Legal Research

Help Examine Lost JFK Files

Posted on February 23, 2008
The Dallas Morning News is asking for your help in reviewing recently found documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The documents, which consist of transcripts, personal and official letters, newspaper clippings, lists of jurors, police reports, rap sheets, autopsy reports, trial notes, police notebooks, photographs, and more, were found in a vault in Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins's office...

The Truth About Visiting DC

Posted on February 22, 2008
It's Friday evening and I refuse to do anything worthwhile. So, I thought I'd comment on Fodor's 25 Things We Love to Do in Washington, D.C. After all, I will have lived here for 20 years this July (I think I'll pretend that was a typo.).If you want links or useful information on these places, you can check out Fodor's article...

Ask BILL!

Posted on February 20, 2008
Ask BILL! - The Best Internet Law Library is a great site for online legal resources. It is produced by the Library of the U.S. Courts of the Seventh Circuit.What's really amazing is how current it is. We've only just recently been hearing about bulk...

Beijing Sculpture A.K.A. AbAtar

Posted on February 20, 2008
OK, a few people have asked what the heck my avatar is over at law.librarians. Since it is a little small over there, I thought I'd try posting a bigger version of the full photo. The photograph is of a sculpture in a Beijing park (I took the photo 10/2006)...

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Law Library of Congress - New RSS Feeds

Posted on February 16, 2008
ResourceShelf reports that the Law Library of Congress has new RSS feeds. You can grab feeds for:News & Events Research Reports Webcasts Global Legal Monitor

DC Court of Appeals - New Rule 49

Posted on February 14, 2008
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals Rule 49 (Unauthorized Practice of Law) was amended and became effective yesterday. Since I think they're a little challenging to find, I thought I'd link to the two versions on the Court's site:Compare Version (additions are underlined, deletions are lined-through)Clean Version of Rule 49 as Amended

A Chance to Win a $10,000 Scholarship by Submitting a Google Doodle

Posted on February 13, 2008
Google announced the launch of "Doodle 4 Google" today. Kids in participating K-12 schools are invited to submit a Google doodle inspired by the question, "What if...?" The winning doodle (logo) will be displayed on Google May 22, 2008 and the doodler will win a $10,000 college scholarship plus a $25,000 technology grant for their school...

Free U.S. Federal Cases Online

Posted on February 12, 2008
Thanks to lo-fi librarian for mentioning that the long-awaited U.S. federal cases are beginning to appear at public.resources.org. You can now access:Federal Reporter 2d (F. 2d)Federal Reporter 3d (F. 3d)U.S. ReportsThe collection is located here.

Ask a U.S. Government Information Librarian

Posted on February 12, 2008
GPO is announcing the Ask a Librarian service at Government Information Online under their "What's New" section, however, the service has been around since 2004. Free Government Information (FGI) (here's the blog feed) has more about the service's evolution here...

law.librarians

Posted on February 06, 2008
lo-fi librarian has started a fun blogging experiment with many law librarian bloggers. You can check it out at http://lawlibrarians.wordpress.com/. For more information, see lo-fi's post here.Oh, and here's the feed: http://lawlibrarians.wordpress.com/feed/

Free, Recycled PACER Docs

Posted on February 06, 2008
Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg has a great post about Public.Resource.org's PACER recycling page. You can upload your old PACER court documents so others can get them for free. You can access the recycled documents at bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/pacer.

Official U.S. Federal Court Rules Now on House Judiciary Site

Posted on February 05, 2008
The House Judiciary Committee has finally posted the current (December 1, 2007), official U.S. federal court rules on their site. Here are the links:Federal Rules of EvidenceFederal Rules of Criminal ProcedureFederal Rules of Civil ProcedureFederal Rules of Appellate ProcedureRelated AbsTracked posts:U...

FY 2009 U.S. Budget - Mapped by State

Posted on February 05, 2008
The Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2009 is now available online. You can view the state-by-state budget information here.

NYCRR (& More) Available On Web

Posted on February 05, 2008
Last September I mentioned that a link to the complete, unofficial copy of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations (NYCRR) would soon be posted on the New York Department of State Website and now it is, at http://www.dos.state.ny.us/info/nycrr.htm. Thanks to Steven Cohen at Library Stuff for pointing this out...

Crime Reports for Your Neighborhood

Posted on February 02, 2008
CrimeReports.com is working with law enforcement agencies to let citizens know where and what kind of crimes are occurring in their neighborhoods. You can enter any part of your address to get a map with current crime report details. By clicking on "Crime Types/Sex Offenders" you can search which crimes you want to see listed (including "Show All")...

Finding Cheap Airfare Online

Posted on February 01, 2008
There's little that thrills me more than finding great travel deals. Over the years I've become quite good at it. However, I'm always on the look-out for something I've missed. For example, Scott over at InformationOverlord had a post not long ago that mentioned the flight search engine Momondo...

New Draft Rules for Judicial Conduct & Disability

Posted on January 31, 2008
The U.S. Courts Web site has posted the 1/23/08 Draft Rules for Judicial-Conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings. The Rules now await consideration by the Judicial Conference on March 11, 2008.

Online Directory of History Departments and Organizations

Posted on January 31, 2008
The American Historical Association has an Online Directory of History Departments and Organizations in the United States and Canada. You can search or browse to find the contact information and Web sites for 848 college and university history departments and historical organizations.

Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act

Posted on January 29, 2008
Nicholas G. Karambelas, a partner at Sfikas & Karambelas LLP has written an interesting feature on RULLCA for the February 2008 edition of Washington Lawyer.You can access a copy of the the Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act (RULLCA) via the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) here.

Free Online Teleprompter - No Downloading

Posted on January 27, 2008
eHub always has great posts, but I especially liked Matthew Murphy's mention of CuePrompter. This site turns your browser into a teleprompter.All you have to do is write or paste your text into the box and press "Start Prompter." You can choose the speed at which your text scrolls...

Where's George? Where's Willy?

Posted on January 22, 2008
Have you ever wondered where your dollar came from or where it's going? I hadn't until I received a $20 with a wheresgeorge.com stamp on it. That was the first I'd ever heard of this bill-tracking (that's dollar bill-tracking) service. It turns out that my $20 came from North Carolina 250 days ago...

In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted on January 21, 2008
Today marks the Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. Federal Holiday. In honor of Dr. King, a truly amazing human being, I thought I'd provide a few useful links to information about and by him. The following are from Stanford University's The Martin Luther King, Jr...

Newly Revised Online Legislative Source Book

Posted on January 17, 2008
I'm very happy to see that the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) has updated almost all parts of the Legislative Source Book. It is a tremendous, easy-access resource. The principal editor, Rick McKinney is the Assistant Law Librarian at the Federal Reserve Board Law Library and definitely knows his legislative research...

National Zoo Ringtones!

Posted on January 17, 2008
For $2.99, you can now download a ringtone of your favorite Zoo animal. You can download the voices of famous pandas, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and baby Tai Shan as well as a wide variety of other Zoo and wild animals. The Zoo says they receive 40% of the proceeds from purchases of Zoo animal sounds and 25% for sounds from the wild...

Web 2.0: Add Tags to LC Photo Collections

Posted on January 16, 2008
The Library of Congress (LC) has posted some photos with "no known copyright restrictions" on Flickr and is asking you to help describe them. On LC's Flickr account, The Commons, it says,"The best way to get involved is to contribute some tags to the photos provided by the Library of Congress account! If we can show that this is a useful, productive endeavor, we can expand the program to include all sorts of collections!"For more information, read Matt Raymond's post, My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven.

2008 Index of Economic Freedom Released

Posted on January 15, 2008
The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation released the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom today. The Top 10 countries ranked as having the greatest economic freedom are:Hong KongSingaporeIrelandAustraliaU.S.New ZealandCanadaChile SwitzerlandU.K...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Gravesites

Posted on January 14, 2008
Anyone who read AbsTracked back in 2005, knows that I am plagued with a love of the morbid. However, I have managed to blog for several months now with only one mention of dead bodies. So, I think it's time for another.Today, Mary Persyn at The Valpo Law Blog mentioned that you can get a nice (Google) map to U...

LexisNexis Digital Congressional Record & Freebies on the Web

Posted on January 10, 2008
LexisNexis announced that they will be adding the following U.S. congressional debate volumes to their Congressional Digital Collection:Annals of Congress (1789-1824)Currently available for free on the Web here Register of Debates (1824-1837)Currently available for free on the Web hereCongressional Globe (1833-1873)Currently available for free on the Web hereCongressional Record (1873-to date)Currently 1873-1875 for free on the Web here, and 1989-present for free on the Web here (you can also access the Congressional Record for free at GPO, but it only goes back to 1994)What Lexis is doing is unique because right now there is no one place to access and search all of these online at once...

Links: Identity Theft and Other Financial Crimes

Posted on January 10, 2008
PInow.com has a useful list of links in yesterday's post entitled, Top 10 Resources Every Victim of Identity Fraud Should Have. That list goes along nicely with USA.gov's updated list of Financial Crimes and Scams U.S. government links.

Library of Congress's Digital Future 2008-2013

Posted on January 10, 2008
The Library of Congress's Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) has just issued a Strategic Plan for 2008-2013 (PDF)."The plan is intended as a living document that will guide OSI as it develops programs, plans and strategies for the Library of Congress's digital future...

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