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LawCite - an emerging International Citator

LawCite takes cases and journal articles and provides citing reference with links in full text. The world-wide coverage enables a researcher to see where the case or journal article is being used in the world's courts. LawCite is sponserd by AustLII.  

West Discusses Summer Associates and Green Marketing

IORG - Beginning to Deal With Information Overload

Is information overload a part of your daily work and home life?  Then you'll be glad to know that someone's doing something about it!  Several someones, as a matter of fact, have banded together to form the Information Overload Research Group (IORG).  Check their latest blog post for a description of their mission and activities. 

The Brits Bring Us a Treaty Index with FLARE

There is a new, free website called the FLARE Index to Treaties which indexes more than 1500 multilateral treaties, beginning from 1856.  Launched in March, it is the work of the Foreign Law Research Group, based in Britain.  It allows you to search for treaties by keywords, title, and the year and the place the treaty was concluded.  In the results, you are given the web version and EISIL link and informed where it can be found in print.  Hat tip to LLRX

Designers of the New FDsys Site Open to User Input

The other day I blogged about FDsys and quickly received an email from Carrie Gibb, Market Research Manager from the Office of the Chief Information Officer.  Her email solicited any specific feedback I might have about the new website. 

Spurred on by Elizabeth Farrell, at Florida State University's College of Law Research Center, I had already taken a second look at the advanced search function on the new site, and she was right, it is far superior to the one on the old GPO Access.  You can even search within each individual branch of government, or will be able to do so, once all the databases are added to the site.   As I emailed Carrie Gibb, it will be very useful indeed to the knowledgeable user. 

However, I still maintain that the GPO Access interface should be retained or somehow incorporated into the new site, in part because the drill-down format makes it clear to law students and other non-expert users which branch of government they are searching.  These pages are instructional, as well.  Take for example the Judicial Branch Resources  Federal Publications and Procedures division, where you can learn that Title 28 of the U.S. Code governs the judiciary and judicial procedure and that the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary may have useful information about the operation of the courts.  My point is that GPO Access as it presently exists is an excellent pedagogic tool, and I think the minimalist approach on FDsys has much less to offer the student/novice searcher.  Decide for yourself.  Compare the old (GPO Access) with the new (FDsys) and let the designers have your feedback at: pmo@gpo.gov 

A Rant on an Unlikely Subject

I'm not one given to casting stones at the efforts of the government to keep us informed electronically, but a change is under way that is very disturbing.  GPO Access, one of the stars in the free electronic resources firmament, is being replaced by something called FDsys.  Even the names are telling.  GPO Access is all about giving us access to what the Government Printing Office provides.  What, pray tell, is a FDsys? 

To the delight of those of us who teach legal research, GPO Access divides up the available resources among the three branches of government, and labels them.  Then it further divides the materials available for each branch and lists them all in subgroupings on the legislative, executive and judicial pages.  By contrast, FDsys takes a cue from Westlaw and Lexis, and presents us with the dreaded, hideously cryptic search box.  If you choose Advanced Search, you are invited to choose a database.  For the uninformed, trying to claw their way to an understanding of the processes of government, this is likely to prove the straw that sends them back to Google.  To move from GPO Access to FDsys is to replace something that's intuitive, nuanced and easy to search with something that's rigid and uninformative.

A History of West Publishing & Westlaw

Everything you wanted to know about John West, West Publishing, Westlaw, and how a small company from Eagan MN became a Global Information Business is in the City Pages article: "Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information." HT to the Westblog.

Link to Today's Federal Register

If you need to keep up with the Federal Register day-to-day, bookmark Today's Issue of the Federal Register

New, Free Online Source for Transnational Commercial Law

TransLex.org is a project of CENTRAL, the University of Cologne Law School's research center for transnational commercial law ("lex mercatoria").  The center also focuses on private dispute resolution in international business, including mediation and arbitration. Resources available on TransLex include civil and commercial codes (chiefly European); international conventions; principles, restatements and model laws; and various arbitration and mediation rules. Search features provide a choice of keyword searching, browsing, and expert searching. The latter enables the user to limit a search to subsets of the TransLex database, and/or by language, type of document, author, party or judge.  An extensive set of links to further information provide the researcher with additional sources of related documents.The working language of the database is English, so non-English documents are provided in both the original language and in English (exceptions: documents originally written in non-Roman alphabets are provided in English translation only). TransLex promises to be a valuable resource for students, teachers and practitioners of international business law.

Changes to West's Key Number System

From the West Librarian Relations Update, 3/17/09:

Changes to the Topic & Key Number System

 

On March 1, West released significant changes to the Key Number System.  Attorney editors have completed the reclassification of over 300,000 headnotes.  The improvements include the following:

 

·         Two new digest topics: The topic PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATIONS AND CONFIDENTIALITY encompasses privilege issues arising in discovery and at trial and contains expanded classifications covering attorney-client privilege, physician-patient privilege, and executive privilege. The topic PROTECTION OF ENDANGERED PERSONS covers such areas as restraining orders and other protection from domestic violence, harassment, and stalking; guardian ad litem appointments; agency investigations and liabilities; and criminal and civil liability.

 

·         Complete revision of four topics: The topics CONVICTS AND PRISONS are completely revised, with many lines afforded to concepts increasingly important in modern cases, e.g., boot camps. The topic DISORDERLY CONDUCT is greatly expanded to include breach of the peace (a similar offense recognized in most state jurisdictions). In the PRODUCTS LIABILITY topic, many points of law are classified once under the product type and again under the legal concept or procedure.

 

·         Other areas of the Key Number System have been given minor improvements particularly in the topics COUNTIES, INFANTS, NEGLIGENCE, and PROCESS.