Legal Research

Feed of the Week: BuzzTracker

Posted on April 26, 2008
BuzzTracker (which was sold to Yahoo! late last year) aggregates the most popular news stories on over 1,000 topics and monitors 90,000 blogs to see who is talking about them. The site is currently in Beta and has a lot more to offer than just the feed...

Wanna Win a Bluebook?

Posted on April 25, 2008
Et Seq. points out that you might win a print copy of the 19th edition of the The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, plus a one year subscription to the online version, by helping out the Bluebook editors. To have a crack at being one of the lucky 10 (OK, couldn't they make it at least 20?) all you have to do is take their survey by June 30th, 2008...

Feed of the Week: New Urban Legends

Posted on April 21, 2008
I realize this is a bit late. I'm also not really sure which week this is covering, but hey, better late than never. Right? Right!The New Urban Legends feed is basically the "What's New" feed for Snopes.com. Snopes is the site that answers the question, "Is this for real?" So, if you get one of those multi-forwarded e-mail messages that sounds a little odd, scary, or unbelievable, you can check it out at Snopes...

National Library Week: Another Freebie

Posted on April 14, 2008
Paul Bush of the Legal Dockets Online Blog is providing a login and password for everyone to access Legal Dockets Online for free until April 20, 2008. He's doing this in honor of National Library Week. The best part is that you don't have to fill out any forms or provide any information about yourself...

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Free for National Library Week 2008

Posted on April 11, 2008
Next week (April 13 - 19) is National Library Week (NLW). In years past, that has always meant freebies. This year appears to be no exception. Running a quick search, here's what I found (Granted, some of these aren't really related to NLW, but the timing's good!):Ovid's Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals - This is actually free for the entire month of April...

Feed of the Week: AbsTracked Twinks

Posted on April 11, 2008
Yes, I finally succumbed to the land of Twitter. However, I'm not "tweeting" about my every life experience. I'm never going to understand that concept, I'm afraid. Actually, I'm not afraid. I'm really, really glad that doesn't make sense to me. If it ever does make sense to me, I hope one of my friends or relatives will seize my computers and dislocate my FiOS...

Legal Definitions 101: Ab Initio

Posted on April 10, 2008
The blogosphere takes itself far too seriously, so here is MiniMulvi to provide you with the legal definition for ab initio.MiniMulvi has expressed an interest in occasionally providing additional legal definitions on AbsTracked. This should prove interesting as MiniMulvi continues to lose front teeth.

2008 U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial

Posted on April 07, 2008
The 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial, United States (928 PDF pages) is now available via the Web site of the Federal Research Division (FRD) of the Library of Congress. The FRD site is sponsored and funded by the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School (TJAGLCS) Library (--TJAGLCS need to update their Web site security certificate--) and has been updated with 54 new documents.

Feed of the Week

Posted on April 05, 2008
At some point 3-4 years ago, I stumbled across a pre-defined Daily Rotation feed. Not knowing what the heck it was, I naturally subscribed to it. It has always been one of my favorites. It's a science/tech feed that produces such fabulous headlines as:Microsoft Windows XP Dies June 30, as PlannedApple Attacks the Big Apple Why the Demise of Civilisation May be Inevitable Eyedrops that Probe the Brain'Alien-' Type Viruses to Treat Staph Infections Chicago Beats Ice with Beet Juice It's a heck of a lot easier than trying to set up your own Daily Rotation feed...

Follow U.S. House & Senate Floor Action on Twitter

Posted on April 03, 2008
Thanks to Jim Milles for pointing out that you can now follow floor proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and Roll Call votes of the U.S. Senate on Twitter. Who knew? Well, other than Jim, apparently the 164 Twitterers who are currently following SenateFloor and the 247 following HouseFloor...

Top Law Schools for 2008

Posted on April 01, 2008
You can check out U.S. News & World Report's 2008 Best Law Schools here.

Geeky Fools

Posted on April 01, 2008
Since it's April Fool's day, I thought I'd provide you with a link to Lifehacker's Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks.Oh, and if you like upside down text, check out Flip from David Faden.

1926-1991 Bluebooks Online in PDF Format!

Posted on March 17, 2008
I think this is great! You can view the 1st - 15th editions at Et Seq. (Harvard Law School Library Blog) here.

Ultimate Irish Traditional Music Reference Book

Posted on March 16, 2008
Anyone who is familiar with Irish traditional music, knows that O'Neill's Music of Ireland is a "must have." The book of 1,850 tunes was originally published in 1903 by Captain Francis "Frank" O'Neill with the assistance of a group of trad musicians he gathered together as members of the Chicago/Irish Music Club...

Feed of the Week

Posted on March 15, 2008
The Consumerist is this weeks featured feed. Their tag line is "Shoppers Bite Back." The Consumerist is published by Gawker Media who also brought you (among other things) Wonkette and Lifehacker.To put it in the words of The Consumerist editors, they're "biased towards the consumer and favor bad company stories over happy customer tales...

Dancing In and Out of the Jungle

Posted on March 13, 2008
Jim Milles who blogs at Out of the Jungle (OOTJ), Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli, and with me over at law.librarians, invited me to post at OOTJ. I felt quite honored and a little intimidated since I felt like I had to be on my best behavior.I just published out my first OOTJ post...

Resources for Legal Self-Help Programs & Self-Represented Litigants

Posted on March 12, 2008
Selfhelpsupport.org is a site that serves as a network for practitioners of self-help programs. Membership is free and allows access to their Library, Newsletter, Network of Pro Se Practitioners, 3 e-mail groups, and training resources.While it is not geared toward self-represented litigants, themselves, it does offer a list of resources (which includes LawHelp...

Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings Approved

Posted on March 12, 2008
In January I mentioned that the Draft Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings would be considered by the Judicial Conference of the United States on March 11, 2008. The rules were approved and will become effective 30 days after promulgation (April 10)...

Your Online Reputation

Posted on March 11, 2008
There are two great articles (hot off the virtual presses) that deal with building a quality online reputation:"Who Do You Think You Are?" by Stem Legal principal/founder, and Vancouver Law Librarian Blog author, Steve Matthews. It focuses specifically on attorneys' online reputations and lawyer branding...

Mario Day Redux

Posted on March 11, 2008
It has come to my attention that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel believes that Mario Day is a day to honor Super Mario. This is blatant commercialization of Chicago Mario's day ; ). Let's set the record straight. Chicago Mario claimed this day. End of story.

I'm Sorry Marios

Posted on March 10, 2008
I'm sorry for two reasons:Not getting my Mario Day post up this morning.The reason I didn't get my Mario Day post up this morning.This is what I had planned on posting this morning:"I first wrote about Mario Day in 2005. I stopped posting for most of 2006 and half of 2007, but did manage to sneak in a mention of Mario Day on July 10, 2007...

Feed of the Week: DVICE

Posted on March 08, 2008
When I first started AbsTracked, I used to have a Feed Link Of The Day. And I gave it the fabulous acronym of FLOTD. Brilliant. Later, it became Feed Link Of the Week. At least FLOW was a better acronym.Well, I've decided to go back to featuring a feed each week...

Proposed Revisions to the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges

Posted on March 07, 2008
The Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States is taking public comments (which must be received by April 14, 2008) on proposed revisions to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.For more information, see today's U...

Why DC Area Residents Need to Go Out to Dinner on March 6th

Posted on March 05, 2008
If you live in the Washington, DC area, you should go out to dinner tomorrow night. Why? Because you deserve it, darn it! And so do others. Thanks to the efforts of Food & Friends:"On Thursday, March 6th, 150 restaurants in the Washington metropolitan region will join together to raise awareness and funds for men, women and children facing HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-challenging illnesses...

Feature-by-Feature Comparison of Office Live Workspace & Google Docs

Posted on March 04, 2008
Microsoft's Office Live Workspace is now available to the public in Beta. ReadWriteWeb has a feature-by-feature comparison of Office Live Workspace and Google Docs.

LII Introduces Two New Blogs

Posted on March 03, 2008
Thomas R. Bruce, the co-founder and director of the Legal Information Institute (LII) at the Cornell Law School, has a new blog that is currently ? nameless for now ?. He promises a copy of The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions (Paperback), edited by Kermit L...

Irish-American Heritage Month, 2008

Posted on March 01, 2008
President Bush proclaimed March 2008 Irish-American Heritage Month.The Library of Congress has an interesting site devoted to Irish immigrants in the U.S. The site includes a timeline, a flash-animated map showing the pattern of Irish immigration in the U...

Do You Want to Be a Diplomat?

Posted on February 28, 2008
If you do, you may be interested in U.S. Diplomacy's list of Useful Websites. If you're looking for something to read during your commute, check out the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Officer's Suggested Reading List.

Encyclopedia of Life Lives!

Posted on February 28, 2008
After crashing and burning on Tuesday (due to receiving 11.5 million hits in 5.5 hours), when it was unveiled to the public, the collaborative Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) appears to be alive and well. And well on its way to documenting all species of life on Earth...

FY 2007 Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics

Posted on February 27, 2008
You can now access the 12th ed. (fiscal year 2007: October 1, 2006 - September 30, 2007) of the United States Sentencing Commission?s Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics as well as the Commission's FY 2007 Annual Report.

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