Chart of U.S. State Cell Phone Driving Laws

ResourceShelf has a post about U.S. state driving laws with cell phone restrictions. They include a link to the Governors Highway Safety Association's "Cell Phone Driving Laws" page which includes a useful chart (current as of this month) as well as a list of countries with driving laws restricting or prohibiting hand-held cell phones in cars.

More New U.S. Government Blogs

Wow, it's a busy week for government blogs. This week Gov Gab got it's start. USA.gov describes it as:

"A new blog from USA.gov and a team from the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services. Each weekday, you’ll find a new post with helpful government information that reflects the writers’ experience working on USA.gov, Pueblo.gsa.gov, or 1 (800) FED-INFO. Readers are encouraged to join the conversation by leaving comments or sending e-mails."

Here's the blog: http://blog.usa.gov/roller/govgab/
Here's the main feed: http://blog.usa.gov/roller/govgab/feed/entries/atom

Scott at Information Overlord also mentions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Mike Leavitt is also blogging. He started last month.

State Department Launches Official Blog: DIPNOTE

The State Department has launched their first blog. It's called Dipnote. According to Sean McCormack's "Welcome" post, Dipnote refers to a diplomatic note. Mr. McCormack goes on to explain what a diplomatic note is:

"The dictionary definition of a diplomatic note is: 'A formal communication between an ambassador and a minister (usually the foreign minister) of this host government or another ambassador.'"

Mr. McCormack explains one of the goals for Dipnote:

"I hope Dipnote will provide you with a window into the work of the people responsible for our foreign policy, and will give you a chance to be active participants in a community focused on some of the great issues of our world today."

You can visit Dipnote here: http://www.blogs.state.gov/. You are encouraged to subscribe to their RSS feed, but they don't actually appear to have any feed yet. At the time of this post, the "How to Subscribe" page only tells you how to subscribe to feed, in general. I'm hoping they'll put a nice, big, orange button on there soon....

UPDATE: They added the feed link. Here it is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dipnote

Extending a Maple Leaf

I'm feeling a little guilty, which is nothing new. Today's guilt stems from reading Steve Matthews's Law Firm Web Strategy post today. It's called, "You Gotta Say Thanks!" And, well, uh ... I didn't. But I am going to do that right now.

Steve wrote a very nice post on his Vancouver Law Librarian Blog called, "AbsTracked is Back!" And I just want to say, "Thanks Steve!"

If you haven't heard, Steve Matthews (who is also a founding member of the Canadian legal blogging co-op, Slaw) just started his own company called Stem last month. I am in awe of anyone who has the courage to start up a new business. Steve's expertise is in Web marketing for the legal industry and here's what Stem is all about:

"The vision behind Stem is to offer an outsourced service for law firms to increase online profile and web-driven business opportunities."

It sounds like a great idea to me. Plus, I really like the leaves that pop-up when you hover over the top navigation links on Stem's Web site.

U.S. National Book Festival

Don't forget that the U.S. National Book Festival will take place on the National Mall in Washington, DC this Saturday, September 29th. The pavilions will be set up between 7th - 14th Streets and the festival (which is free) will run from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Here are some useful links:

• Festival Map (PDF)
• List of Participating Authors
• Author Lecture Schedule
• Author Book Signing Schedule
• What's in the Pavilions
• Podcasts

If you can't physically go to the festival, you can still listen to the author lectures. Just click on any of the author links above, and then click on a specific author's name to access the Webcast. According to LC, the Webcasts will be available shortly after the author's appearance at the festival. Oh, and in case you haven't heard, Nancy Pearl will be there.

Sedona Conference - Search & Retrieval Methods

Dan Michaluk of All About Information points out that the Sedona Conference has published, Best Practices Commentary on Search & Retrieval Methods (August, 2007). You can read Dan's "key quotes made in advocating for automated search" in discovery here.

HeinOnline Launches a Blog

HeinOnline created a blog earlier this month and started adding content September 10th. They just introduced it today.

Here's the blog: http://heinonline.blogspot.com/

Here's the blog feed: http://heinonline.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

'Looking for Personal Finance Blogs?

Look no further. pfblogs.org is an ad-free personal finance blog aggregator. We're talking about over 40,000 entries from 900+ blogs (at this second) - all aggregated at one site. You can search the site, pull up individual blog content on the site, find the most popular (most clicks) blogs and posts, link to all of the individual blogs, and snag lots of feed.

You can even grab the monster feed for all 900+. I have to warn you though, your own feed reader will max out in minutes. Every time I go to check it in Bloglines, I have 200 posts waiting for me. Apparently that's the max (thank goodness!). Do you think you can handle it? Here's that monster feed: http://pfblogs.org/feed/

Federal Court Transcripts Will Now Be Available on PACER

In a news release today, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts announced that:

The Judicial Conference of the United States today voted to make transcripts of federal district and bankruptcy court proceedings available online through the Judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system.

The transcripts will be available on PACER, at 8 cents/page, 90 days after they are delivered to the court clerk. The transcripts of court proceedings are the only type of court document not yet publicly available online nationwide.

Rockin' Reno

Former US Attorney General Janet Reno has just released a 3-CD set of historical songs. The 50-tune CD set is called, Song of America. You can read about it and listen to a few audio clips in yesterday's Miami Herald article, "Janet Reno Leads a Musical History Tour." You can listen to audio clips of all 50 tracks at Amazon here.

Here are a few of the artists included in Song of America:

• Devendra Banhart
• Bettye LaVette
• John Mellencamp
• Jake Shimabukuro

New York Just Wants to Be Free (Not Just NYT)

By now you've probably heard that the New York Times is offering to give away a lot of its online content for free. More specifically, the articles from 1987 - present and from 1851 - 1922.

Only some of the content from 1923 - 1986 will be free. Maybe that will change....

Anyway, if you haven't already read about it on every blog you monitor, you can read today's New York Times article, "Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site."

But wait! There's more!

New York Civil Law points out that the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations (NYCRR) will soon be available online for free as well. Bill A7885A was signed into law by New York Governor Spitzer last month requiring the New York Department of State to "post or maintain a link" to an unofficial copy of the NYCRR on their Web site. The law goes into effect on January 1st, 2008.

I like free.

Westcasts & Federal Info Pro Podcasts

Thomson West offers "Westcasts" (podcasts) on a variety of topics. For example, in July, they had a podcast on Librarians and Legal Research. You can grab the RSS feed here: http://www.west.thomson.com/podcasts/westcast_rss.xml

LexisNexis also offers podcasts. You can check out Federal Info Pro podcasts such as, Leadership Through Influence: The Path for 21st Century Government Librarians, a talk with the Director of Law Library Services, at the Law Library of Congress. You'll find the RSS feed here: http://fedinfopro.hipcast.com/rss/lexisnexisfederalinfopro.xml

Law Library of Congress - New Stuff!

In celebration of their 175th anniversary, the Law Library of Congress has redesigned their Web site. They are also offering a host of events, including a monthly Orientation to Legal Research and the Use of Law Library Collections class. Here's a description:

"This class provides an overview of statutes, regulations, and court cases and the relationships among them. The Law Library's resources for locating these items in print and automated formats are presented."

You just need to get a Reader Identification card and to register for the class.

Free Full-Text Time Magazine Articles Back to 1923

Time magazine not only allows you to search their articles from 1923 through last year, they also let you view them. And the best part? No subscription needed.

Testing it out, I ran a search on my mother's name. I came up with an article that ran 40 years ago this month. The third paragraph of "Corporate Nomads" reveals that my parents moved 10 times over the course of 9 years.

In case you're wondering...I was 1 year old when the article was written. From the time I was born to the time I was 3, we lived in 3 different states. That was it, though. We stopped the nomadic life in 1969. Despite the "cheerful" comments, I can't imagine anyone missed it!

Irish Times Searchable Online Back to 1859

Last week Peter Scott pointed out that the Irish Times Digital Archive is fully searchable back to 1859. That's very exciting news except for one thing. You need a subscription to view the actual article. Then again, if you need one particular article, you can search for it in the archive and order a "high quality" reproduction online.

National Hispanic Heritage Month at LC

U.S. National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th - October 15th. The Library of Congress has some new information on their Web site celebrating it. You can visit this page to check out interesting items related to this year's theme:

"Hispanic Americans: Making a Positive Impact on American Society"

You'll also find a lot of online resources for teachers and students at LC's Community Center Learning Page here. For more information on National Hispanic Heritage Month and the law that established it, click here.

KGB Documents Now Online

Lithuanian historians have placed KGB documents sent from Moscow to the KGB in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on the Internet for all to see. You can read the AP article here and view the documents at http://www.kgbdocuments.eu/.

Free Online Federal District Court Cases

Yesterday, I mentioned a site for searching full-text U.S. Supreme Court case and federal appellate case opinions. Today, I see that beSpacific mentioned that you can search the free online federal district court case opinions and orders back to 2004 at Justia here.

Free Online SCOTUS & Federal Appellate Cases

ABA Site-tation points out that you can get free online federal case law at AltLaw. AltLaw is currently in Beta and is a joint project of Columbia Law School’s Program on Law and Technology, and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the University of Colorado Law School. Current features include:

• Full-text searching of approximately 10 years of federal appellate and Supreme Court opinions
• Advanced search options (proximity searching, Boolean, concentration, wildcards, etc.)

They hope to eventually have daily updates, but aren't there yet. They also ask that:

"before relying on our site, you double-check your results with another legal research resource."

But if you're a librarian, you already know that! Oh, and did I mention that they have a Recent News & Announcements feed? It's worth a gander.

50-State Legislative Tracking

Last month, Joe Hodnicki of the Law Librarian Blog had a post about the National Conference of State Legislatures' (NCSL) 50-State Legislative Tracking Web Resources. The NCSL site says,

"Here you will find a topical, alphabetical listing of legislative and statutory databases, compilations and state charts/maps."

I checked it out and the resources are truly wonderful. For example, check out the Links to States' Legislative Ethics and Lobbying Laws, the State Legislation Database on Native American Issues, the state Campaign Finance Legislation database, or the state Budget Cycle chart. These are just some of the myriad of useful state legislative resources available from the NCSL.