As reported last week internet activist Aaron Schwartz “was charged … with sneaking into a computer closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and making unauthorized downloads of more than four million journal articles” from JSTOR. While there is a long list of charges (a copy of the 15 page indictment from the US District Court can be found here), the charge that has generated the most online debate is “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access” 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2).

Academic libraries pay for access to JSTOR – an enormous repository of . . . [more]

I remain surprised at the number of intelligent, articulate, and well-read legal professionals who still use “and/or” in legal writing.

I am therefore creating this post to document a fairly complete list of authorities that support what I think is the better (if not obvious) view: never use “and/or” in legal writing (or any writing). And yes, I said “never.”

The Abomination that is “And/Or”

Although there is some support for “and/or,” the weight of authority is against its use, primarily for two reasons: (i) its use can result in uncertainty, (ii) it is not a real word.

I definitely . . . [more]

In addition to the blog posts I put together from selected sessions at the PLL Summit on Saturday, I have also liveblogged a few of the other conference sessions I have attended:

• Barbara Tillett and John Mark Ockerbloom on Authority Control Vocabularies and the Semantic Web
  These are notes are from talk by Dr. Barbara B. Tillett of theLibrary of Congress and John Mark Ockerboom of the University of Pennsylvania.
• To Recover or Not to Recover: Trends, Solutions, and Alternatives for Taming Online Research Costs
  These are notes are from a panel discussion session with Joan Axelroth

The Meaning of License

According to Black’s Law Dictionary, a “license” is “The permission by competent authority to do an act which, without such permission, would be illegal, a trespass, or a tort.” Also, “Permission to do something which without the license would not be allowable.” It is that license which allows us to download an e-book onto our e-book reader, upload computer software, and legally obtain music online. In fact, with digital content, licensing has become an integral part of our access to, and use of, informational, educational, and entertainment content. And yet the meaning of a license . . . [more]

I just received this information from the CALL webinar committee, and thought the SLAW community would be interested. I work with Rick – he has incredible knowledge of legislation and a wicked sense of humour. Caroline is not unknown to the CALL community – she has spoken at annual conferences before, and has always impressed me with her skill as a speaker and her encyclopedic knowledge.

This is a session not to be missed!

Thursday September 15, 2011
1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT 

Join two legislation experts in the first of a series of webinars that will share tips

Sunday at the AALL 2011 conference in Philadelphia about 200 people attended the Cool Tools Cafe, a 75 minute session in which we could visit 5 minute demos of new tools at any of 17 tables. I managed to visit about half. I was particularly impressed by DRAGNET, a legal search tool from the New York Law School demonstrated by Terry Ballard, Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems of Mendik Library.

DRAGNET (Database Resource Access Using Google’s New Electronic Technologies) is a search tool created with Google custom search which we have mentioned a few times over . . . [more]

I am currently in Philadelphia for the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today is the PLL Summit put on by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section (PLL-SIS). I have live-blogging the sessions I attended:

• James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends
• Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries
• Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown – Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management
• Joan Axelroth – What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know
• Greg Castanias – How librarians add value to their law firms
• David Curle on transformations in the

A short while ago the first issue of the UC Irvine Law Review became available via the UC Irvine website. Given the school’s initial growing pains it is welcome to see this first issue. Many SLAW readers may remember the political controversy involving the initial offer, withdrawal of offer, and rehiring of leading US constitutional law scholar (and frequent critic of the Bush administration) Erwin Chemerinsky as the school’s Founding Dean. Dean Chemerinsky addresses the controversy in the journal’s opening article on the school’s founding and his vision for a new law school. Of interest to SLAWers is that . . . [more]

Law students or young lawyers sometimes struggle when they are faced with a complex research problem. Where do they start?

At the root of this is the need to think strategically about the problem to identify what sort of problem it is and how to best break it down into manageable pieces.

In retrospect, I realize that I in fact don’t necessarily address this challenge head on in my book, aside from citing some of the suggestions on how to analyze the facts and the law made by Maureen Fitzgerald in her Legal Problem Solving – Reasoning, Research & . . . [more]

Law library consultant Nina Platt is the editor of the new PinHawk News free daily email alert service for law librarians, the Librarian News Digest.

From the inaugural issue:

Welcome to the first issue of the daily Librarian News Digest, a free digest of news from publications and blogs on the internet that focus on topics of importance to librarians. As editor of Librarian News Digest, my goal is to track pertinent news and select what’s most important to you as a librarian. Expect to see news and ideas that help you manage, acquire, organize, research, and market your

Justia.com is now providing free daily and weekly opinion summaries for the US Supreme Court, all US federal courts of appeal, and state supreme courts. As well, free weekly opinion summaries are available for nearly sixty areas of practice. These, it would seem, are delivered by email; there doesn’t seem to be an RSS feature. If you’re curious, you can look at a sample daily email for the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or a sample weekly summary for the practice area of environmental law.

Needless to say, this is a powerfully impressive service and a considerable contribution . . . [more]

There’s a new Columbia research study that looks at our ever growing reliance on search engines for memory recall. Not a ton of surprises here. Yes, we’ve become more reliant, especially for certain types of information. We’re also becoming better at remembering the successful search strategies that led us to obtaining certain facts. In some cases, our memory of the search strategy is better than our recall of the trivia itself.

Oh, and three cheers for Columbia for including an embed code within their video player! So I can show you this:

. . . [more]