Jocelyn from the Library

Checking out the new Blogger interface

2011-09-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've almost entirely abandoned this blog, but when I saw Three Geeks mention that they've cleaned up the interface, I thought "maybe I should check that out!"

This interface is much better, but is it better *enough* that I'll start blogging regularly again? We'll see.

SC Nominees, SC Statistics, True Stories of Bluebooks on Amazon.

2010-07-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Is there anyone out there who isn't fascinated with the Supreme Court nominations process? Any attorney or legal professional who doesn't arm-chair quarterback the congressional interviews and think how he or she would answer if he or she were nominated? Who doesn't enjoy comparing and contrasting the prospective Justice's answers with the answers of those who came before?

Along with the rest of the legal world, I'm keeping an eye on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, replacing Justice John Paul Stevens. ResourceShelf has pointed me to a few different resources for information on Ms. Kagan, including a compilation from the Library of Congress, which includes a lot of information from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library. The Clinton library has put together a set page for resources on Justice Sotomayor, I hope in time they'll do the same for Kagan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog has an interesting piece on Supreme Court oral argument statistics, using data put together by O’Melveny & Myers' Sri Srinivasan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally (and the real reason I'm updating this blog), I wanted to link to a thoughtful and well-reasoned review of the new edition of the Bluebook, including the timeless comment "The plot is quite contrived and character development is stagnant at best, regressive at worst. Apparently, the authors think we'll automatically care for the protagonist, "Statute." Well, newsflash, Harvard Law Review, we don't! What kind of home does he come from? What are his hobbies? Does he have a girlfriend? All of these answers are conspicuously absent. Personally (and I don't pretend to be an author of any kind), I would have made "Periodicals" the main character, instead of just a on-again off-again third wheel. And he'd have an drinking problem. Also, it doesn't take a genius to realize that for something to be successful nowadays, it needs vampires! What, are law students too busy to enjoy a movie once in a while? There could even be "Team Periodicals" versus "Team Statutes." Think outside the box, Harvard Law Review. Seriously." I've always thought that the plotting and character development of the Bluebook are sadly lacking. Kudos to Evan612 for this overdue criticism.

2010-03-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

Hey, guys - do you need a job? You could be the President's librarian!

http://jobview.usajobs.gov/GetJob.aspx?JobID=87119748&JobTitle=Librarian+%28Reference%29&q=librarian&x=0&y=0&brd=3876&vw=b&FedEmp=N&FedPub=Y&tm=3&AVSDM=2010-03-26+13%3a34%3a00

I'm astonished at how terrible that salary is, though. Didn't the last President's librarian get half his stuff? Laura Bush, how dare you not increase the pay on this job!

Time Saving Tips and Free Online Legal Sites

2010-02-24T13:18:00.000-08:00

Tips on Productivity!
Shocking news: it’s almost March. Didn’t the new year just happen? Why are the months flying by so quickly? Happily, time is moving faster, in part, because we’re busy.
Since time is moving faster, I’m trying to find ways to do more with my work day. Strangely, no matter how hard I try, I can’t squeeze more hours into my day and I’m left trying to squeeze more work out of my hours. Since I know I’m not the only one interested in managing my time better, I’m putting together some interesting resources to share with you.
One of the best time- and workflow-management systems I’ve found is the “Getting Things Done” system by David Allen. This system gives you a framework for dealing with every work assignment, email, and chore in your personal or professional life. It gives you a way of keeping track of your ongoing projects that is supposed to eliminate (and actually does cut down on) those moments you spend thinking about all the things you need to get done. I call those my “mental Outlook Pop-Up Reminder moments” because they remind me of those annoying reminders from Microsoft, and are generally about as welcome.
You can check out some of the free articles on the Getting Things Done system on David Allen’s website. Some other quick and interesting articles on time management are available at the Legal Watercooler (an excellent legal marketing blog), Brazen Careerist (a dubious but fascinating career blog), lawjobs.com and on ABAJournal.com. There’s also a free e-book available called Time Management for Creative People that works extremely well for lawyers.
I hope you find these resources helpful – here’s to productivity!

Free and Trustworthy Online Legal References

There are a lot of different free legal reference sources out there, some that are well-maintained and some that were put up some time ago and haven’t been updated in ages. In fact, the federal government is looking into starting up Law.gov, a website that is “A Proposed Registry and Repository of All Primary Legal Materials of the United States”
While Law.gov is still under construction, Cornell’s Legal Information Institute has a number of great resources available online, including the entire US Code, Supreme Court Cases from 1992 on, and a link library that directs people to state-level resources in their own state. They also have a wiki-style legal dictionary, built by the site’s users and administrators.
Another great legal resource with access to case law is Findlaw for Legal Professionals - it has cases, practice-area specific pages, interesting legal news, sample business contracts and more. However, you do have to wade through some pop-up screens to access the information.
And, in honor of this past President’s Day, here are some Presidential documents that you might be interested in looking into:
Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents from GPO Access: searchable, from 2009.
Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from GPO Access: searchable, 1993-Jan. 29, 2009.
Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents from Hein Online: searchable, from 1965.
Public Papers of the President from the National Archives and Records Administration via GPO Access: searchable, from 1992.
Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders from the National Archives and Records Administration: searchable, with an index and disposition tables, from 1945 to 1989.
Executive orders disposition tables, from the National Archives and Records Administration: arranged by president then year, from 1937-date.
Presidential Documents Guide from the National Archives and Records Administration.
(Hat Tip to the Marian Gould Gallager library for the Presidential Information!)

New Year, New Habits

2010-01-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

I was reading "The Legal Watercooler" on my google reader stream, and was really intrigued by her New Year's post. I love New Year's superstitions and resolutions, even if I don't always follow them. I often think about what's gone well or badly over the past year, and come up grandiose visions of who I'll be by the dawn of the next year. What I liked about Heather's list is that she's focusing on stuff she can accomplish on a smaller scale. Small things she can always do, but that add up to big things over time. Here are hers:

I can clean out my in-box of today's messages before I leave the office
I can call a client (in my case, an in-house attorney at my firm)
I can write a blog post
I can return the phone calls on my list
I can prep the ad for the magazine
I can schedule the ad placement for that conference
I can participate in networking (online or in person)
I can make plans for an in-person meeting with a fellow legal marketer
I can go to the gym and follow my trainer's food plan
I can give more than I take

Can you tell it's a legal marketer's blog? Anyway, though my perspective as a law librarian is different, it inspired me. Here are my bite-sized daily resolutions:

I can color-code all standing requests in my in-box before I leave the office
I can log my time before I leave the office
I can write a blog post (even if it's just some thoughts on an article, it can be my personal or library blog)
I can review and file all my new action items (ie, actually open all the mail and email and figure out what I need to do with it next)
I can make a schedule for the next morning
I can spend a few minutes remembering what I like about my job and my life
I can be social (online or in person)
I can do ten push-ups on the balance ball
And I like her last one - I can give more than I take

What would you like to do every day? What little steps would actually make a big difference in your life?

Official Google Blog: Finding the laws that govern us

2009-11-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

Official Google Blog: Finding the laws that govern us

This is very cool, folks. I'm a huge Google fan, as you can probably tell from my blogger page with it's Google Reader feed, and my constant presence on Gmail.

Now Google is making my professional life easier, too! They've added a widget to Google Scholar that restricts your search to legal materials, meaning that the average person with an internet conection can now find a lot more legal information a lot more easily. I've long thought that Google Scholar was the best way to search Hein Online (their on-site search engine is dreadful) but this is even better.

2009-10-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,

I was messing around in Google Reader, and saw there's a way you can create and share bundles of resources with friends! If you'd like to read the same feeds as me in legal or law library subject areas, check out my bundles (hah-hah) half-way down the left hand column. Or, you can keep trusting me to share the funny and weird headlines in my "Google Reader Shared Items" widget, at the top of the the left hand column.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Academic Lectures Online:

What did you like best about lectures when you were in college? The mental stimulation? The new information to discuss at parties? Nap time when you sat in back? Some (though not all) of your favorite undergraduate memories can be relived now, thanks to the wealth of academic lectures now available online.

Just-launched Forum-Network is a website created by PBS and NPR bringing you a variety of lectures, searchable by keyword.

An older site, Research Channel, has made over 3,500 lectures available online. They are browseable by subject, program title, series title, or University/Institution. YouTube EDU also has some interesting academic lectures, and iTunes U has a section of academic podcasts. If you need to help your kiddo with his or her homework, there's WatchKnow, a site illustrating different concepts with videos for the K-12 set.

These are great sources to learn about new topics or refresh your memory of old ones. And if you use them for their soporific effect, I promise not to tell.

Hardcovers and Internet Archive Updates

2009-10-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

So, Target has lowered it's price on hardcovers, following Wal-Mart and K-Mart's lead. The New York Times points out that this might be a bad thing for bookstores, which can't compete with large chains selling books at a loss. But the reaction of readers throughout the blogosphere? My general impression is "Does this mean they'll stop publishing hardcovers? I hope so!" Does anyone like hard-cover fiction? It doesn't fit in your purse, you can't read it in bed, I rarely buy the kind of book you'd want to have in hardcover on your shelf for years into the future. I read trash when I'm not reading for work. And I read series trash, but don't want to spend $20 for the new Harry Dresden novel, let alone the new Amanda Quick.

At any rate, this got me thinking about bindings on legal books, and the librarians who loathe them. I went to an event at CEB once (a California publisher) where a vendor employee mentioned that public librarians dislike looseleafs because their patrons come in and take out pages to photocopy and then don't replace them, leading to a rash of missing pages. I hate soft-covers because they fall over on the shelf more, and get that horrible page-cramp that makes me crazy. I'm not happy about having to pay a filer to deal with the loose-leaf book updates, either, but I'm reference so I don't have to worry about that too much (and I love our filer herself. She makes my library look beautiful). At any rate, if I were the god of legal publishing (aka Wexis) I'd issue everything possible as a hardcover. There doesn't seem to be a huge price difference between the different formats, possibly because they're price-gouging so badly already?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news, I've started a column on the firm intranet for the library, and may repost my innocuous column that contains no firm news on this blog. That column's office title is "Fun News from the Library" but I think of it as my "Libraries are Awesome" column. Here's the latest:

Resources from the Internet Archive:
The Internet Archive has been in the news a lot lately. First, it's founder Brewster Kahle was named one of Utne Reader's 50 Visionaries who are Changing our World. The Internet Archive has launched Bookserver, a webserver whose goal is to make not only information on books available to the public, but to make the books themselves available in open-format, so you can read them on any device (unlike the Kindle or other proprietary devices, that only allow you to buy books from one vendor). This article will give you an idea of how impressive Bookserver will be once they shake the bugs out.
If you go to the Internet Archive's home page, you'll see that they're already making a wealth of information available to the public for free, including books, audio, live music recordings, and moving images.
For an example, click this link to the catalog record for "Alice's Adventures Underground: Being a Facsimile of the Original Ms. Book Afterwards Developed into 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'" Once on that page, you can clink on the http or pdf links on the left-hand side of the screen to access the full text of this manuscript from 1886. The Internet Archive has a variety of media available for free download, including many audio files. Check out this episode of Old Time Radio Program, The Danny Kaye Show. They also have a live music collection, including a large collection of live recordings of the Grateful Dead. Their moving image collection is not very extensive, due to very few being in the public domain. It includes mostly content submitted by users. The same is true of their Software collection.

2009-07-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

I've added a feed from my google reader account to this blog, which I am super excited about because I love google reader.

I was thinking earlier today about how so many bookstores have gone out of business in the bay area, especially independants, and how I'd love to open a used book store specializing in used sci-fi, fantasy, romance, legal biographies, and books about war in the Embarcadero Malls. I'd have lunchtime buyers from everyone in the local office buildings who reads on BART.

Honestly, if you've had the (arguable) pleasure of talking to me in person lately, I've probably talked about how I think that the local independant bookstores are going out of business because they're ignoring popular fiction, especially romance (which, hello, is 50% of books sold in the USA! talk about shooting yourself in the foot). A store that sells books people actually want to read on the train would probably do great in this area. Sadly, the money and time to open this store? I do not have them. Ditto the business know-how. But if you're reading this, you should!

2008-02-26T16:31:00.000-08:00

I should dust this blog off more often!

Just stopping in (after over a year) to say that LibraryThing's legal collection has expanded! Blog post on that: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/01/lawlibrarything.php

I love LibraryThing, it's addictive. It also makes me want to run out and buy scads more books. Which can't be good for my budget, but I can't bring myself to care.

For Future Reference:

2007-02-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

If I ever decide to do an article or paper on diversity in law firms, I'll be glad I saved these citations. If any of you have diversity committees, you might be interested in pulling these. Also, the ABA report "Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms" is very revealing - not only about the (depressingly bad) support and training minorities get in law firms, but also because it lays out a very clear picture of where the power lies in law firms, and why.

The citation information is courtesy of LexisNexis.

Copyright 2006 Gale Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ASAP
Copyright 2006 Cox, Matthews & Associates
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
November 30, 2006
SECTION: Pg. 24(5) Vol. 23 No. 21
ACC-NO: 155870612
LENGTH: 2444 words
HEADLINE: Getting to the truth: legal scholars struggle to understand the impediments to minority success in large law firms;
Cover story
BYLINE: Roach, Ronald

Copyright 2007 Law Bulletin Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
Chicago Lawyer
January 2007
SECTION: Pg. 20008
LENGTH: 3504 words
HEADLINE: Generation Y: Group holds different goals for law career
BYLINE: OLIVIA CLARKE

Copyright 2007 LRP Publications
All Rights Reserved
Disability Compliance Bulletin
January 18, 2007
SECTION: Vol. 33 No. 9
LENGTH: 661 words
HEADLINE: ABA pushes hiring of lawyers with disabilities

Copyright 2007 Law Bulletin Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
Chicago Lawyer
February 2007
SECTION: Pg. 10008
LENGTH: 4516 words
HEADLINE: Women and Minorities: The Retention Challenge for Law Firms
BYLINE: BOB YATES

Search Engines!

2006-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

I just learned about some interesting new search engines, and I'm listing them here, so I don't forget about them:

By Prof. Judy Weedman, a site that does have sound. A talking librarian!
www.missdewey.com

This is a neat combination of search engine and directory search:
http://www.kartoo.com/

Where do you file those things in Canada, anyway?

2006-10-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

This morning I spend a good long time trying to find a corporate record for a company in Quebec. I had no idea where the equivilant of a US Secretary of State's Corporate Records online search would be. I wasn't even sure what level of government filed those things. I finally found this: https://ssl.req.gouv.qc.ca/slc0130_eng.html which I think gave me what I needed, but I came awfully close to emailing Connie with questions.

Also, I never though my highschool French would come in so handy- it seems all Quebec's official docucuments are in French, and I could actually read them. Shocking!

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm very dense or very clever...

2006-08-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

I just looked up the definition of a term in the IRS regulations of a word used in the IRS statutes, and it seems that the decemal numbering of section 1 of title 26 of the CFR tracks the numbering of title 26 of the US Code. Do other regulations do that, or is it just the IRS? I've only noticed the corrolation between 26 CFR and 26 USC. Am I just not noticing this in other sections?

2006-07-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Why does the world need law librarians? Because without us, lawyers turn in briefs that illicit opinions like this:

http://mithras.blogs.com/blog/bradshaw.pdf

(Thanks to Mithras for the link)!

2006-07-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

The best interlibrary loan request I've ever gotten:

Good morning,

I have been asked to find and borrow the following title, and surprise surprise I can't find it in any of the biblio databases:

The Online Adult Entertainment Webmaster Legal Resource: The Laws that Every Webmaster Should Know, by Frederick S. Lane III, Gregory A. Piccionelli, Version 2.0, 2004.
I know it's a long shot, but does anyone have a copy of this that we can borrow? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve at HR

I looked for it on Amazon (thinking it would hilarious to get my boss to get us a copy) and couldn't find it. How could such an obviously useful book go out of print?

2006-07-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

A pet peeve of mine:

When a new publisher takes over a title, and makes you buy the whole thing again, instead of just updating what's already there. This just happened with the San Francisco Municipal Code, now published by Municode. They're making the library pay $401 for a new edition of the code, and then another $280 at the same time for update service. But our firm can't not have access to the Municipal Code, so we'll pay and watch our library budget hemmorage money. There has been much complaining about this on the local law library boards, but aside from starting a POD print operation and taking over publication ourselves, there's not much we can do.

2006-06-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Huh. Look at that. LLRX.com has an article on Law Library Blogging (here: http://www.llrx.com/columns/tao6.htm ) by another Blogger on this site - Ms Connie Crosby (her blog is here: http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com/ ). Her site is very interesting (as SLaw sites tend to be) with a useful list of links on the side, and it makes me wonder why so many of the great law librarian blogs I've seen since starting to poke around online are Canadian. I wonder if our neighbors to the north are adapting to technology faster, or if the law librarian democraphic is younger, because I sincerely doubt they just have more time on their hands.

2006-06-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

Noelle, my best friend, posted this meme on her blog:

Closest Blue Book Meme
1. Grab the nearest book with a blue cover.
2. Open the book to page 86.
3. Find the first full paragraph.
4. Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find, just the closest blue book.

I'm at work, and the closest book that is blue is "The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation." I suspect I'm the only one who finds this hilarious. Anyway, here's my quote.

"For cases with multiple dispositions, however, the parenthetical identifier is given only when a case is cited as the primary citation. Once given, the parenthetical identifier may be used when the case is cited again. Thus, the following examples are correct:"

2006-06-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

I keep on working on this pile of cataloging, but it doesn't seem to get smaller.

And the printer doesn't want to print labels for the books from LA (and who can blame it, really).

And I'm very, very sleepy today.

Tomorrow I am bringing my earphones and my MP3 player. There has to be a better way.

2006-06-16T16:16:00.000-07:00

"Be a little careful of your Library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you? You will come here & get books that will open your eyes, & your ears, & your curiosity, & turn you inside out or outside in." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

The 5 Ws and an H

2006-06-09T10:47:00.001-07:00

Who: Me
What: Didn't have to shelve a huge pile of books
When: Last night
Where: At my little law library
Why: Because the guy who files our legal pocket parts and looseleaf updates did it for me!
How: With great skill and finesse

Bonus W: Who Cares? I do! I hate leaving a messy library overnight, and I was going to have to, because I'd been working on a giant project all day and had hit my cap on my hours.

The 5 Ws and an H

2006-06-09T10:47:00.000-07:00

2006-06-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about this job is that occasionally, I get paid to spend hours surfing the web. Today was one of those days.

I tried out ask.com today - I didn't like it much. I'm not sure if it's because I'm used to searching using Google, or if it's because the groups search was thrown off by the last name of the person I was searching for information on (the last name was Gates, and ask.com tried to sell me gates, even though I had the first and last name in quotes, so it shouldn't have isolated that term). I'll give it another shot, but I think my default search engine will still be Google or Yahoo.

I just tried to edit my links on the sidebar...

2006-06-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

I just tried to edit my links on the sidebar, and the changes are showing on my Template page, but not on my blog. That's annoying.

I'll poke at it more later.

*edit in* - it's because my computer was pulling up the cached version. I hit refresh, and now everything displays fine. *Facepalm*

My first post!

2006-06-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

I'm not planning to use this as a regular blog (I keep that elsewhere, sorry people), but I do plan to post links and useful law library tips. Mostly so that I remember where all the links are. Think of this as a poor man's (or poor law librarian's) version of J's Scratchpad, but not nearly as cool.

Links to start out with? For library job hunters in the bay area:

http://www.sla.org/chapter/csfo/jobline/jobline.html

http://www.nocall.org/

www.craigslist.com (do a search for "Librarian" in the "jobs" section, and you'll find a bunch of stuff)