LinkedIn Groups Now Have Discussions

Now anyone in the Law Librarians Group at LinkedIn can start and engage in a discussion. I did a little test and I think it looks pretty cool.

Sessions of Congress

If you have to work with U.S. congressional materials, you probably find yourself having to convert congressional sessions into years. That's fine if you're dealing with the past 20 years, but beyond that, you may have to start staring at the ceiling to do the math. Instead, you should use a cheat sheet.

LLSDC has one (actually two - there is an old one floating around out there) with corresponding debate record volume numbers. LLSDC's is in PDF format and goes back to 1789. It's very good, but it gets a little wild with the Notes symbols (because the focus is on the volume number information).

THOMAS has a good layout (although it would be preferable if the list descended vertically instead of horizontally) that links to a nice calendar view. THOMAS's list only goes back to 1975, however.

So, after looking at those and a few others, I think the winning cheat sheet is the U.S. Senate's Dates of Sessions of the Congress, present-1789. The list includes recess dates for both houses and you can flip it to sort from 1789-present. Plus, you can easily link to the Sessions of Congress page for more information.

Unbelievable List of UK Government Feeds

Scott Vine at InformationOverlord has created quite an amazing list of "UK Central government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies with rss feeds." I'm excited.

Feed of the Week - CIA

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has several good feeds. You can grab feeds for:

• CIA Library
• What's New on CIA.gov
• CIA Press Releases & Statements
• CIA Featured Story
• CIA Careers
• CIA Speeches and Testimony
• CIA.gov Kids' Page Updates

From the What's New on CIA.gov feed I just learned that:

"Two new fields have been added to The World Factbook People category. The new fields focus on the topic of education: "Education expenditure - percent of GDP" and "School life expectancy (primary to tertiary)" Descriptions of these two new fields can be found on the Notes and Definitions page. In addition, country information has been updated in all of the nine categories – Introduction, Geography, People, Government, Economy, Communications, Transportation, Military, and Transnational Issues – that make up The World Factbook."

You can any or all of those feeds here: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/your-news/index.html

It's Time to Take Another Look at LII's U.S. Code Collection

I recently took a new look at Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute's (LII's) U.S. Code Collection and I have to say, I'm very impressed. You may have heard that they now have RSS feeds to alert you to recent changes to the U.S. Code. That, alone, is a pretty fantastic addition. You can get feeds for titles as well as individual sections. You can also browse and search titles and, more importantly, click for updates to any section or title.

LII uses the official version of the U.S. Code from the U.S. House of Representatives Web site. It's updated using the Law Revision Counsel's Classification Tables. If you want to stay current, this is current. All you have to do is follow the trail to double-check the work they've already done for you!

So, let's say you want to cite 10 USC 2467. Click on that cite link and take a look at the right-hand side. You'll see Notes that provide the history of the section - you can see that it was added to the Code by PL 100-456; a 1988 public law. Click on the "Updates" (or "How Current is This?") and you'll see that this section was repealed earlier this year. LII tells you which public law repealed it and specifically which section. They also provide links to the law so that you can double-check this information yourself. Links to parallel authorities are also included on the right-side of each section.

LII's U.S. Code Collection has really improved. It's a great starting point.

404 Alert - U.S. Federal Court Rules

The House Judiciary Committee has a revised Web site. Unfortunately, it appears that they have removed the U.S. federal court rules in the process. So, if you link to them, you are now providing 404 errors to your visitors (like those you see when you click on these rules links).

Fortunately, the Federal Judiciary's Federal Rule Making page has links to the current official version of the federal rules. The Bankruptcy rules on that page link to a copy on Cornell's site.

GPO also lists the official version of the federal rules on its House Committee on the Judiciary: Committee Prints - 110th Congress page. However, you might notice that the dates are wrong. It lists them as being from 2005 (109th Congress), but when you click on the links, you get the correct 2007 version. Hopefully they'll fix that....

Update (01/13/2009): The House Judiciary Committee has relocated the U.S. federal court rules to this page.

It's the Economy, Stupid

Or so it seems. And if all this talk of economic woes has you worried, you might want to read what the blogs are saying. A nice way to find those blogs is via economist Aaron Schiff's Economics Blog Directory & Ranking. As of the time of this post, he lists 268 economics blogs in Technorati rank order. Schiff also provides a Google Custom Search that allows you to search all 268.

Digital Page Turners

If you love the availability of digital collections, but miss the comfort of being able to turn pages, fear not. The University of Minnesota Libraries allows you to do both.

You can see what I mean by clicking on the "Next Page" of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You can check out the rest of the OZ Collection here.

Official Olympic Reports

You can access digital copies of Official Reports of Olympic Games and Olympic Winter Games going back to 1896 at the LA84 Foundation's Web site. You can even search the reports, along with many other sports/Olympic-related materials, including oral histories.

The LA84 Foundation uses surplus funds from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games to "serve youth through sport and to increase knowledge of sport and its impact on people’s lives." They have the largest sports research library in North America.

Newfoundland Links & Tips

I recently returned from a 2 week trip to Newfoundland. It would have been great if I’d found one small page on the Web that had all the information I needed, but, alas, there was no such page. So, I’ve decided to share what I found while preparing for the trip.

Driving from Washington, DC isn’t bad. We were able to drive up to the ferry in 3 days with a quick pick-up in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Good overnight stopping points are around Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Moncton, New Brunswick.). To get to Newfoundland from the States, you need to take a ferry from North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Below are the ferry schedules (Note: A new vessel - and undoubtedly other changes are coming this fall):

• To Argentia on the East Coast (The ride is approximately 14 hours - Note: ferry departs at odd hours – like 3:30am - not good overnight hours like 6pm - 8am)


• To Port Aux Basques (sometimes called Channel-Port Aux Basques) on the West Coast (The ride is approximately 6 hours)

You should book in advance (you can do so online) and cabins are available. If you’re traveling with a young child, a cabin is great for naps! One very important thing to note with the cabins, though, is that if you aren’t in line for the ferry an hour and a half before the departure time, they will mark you as a “no show” (even if you check in well ahead of time) and may give away your cabin.

‘Don’t know which coast to visit? If the ferry schedule didn’t make your decision for you, here are just a few of the places you can easily reach from each port:

West

• Gros Morne


• Corner Brook / Steady Brook


• Port Au Choix


• L’Anse Aux Meadows


• St. Anthony


• Twillingate Island

East

• Trinity


• Burin Peninsula


• Terra Nova


• Witless Bay


• St. John's


• French Owned Islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon

Below is a map (2 versions) to give you a better idea of where everything is located. You might notice that there is basically one main road). Some locations can only be reached by boat.

• Image View


• PDF Version

While you're in Newfoundland you can see whales (I hear the best time is around now), moose (any time), icebergs (usually spring - June/early July for best weather), and puffins (I was told October is the best time to see these guys). If icebergs are your thing, here are two sites for tracking where they are:

• Iceberg Finder


• Canadian Ice Service

By the way, if you're planning a trip, feel free to contact me. I'd be happy to suggest places to stay and books for more information.

Law Librarian Survey 2008

This new survey focuses on the role law firm librarians play in competitive intelligence. You'll also find some interesting information regarding negotiating vendor contracts. The part that really surprised me is that only 18% of those polled say they manage their firm's intranet.

Of course, you have to take it all with a grain of salt since only 94 head librarians (all from Am Law 200 firms) responded. Check out the stats and read "Competitive Advantage: Business Intelligence - Finding, Analyzing and Leveraging It - Reshapes the Role of Law Librarians" by Alan Cohen.