by Anna Endter
As noted in a recent AALL Washington Blawg post, FDsys now includes a collection of lower Federal court opinions as part of a pilot project between the Government Printing Office and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The USCOURTS collection provides public access to authenticated Federal court opinions from selected appellate, district and bankruptcy courts back to April 2004. GPO authenticates these opinions with digital signatures, just as it does for all other collections within FDsys.
by Philippe Cloutier
The following Thomson Reuters letter (which I am calling J’accuse!) has been making the rounds across our fair country and perhaps globally. In some instances librarians are receiving a half dozen of the exact same letter: one for the home, one for the office, one for the restroom, one for framing, etc. If in the rare instance you have not had the delight to feast thine eyes upon Brian Knudsen’s most concerned letter, I offer a scan below for your edification. Continue reading 'Thomson Reuters Takes Aim, Sends Snail Mail'»
Announcing
The Third International Conference of the
Chinese and American Forum on Legal Information and Law Libraries (CAFLL)
Shanghai, China, June 10 – 12, 2013
This third international conference is sponsored by the Chinese and American Forum on Legal Information and Law Libraries (CAFLL), a non-profit U.S. organization, in conjunction with a similar organization in China represented by the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL); East China University of Political Science and Law (ECUPL); Tongji University School of Law; and other prominent law schools in China. The host for this conference is ECUPL, located in Shanghai, China. The venue for the meeting will be the Renaissance Shanghai Zhongshan Park Hotel: http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/shabz-renaissance-shanghai-zhongshan-park-hotel/.
The Conference will be an opportunity for law librarians and legal information professionals to share experiences and exchange views about legal information access and development and law library management in both the United States and China. The theme of the conference is Collaboration: Information, Access, and Partnership. Topics will include public access to legal information, digital technology in libraries, internationalization of shared legal information, and more.
Registration information will soon be available at: http://cafllnet.org/annual-conference/.
Previous successful international conferences were held in Beijing (2009) with sponsorship from CAFLL, AALL and IALL and Philadelphia (2011) with sponsorship from CAFLL and AALL: http://cafllnet.org/annual-conference/. Speaker materials from the Philadelphia Conference are available at: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/library/cafll/presentationhandouts.pdf.
Due to a temporary staffing shortage, the Gallagher Law Library will close at 6pm Sundays instead of 11pm, effective this Sunday, November 4th. In December we will consider making the shorter Sunday hours permanent. The Gallagher Law Library continues to be open 24/7 for all UW law students, faculty, and staff, and 84 hours per week for everyone else (M-Th 8am-11pm; F 8am-6pm; Sat & Sun 11am-6pm).
by Emily Smith
Full disclosure at the outset: this is less of a useful, informative post than it is an attempt to get information and input from you, dear readers. Here’s the situation: next quarter I’ll be teaching the foreign and international law research class at the UW law school. This year I’m co-teaching the class with Trinie Thai-Parker of Gallagher Law Library, and we’ve decided that we’d like to take advantage of having a firm librarian in the classroom to try to bring more of a practical, real-world angle to parts of the class. The practice of law is becoming increasingly international even for attorneys who don’t specialize in this area, and we think it would be useful to give students a realistic sense of what they might face as attorneys in firms that represent multi-national corporations and clients who do business across borders.
So in preparation for next quarter, I’ve been keeping a list of the types of questions that our library fields from attorneys and others on foreign and international law issues. And I’d love to hear from any of you about the types of research requests you get in this area — either those that are routine or that have had you stumped in the past. (Additional disclosure: ‘stumped’ is my general state of mind when faced with these questions. I’m no expert in this area of research; one of the best things about teaching a class like has been having to learn it just well enough to explain it to someone else.)
If you have items you’d like to share — or if you have thoughts on any of the ways in which your attorneys could be better prepared for this type of research when they step into a law firm job, feel free to drop a note in the comments or email me directly.
Thanks in advance! I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
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