One (of many) benefits of being a member of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) is getting access to their salary survey (published every 2 years or so, most recently in 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005 and 2003) (with a “shout out” here of thanks to colleague and blogger Brenda Wong who, with her committee, was in charge of helping to compile the most recent survey).

This year’s 2010 survey had two items I wanted to comment on:

1) Dual-degree law librarians: Of the 135 responses on the question of educational level, 15 people (11.1%) responded as having both . . . [more]

I was following links from tweets yesterday and came across an old, if May 2010 meets that criteria, Rex Gradeless post about citing podcasts in legal documents and the new Bluebook (the US equivalent to the McGill Guide). Rex Gradeless is one of the social media savvy (former) law students that we talk about.

There has been a lot of traffic on Slaw regarding podcasts lately, and as you can read, plenty of great offers via that medium.

I just HAD to check out my new McGill guide to see if we had an equivalent! I am happy to . . . [more]

In Friday’s episode of Law Librarian Conversations podcast, we talked with two social media-savvy third year law school students to get a dose of reality on what they think about social networking, online communication, legal research and practice skills. Our guests were Laura Bergus from Iowa who runs a legal podcast called Legal Geekery and writes for Lawyerist.com and Huma Rashid from Chicago’s John Marshall Law School, who runs a personal blog called The Reasonably Prudent Law Student where she offers budget fashion tips and thoughts on being a law student. Both Laura and Huma participate in the Social . . . [more]

The wonderful folks at AustLII, that powerhouse in the legal information institute movement, have just launched their International Law Library on WorldLII. From the press release [PDF]:

The International Law Library contains over 80,000 searchable documents for free access. This includes over 25,000 decisions of International Courts and Tribunals, over 30,000 treaties and international agreements (including the League of Nations and UN Treaty Series), international law journals and law reform materials. These materials cannot be jointly searched elsewhere on the Internet. AustLII’s LawCite citator tracks where international cases, treaties and law journal articles have been cited.

(A cavil: . . . [more]

We didn’t get around to noticing the Law Library of Congress’ new blog In Custodia Legis, which explains its name and aim here.

Today, it featured a new post on the developments at Thomas to make legislative information more accessible. There aren’t a lot of comments yet, but it’s early days.

The high spots for me were on Social Media and a Legislative Map at the State level, which looks simple but is only simple to use.

Social Media Box

In addition to easier access to the Library’s social media, there is a new box to highlight ways . . . [more]

I know this will interest a number of us here at Slaw. From David’s blog post:

I’ve got a new job: I’m co-director of the Harvard Library Lab, a part of Harvard Law School. I’m excited.

The Lab (the name is going to change) was created by John Palfrey a year ago when he became head of the Harvard Law Library (and Vice Dean for Information and Library Resources at the Law School). JP had been executive director of the Berkman Center. The key thing to understand is that the Lab was established by someone with a commitment

The Virtual Chase, an online website for U.S. legal research founded by law librarian Genie Tyburski, is now powered by Justia.

Virtual Chase was launched in 1996 by Tyburski, a law librarian at Ballard Spahr LLP in Philadelphia. It was a popular destination for law librarians and legal researchers but was closed down a few years ago.

It is now back with a redesign and new content sections:

• Legal Research: guides to U.S. federal and state law, and links to subject-specific guides
• Community: links to law librarian blogs, Twitter feeds, the Law-Lib listserv, etc.
• Law Libraries:

This is a follow-up to Gary Rodrigues’ excellent discussion about Access Copyright on July 26. Access Copyright has some proposed changes to its tariff before the Copyright Board of Canada. In contention: the high jump in fees per student in academic institutions, and Access Copyright’s definition of “copy” which includes uses already permitted under the Copyright Act.

Some good write-ups about the proposed tariff increase (from anti-tariff viewpoints): Michael Geist, Howard Knopf and Techdirt. I was looking for something pro-tariff not written by Access Copyright themselves, but didn’t see anything. Additional links welcome in the comments! . . . [more]

The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States Government including changes to rules and regulations, is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has relaunched its website and re-envisioned their services. Federal Register 2.0 is organized like a daily newspaper and is part of the open government initiatives under the Obama administration.

This video (which also appears on the new website under “About Federal Register 2.0”) provides additional detail about the history of the Federal Register and the changes:

Also note the website is using images from photo sharing site Flickr made available for use under Creative Commons licensing. . . . [more]

My colleague Laurel Murdoch showed me the latest issue of the Harvard Law School Bulletin, the lead article focusing on the changes happening at the Harvard Law Library, led by John G. Palfrey, the Law School’s vice dean for library and information resources (formerly of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society). Palfrey is the author of a very interesting piece that Louis alerted us to, entitled Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus

Palfrey’s piece ends with a collaborative challenge:

Our next step should be a process akin to a design charrette.60 We ought to

As was mentioned a number of years ago here on SLAW, the free Thomson Reuters newsletter called Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing was a useful assortment of articles for those who are involved in teaching legal research and writing.

Word comes now that the newsletter will no longer be published in print. Anyone wanting to receive the newsletter, however, can sign up for free delivery by email of an electronic version. . . . [more]

The Google Scholar Blog has pulled up a metric dozen “entertaining legal opinions” for our amusement — and, presumably, to remind everyone that Scholar makes many U.S. judgments available free. For example, there’s a reference to US v. Syufy Enterprises 903 F. 2d 659 (1990) which is said to contain the names of over 200 movies smuggled into the ordinary text.

(The blog helpfully provides a link to an article that marks up the titles in the judgment for you. Me, I think it’s interesting that in Syufy one of the judges is named Quackenbush, because that’s the . . . [more]