New Libraries from Hein Online

From the Hein Online Listserv, 1/31/2006:

New from Hein Online:

1. HeinOnline's U.S. Federal Legislative Histories Library

This new database includes complete federal legislative histories
on such landmark Acts as the Securities Act of 1933 and Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), Railway Labor Act of 1926, USA Patriot Act, Civil Rights
Act of 1991, Federal Copyright Law, The Legislative Histories of the
Major Enactmentsof the 105th Congress, Legislative History of the
Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and more.

Also new is the Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories
database, derived from the looseleaf publication, "Sources of
Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government
Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books," by Nancy P.
Johnson. Her work includes compilations of congressional
documents for major laws and also references legal periodicals,
treatises and looseleaf services.

2. U.S. Statutes at Large Library

Within HeinOnline's Statutes at Large library collection,
researchers may browse by volume, popular name, Indian
Treaty, or "Other Treaty", which refers to the treaties entered
into between the United States and another country (treaties
are found in Statutes at Large until 1948).

Both of these new libraries employ a new search tool, Lucerne,
which enables researchers to narrow the content of their
searches based on additional criteria not currently found in
HeinOnline's traditional search tools.

Hein Online may be accessed by Syracuse University
users from the Barclay Law Library web site at:
http://www.law.syr.edu/lawlibrary/electronic/fulltext.asp

State of the Union Addresses, 1790 - 2005

Compare what President Bush says this evening in his
State of the Union address with the addresses of his
predecessors at State of the Union Addresses of the
American Presidents from askSam.com . The site
is a searchable repository of the full text of all State
of the Union addresses from 1790-2005.

Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-2005

The BeSpacific blog (1/27/2006) brings our attention
to the updated Biographical Directory of the United States
Congress, 1774-2005, now available at no cost in PDF from
GPOAccess. This historical reference work may be
downloaded in full or by section.

"Coast to Coast" Podcast on DNA Evidence

Coast to Coast is the weekly legal news podcast cohosted by
J. Craig Williams and Robert Ambrogi.

On this week's podcast, Williams and Ambrogi will discuss the
issues surrounding the use of DNA evidence. The guests are
Robert N. Feldman, a founder of the New England Innocence
Project and an attorney in Boston, and Joshua Marquis,
district attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon, and vice
president of the National District Attorneys Association.

An archive of all past shows is available here. All shows are
available to listen to in Windows Media format or to download
in MP3 format. The show's RSS feed is available here.

If you are member of the Syracuse University College of
Law Faculty and would like assistance with accessing this
podcast for yourself or your students, please contact me.

American Women's History : A Research Guide

The Law Librarian Blog (1/24/2006) highlights the
American Women's History : A Research Guide, a
web resource developed by Middle Tennessee State University.
The guide offers citations to print and Internet sources,
and links to digital collections of primary source material.

Materials may be retrieved by subject or state.

2005 The Whitest Law School Report

Professor Vernellia Randall (Dayton) has released
"2005 The Whitest Law School Report; and Other Law
School Rankings Related to Racial/Ethnic Diversity in Law School"
on her web site. According to Randall, the purpose of the report is
to provide:

*an alternative method to measure the extent that whites are
over-represented in law schools
*a way of measuring change and progress in equitable representation
of traditionally discriminated against racial groups
*a mechanism of comparing law schools training of a racially
representative group of lawyers as we move toward becoming a
"nation of minorities"; and
*provide information on the status of traditionally discriminated
against racial groups in law schools.

The 2004 report is also available on Randall's web site.

FirstGov Expands Search Capability

The BeSpacific blog (1/24/2006) highlights FirstGov's
expanded search capability for access to government
information. The improved search engine: expands the
search to include federal, state, local tribal and territorial
documents; increases the universe of government documents
from 8 million to 40 million; searches more efficiently and
effectively through the Microsoft MSN search index and
Vivisimo's metasearching technology; and, uses clustering
technology to organize thousands of search results into
categories.

"Sexing the Constitution"

What is the proper role of sexuality in constitutional law?
To what extent is the Court acting responsibly when it
protects sexually explicit art, of a right to use contraceptives,
or a right to abortion, or a right not to be prosecuted to be a
homosexual?

The University of Chicago's Geoff Stone addresses these
questions and more in his presentation entitled, "Sexing
the Constitution." The talk lays out some of the preliminary
research that Professor Stone has done for a future book on
how sexuality and sexual behavior is treated in
constitutional law.

You can listen to the the presentation and discussion
from a link on the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog.

New Research Guides from GlobLex

The Law Librarian Blog (1/25/2006) announces the following
new research guides on GlobLex at NYU:

Algerian Law Guide
A Research Guide to the Argentine Legal System
Guide to Indian Laws
The Mongolian Legal System and Laws: a Brief Overview
UPDATE:
A Guide to the U. S. Federal Legal System Web-based Public
Accessible Sources

"Teaching Tech Skills to Lawyers"

A recent article on Law.com (1/20/2006),
"Teaching Tech Skills to Lawyers" claims that,
..."despite a broad and increasing embrace of
technology by the profession, for the most part,
lawyers today learn about technology in ways
that have not changed in years." The article
goes on to describe the technological skills set
that new lawyers should possess through
training in law schools, bar associations, law firms,
and CLE providers.

"A Librarians' Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust"

Karen G. Schneider, Director of the Librarians' Internet
Index (LII), has published a handy "Librarians'
Guide to Finding Web Sites You Can Trust." This
succinct and practical guide is an essential tool
for students doing research in your classes.

"Good-bye to Law Reviews?"

Now that she is tenured, Rosa Brooks (Virginia) isn't planning to
write any more law reviews. In her post on the LawCulture
blog (1/17/2006), Good-bye to Law Reviews?, Brooks
claims that , "In the main, the strait-jacket of law review style
has killed what might have been a lively literature. It has maimed
even those few pieces of legal writing that actually have something
to say." The title of the piece refers to a 1936 article by Fred
Rodell in 23 Va. L. Rev. 38 (1936).

Brooks' fighting words have prompted a spate of replies and
comments. See:
Comments posted on PrawfsBlawg
Does Scholarly Writing Have to Be Tedious? (Concurring Opinions)
Hello to Law Reviews -Goodbye to Student Editors (Law&Society Blog)

See also Brooks follow-up blog post on LawCulture.

New from LLRX

Here's what is new on LLRX as of 1/15/2006:

*Deep Web Research Research 2006
*The Google Library Project: The Copyright Debate
*Researching Laws and Information on Nutritional and
Dietary Supplements On the Web
*Election Law @ Moritz
*Adobe's Macromedia Studio 8 -What's New in the Upgrade?
*Cost Savings With New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for e-Discovery?
*CongressLine by GalleryWatch.com: Floor Fight
*The Government Domain: News Roundup
*FOIA Facts: Bush Orders FOIA Executive Officers

Full-text Searching of Podcasts

Robert Ambrogi (LawSites, 1/11/2006) highlights
Podzinger, a new full-text search engine for podcasts launched
by BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Mass. "Search results
include text highlights of the portions of the audio that
match your search. Click on any word in the highlighted
text, and the podcast begins to play at the point where you
clicked. To the left of the results is a control panel that lets
you play the entire podcast or move backward or forward
through the audio. The control panel also allows you to
download the entire podcast, subscribe to its RSS feed, or
subscribe via iTunes or Yahoo."

West Launches "WestCast" Podcasts

Thomson/West has joined the ranks of podcasters
with it's new WestCast service, a series of law-related
podcasts. The first episode features Judge Joe Lee
and attorney Hugh Ray discussing the impacts of
recent bankruptcy reform legislation.

Recent CRS Reports on Court Opinions of Judge Alito

The Law Librarian Blog ( 1/04/2006) has abstracted
recent CRS Reports on the Court Opinions of US Supreme
Court Nominee Samuel Alito. Please contact your
Library Liaison for assistance with locating the full-
text of the reports.

LawCulture Blog

The Leiter Reports (1/13/2006) brings our attention
to the new LawCulture blog. Contributors include:
David Barron, Jennifer Mnookin, Jessica Silbey,
Kim Scheppele, Peter Brooks, and Rosa Brooks.

Recent posts include:
Evidence in Conflict: Repatriating Native American Human Remains
So much for the Kelo backlash
More on L'affaire Frey

Hein Online Down Time

The William S Hein Company has issued a statement on
its Customer Service listserv that "Hein Online will be
unavailable on Sunday, January 15, 2006 from 6 AM to
NOON due to an operating system upgrade."

Recent CRS Reports on Civil Rights & Liberties

The Law Librarian Blog (1/11/2006) highlights
Recent CRS Reports on Civil Rights & Liberties.
The article provides an abstract of each report,
publication date, author and CRS document number.

If you would like assistance in locating a report,
please contact your Liaison Librarian.

Project on Peer-Review Law Journals

In the upcoming weeks, Prawfsblawg will focus on peer
-review law journals. Author Matt Bodie will be taking
a sample of such journals and exploring who they are and
what they do.

For each journal, Bodie will consider:

What is the process for submitting to the journal?
What types of articles does the journal publish?
Who runs the journal?
Who are the peer reviewers for the journal?
What does it mean to have your article published in that journal?

Web Portal on Human Trafficking

The BeSpacific blog (1/11/2006) reports that the
National MultiCultural Institute (NMCI) has launched
a web portal that provides more than 15,000 web entries
of informational resources on issues related to human
trafficking and modern-day slavery from around the world.

NMCI's mission is "to work with individuals, organizations,
and communities in creating a society that is strengthened
and empowered by its diversity. Through its initiatives,
NMCI leads efforts to increase communication, understanding
and respect among people of diverse backgrounds and
addresses some of the important systemic issues of
multiculturalism facing our society."

Law Librarian Blogs the Best Legal Blog Category

Dennis Kennedy - considered among the most influential
experts on the application of technology in the practice of
law - has named Law Library blogs as the Best Legal Blog
Category in his 2005 Best of Legal Blogging
Awards (the Blawggies).

We are pleased that Mr. Kennedy mentioned the BarclayBlog
by name in his comments.

"You Send It" Let's You Email Large Files

Thanks to the TechCrunch blog ( 1/4/2006) for pointing
us to "You Send It," a free software that you can use it to
email very large files (like PowerPoint presentations).

According to TechCrunch, "you upload the file to the site,
tell it the email addresses to send the file to, and the
recipients receive a link that allows him or her to download
the file. The maximum file size is 1 GB. You cannot send
multiple files in one email, but you can send a zip folder.
Only a free version of the service is offered, which allows a
single file to be downloaded 25 times over seven days."

USB Wrist Bracelets Both "Cool" & Practical

Be techno-chic and keep track of your portable
USB drive with a rubber USB wristband.
The LibrarianInBlack blog (1/9/2006)
features a picture and links to more information.

Citation Database of Scientific & Medical Citations Now Free

Thanks to the BeSpacific blog (1/9/2006) for
pointing us to the following press release of 1/5/2006:

"Infotrieve, Inc. today announced that it had converted
ArticleFinder, its online scientific, technical, and medical
(STM) database with more than 26 million citations and
eight million abstracts from over 54,000 journals, to a free
access model. The move provides scientists and researchers,
who work for corporations and are subject to different copyright
regulations than their academic counterparts, with an end-to-end
solution for conducting STM searches across literature from
multiple providers. The solution seamlessly retrieves full-text
scholarly journal articles that they need on a pay-per-view basis."

Sony's New eBook 'Reader' Easier on the Eyes

Library "techies" are buzzing about Sony's new
eBook, released just last week. According to Sony,
"[this] breakthrough ... technology provides clarity
and resolution that rival paper itself. The 6-inch screen
is as easy to read in full daylight as indoors, and can be
viewed from nearly any angle.."

For more information and comments from
library technology blogs, see:

Sony Reader (Sony)
USA Today, 1/4/2006
LawLibTech blog
Librarian in Black blog

Archive-It

The Inter Alia blog (1/04/2006) points us
to a new service of the Internet Archive.

Archive-It allows users to browse or search through
the archived collections of web pages. Currently, there
are only 26 databases, but we can anticipate more along
the lines of those named by Inter Alia, including:
South Dakota State Agencies, Indiana State and Local
Documents, documents on Anarchism, South East Asia,
and the Islamic Middle East, and documents from the
French Institute.

Law School Survey of Student Engagement

From the Cornell Law Library InSite
electronic newsletter, 1/06/2006:

"Begun in 2003 and inspired by the undergraduate National
Survey of Student Engagement, the Law School Survey of
Student Engagement (LSSSE) gives law schools an idea of how
well students are learning and how they are engaging
in the law school experience. This survey covers over
40,000 students from seventy-three different law schools
located in 30 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.
Designed to provide data to law schools to improve
legal education, enhance student success, inform accreditation
efforts, and facilitate benchmarking efforts, the aggregate
data from this survey is made available to the public at no
charge through the LSSSE's website. Each participating law
school privately receives its own institutional data for analysis;
this information is not publicly available. The LSSSE website
provides visitors with overviews, annual reports, and a list of
participating law schools for each year of the survey. "

What is Web 2.0? Should You Care?

Legal tech gurus Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell
introduce us to Web 2.0 in their recent article
in Law Practice Today (January, 2006).

What is Web 2.0? According to the authors,
"it's a set of new technologies that is making
the Internet more interactive for its users."
The controversial open-contentWikepedia is
cited as an example of Web 2.0, while the online
Britannica is an example of plain ol' Web 1.0.

How does this emerging technology impact
on the law and legal research? The legal
world is jumping on the 2.0 bandwagon and
developing law related open-content projects.
Examples of Web 2.0 projects in the legal arena
include:

Wikilaw, a legal encyclopedia devised by
two law school grads that allows anyone to edit
any page. "Theoretically, the community of
users keeps the content accurate and
up-to-date." Will your students be citing to
Wikilaw?

WEX, Cornell Legal Information Institute's new
online legal encyclopedia, was developed along the
lines of Wikipedia, but with editors and
'vetted' contributors.

Kennedy's and Mighell's article link to a number
of sources where you can learn more about Web 2.0.
Of particular interest is their recent roundtable discussion,
Does Web 2.0 Point Us Toward Law 2.0?

Professional Qualifications of Judge Alito Evaluated by ABA and Law Professors

The BeSpacific blog (01/05/2006) highlights
the ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary
rating of the professional qualifications of Samuel A.
Alito. The unanimous vote of the Standing Committee
(with one recusal) was "Well Qualified." You can
view a PDF file of the individual votes at:
http://www.abanet.org/scfedjud/alito.html

Martindale.com Side-by-Side Comparisons

Robert Ambrogi's LawSites blog (1/04/2005)
points us to a new feature on Martindale.com.

LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell has launched an enhanced
version of its Martindale.com lawyer directory. The site
now includes a tool that shows side-by-side comparisons
of lawyers' credentials. You can compare up to four law firms
or lawyers based upon criteria such as areas of practice,
size of firm, office locations, educational background and
attorney bar admissions.

U.S. v. Abramoff

The BeSpacific blog (1/3/2006) has compiled a list of documents
and news articles associated with charges brought against lobbyist
Jack Abramoff.

New Journals on the Legal Scholarship Network

The Law Librarian Blog (12/29/2005) describes
two new journals on LSN, Law & Positive
Political Theory and Indigenous Nations & Peoples
Law. The latter is sponsored by the Syracuse University
College of Law Center for Indigenous Law, Governance
& Citizenship edited by: Carrie E. Garrow,
Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous Law,
Governance & Citizenship; Professor Robert Odawi
Porter, Dean's Research Scholar of Indigenous Nations,
Director of the Center for Indigenous Law, Governance
& Citizenship, and Senior Associate Dean for Research;
and Kevin Maillard, Assistant Professor of Law.

Jus Cogens: New Public International Law Blog

Although the editor is anonymous (his/her home
page indicates that he/she is an attorney admitted
to practice in the State of New York with a specialized
interest in public international law), this new blog
might be worth checking out.

Juscogens.net is a website "dedicated to recent
developments in the field of public international law."
Sources include the opinions of international tribunals,
international conventions, international organizations,
international custom, and the judicial decisions and
teachings of qualified publicists. Each major source
is tabbed on the home page for quick access and the
site is keyword searchable.

I especially like "This Week in International Law
Scholarship," a feature that cites a selection of new books
and articles on issues in international public law.

2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States

The 2006 Statistical Abstract of the United States
is now available from the U.S. Census Bureau
web site at:
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract.html.