For those of you who could not make it, and those of you whose curiosity and sense of concern were peaked by Cass and Kian’s great presentation yesterday, I have uploaded and linked the presentation slides below.
LLOPS Presentation-GovInfo-Oct2019
Enjoy!
As part of National Library Week, the RIPS Teach-In Kit Committee is pleased to announce that the 2015 Teach-In Kit is now live. This year’s kit includes a number of legal research exercises, tutorials, and presentations on topics such as intellectual property, taxation, regulatory, and statutory research. The kit also includes a terms and connectors activity, a legal research handout geared toward visual learners, and an in-class exercise that pits indexes, keywords, and tables of contents against each other Thanks to all our contributors and to the members of our committee.
by Robyn Hagle
At the beginning of June, I attended a special program on Competitive Intelligence at SLA in Vancouver. The speaker was CI pro, Zena Applebaum. Zena’s goal was to empower the librarians and information professionals in the audience to “draw your own conclusions.” Librarians who don’t regularly do CI as part of their jobs typically stop at step 2 in the CI cycle (below). It’s time we started closing the loop. Our end goal when we do CI should be to mobilize the end user so that they are decision-ready.
Continue reading 'Special Report: Competitive Intelligence Program at 2014 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference'»
by Grace Feldman
You are probably well aware of the West Key Number System and headnotes but are you familiar with Westlaw’s Headnote of the Day provided on Thomson Reuters’ Legal Solutions Blog? If not, today’s headnote might make you want to subscribe:
A dog cannot recover for emotional distress.
Obserschlake v. Veterinary Assoc. Animal Hospital, 785 N.E.2d 811 (Ohio App. 2003)
While it is unlikely that the Headnote of the Day will significantly help you with your work (the blog does state that they “offer the Headnote of the Day as a diversion; the point of law it contains may no longer be good law”), it might brighten up an otherwise gloomy Friday! TGIF LLOPSters!

by Anna Endter
This post has been reposted from the Gallagher Law Library blog
From the Google Maps Blog:
If you’ve ever wondered which trails Lewis & Clark traveled for their famous expedition, or looked for maps of the best schools in your region, you may have found yourself scouring the web without much luck. The best results for your search may come from governments, nonprofits and businesses, but historically that information has been hard to find or inaccessible to the public. Well, now, with the new Google Maps Gallery, it’s easier for you to find maps like those all in one place.
I poked around a little and found a map from the World Bank that shows the percentage of internet users across the world, a topic that is often of interest to the legal community. I also noticed that you can explore by topic to find things like historical and environmental maps. Give it a try!
(Hat tip to beSpacific)
by Grace Feldman
This post has been reposted on the Gallagher Law Library blog
What has your state bar association done for you lately? Quite a bit, actually! (Unless you’re in California, Delaware or Montana). For attorneys in the other lucky 47 states, state bar associations provide access to Casemaker or Fastcase or InCite! If you’re curious to see which service different state bar associations provide, check out this fantastic map created by J. Michael Goodson Law Library at Duke University School of Law!

A screenshot of the State Bar Association – Provided Legal Research Services map. Thank you Goodson Law Library!
Here in Washington, the WSBA provides access to Casemaker. Casemaker provides access to case law, statutes, and other materials from all 50 states as well as a large federal data set that includes Supreme Court Opinions, Circuit and District Court Opinions. More information can be found on the WSBA Casemaker page!
by Jennifer Hill
The 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath left record numbers of U.S. homeowners facing foreclosure. While the current real estate market seems robust, with reports of bidding wars and rising home prices in the Seattle area, the reality is that as of March 2013, Washington State had experienced a 154 percent increase in foreclosure starts over the previous year. Foreclosures are still happening, and they are accompanied by complicated legal issues that can challenge even experienced legal researchers.

Foreclosure Manual for Judges
Washington Appleseed, a non-profit legal advocacy organization working to solve social and economic problems in Washington, recently published the Foreclosure Manual for Judges: A Reference Guide to Foreclosure Law in Washington State. The manual was written to help guide attorneys and judges through the maze of mortgage servicing, modification and foreclosure law. Although the target users are attorneys and judges, this guidebook is a great resource for anyone researching mortgage and foreclosure law in Washington.
Continue reading 'Book Review of the Foreclosure Manual for Judges'»
by Anna L. Endter
This post has been reposted on the Gallagher Law Library blog

Gary Somerset of the Government Printing Office reports that FDsys has achieved 500 million retrievals:
The U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Federal Digital System (FDsys) has achieved the milestone of 500 million document retrievals. FDsys is a one-stop site for authentic, published information on the three branches of the Federal Government. Retrievals are measured by the number of times content is viewed or downloaded from FDsys. GPO launched FDsys in January 2009 and since that time it has expanded to include 800 thousand searchable titles. Examples of content found on FDsys include: the post-President Kennedy’s assassination tape recordings, President Nixon’s Watergate grand jury testimony, the Budget of the U.S. Government, the Congressional Record, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and congressional bills, hearings, and reports. GPO is continually adding content and working with agencies on new collection opportunities.
Don’t overlook FDsys when researching federal material. There are a few ways to search FDsys (search box, browsing, by citation, etc.) and the underlying documents are authentic and free.
by Grace Feldman
This post has been adapted from a post on the Gallagher Law Library blog.
Do you remember the hilarious “Friends” episode where Joey wants to buy an encyclopedia set but can only afford to buy one volume, so he chooses the “V” volume and learns everything beginning with the letter “V”? With an encyclopedia, he became an unstoppable force of interesting facts, beginning with the letter “V”!

Continue reading 'The Wonderful World of Online Encyclopedias'»

Washington: 2010 Population and Housing Unit Counts
by Grace Feldman
Did you know that the first U.S. Census in 1790 counted a population of 3.9 million (including slaves but not Native Americans), and the recent 2010 census counted over 308 million people! The Decennial Census is a fantastic resource and there are probably about 308 millions reasons why.
Continue reading 'Washington: 2010 Population and Housing Unit Counts'»