world and its complex inhabitants." Sounds like some aging hippies afraid that "our world will be reshaped in their image" wrote this blather.

Don't let Basic Books' marketing department distract you from this important sociological analysis of issues (e.g., digital identity, privacy, stranger-danger) that may be important to digital immigrants like us (but may not be important to digital natives). [JH]

PCAOB Withstands Constitutional Challenge

So ruled the DC Circuit in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB (D.C. Cir. Aug. 22, 2008). By a 2-1 decision, the D.C. Circuit held that Title I of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), was constitutional and did not violate the appointments clause and separation of powers. For the best analysis in the legal blogosphere, check out the series of posts at The Race to the Bottom. Appeal to the Supreme Court is expected. [JH]

GlobaLex Legal Research Guides, August 2008

GlobaLex has published several updated research guides this month:

• International Criminal Courts for the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone: A Guide to Online and Print Resources by Amy Burchfield
• The Legal System and Research of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): An Overview by Dunia Zongwe, Francois Butedi and Clement Phebe
• A Guide to Legal Research in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Mirela Rožajac-Zulčić
• Russian Federation Legal Resources in English: Selection of Research Material by Lucy Cox
• A Guide to Legal Research in Russia by Arina Popova and Lev S. Soloviev

A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike

New report from the National Institute of Justice:

"Although we know a great deal about the behavior of traditional criminals, little information has been available about terrorists. Are they much different from conventional criminals, who tend to commit their crimes close to home? Research has shown that traditional criminals are spontaneous, but terrorists seem to go to great lengths preparing for their attacks — and may commit other crimes while doing so. How long does this planning take? And do different types of terrorist groups vary in preparation time?

To help answer these questions, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) launched a series of projects to explore patterns of terrorist behavior. In the first of these projects, a panel of experts was assembled to examine 60 case studies involving terrorist incidents in the U.S. during the past 25 years. These cases involved the four major types of U.S. terrorist groups: left wing, right wing, single issue and international. The panel — including this author — looked at the homes of the terrorists, the locations of planning and preparation, and the sites of the terrorist incidents to discover whether any patterns emerged.

What we learned was intriguing: The cases of McVeigh, the Sept. 11 hijackers and Rudolph are actually unusual. In fact, we found that most terrorists live close to their selected targets, and they engage in a great deal of preparation — some over the course of months or even years — that has the potential of coming to the attention of local law enforcement."  [RJ]

UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy

By its landmark resolution 60/288 of 8 September 2006, the General Assembly adopted the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which, for the first time, united all 192 Member States behind a common strategic framework.  A new report UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy: activities of the UN system in implementing the Strategy has been issued. The report highlights the efforts of the United Nations to support implementation of the Strategy, both through its individual departments, specialized agencies, funds and programs and through the Task Force. In looking forward, it suggests some measures on how the Task Force can further contribute to Strategy implementation.  [RJ]