Former UW Law School Dean George Bunn, a noted nuclear arms expert and negotiator, died of spinal cancer Sunday in Palo Alto, Calif., said his son Matthew Bunn. He was 87.

A more detailed obituary appears at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation site.

George Bunn served at the UW Law School from 1969 to 1986. He was dean of the from 1972-1975.

The Bunn family has a long ties with the UW Law School. Other family members include Judge Romanzo Bunn, who served as a lecturer in the 19th century; Charles Wilson Bunn, who received his bachelors and law degrees from UW; and Charles (Bob) Bunn, a long-time member of the Law School faculty from 1934-1962.

There is an interesting article about the Bunn family in the Autumn 1969 issue of The Gargoyle.

• READ Poster
  View this year's poster featuring Steve Barkan, Professor of Law and Director of the Law School Library
  - On display inside the library entrance on the 5th floor
  - View posters from previous years on our Facebook page

• Trivia Contest
  Law students, faculty and staff - Test your skills in sports, movies, history and more
  - Tues., April 16th at 5:00 pm in the Law School Atrium

• Make your own READ Poster
  Law students, faculty and staff - Bring your favorite book and be a literary star!
  - Wed., April 17th from 11:00-2:00
  - Thurs., April 18th from 1:00-4:00
  To reserve a time for a photo, email circ@law.wisc.edu or ask at the circulation desk. Walk ups also welcome.

According to the Wisconsin Legislative Council the act does several things:

• Removes the authority of the Secretary of State to designate the date of publication
  
• Instead, under the Act, the date of publication of an act is the day after the date of enactment unless a different effective date is expressly prescribed
  
• The Act requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish each act on its date of publication
  
• An act's effective date is the day after its date of publication

"Due to the scale and scope of the conflict, every aspect of civilian life was affected. The American legal system, including legal publishing, was greatly transformed by the conflict."

Many very interesting ads are reprinted in the article. I think that my favorite is the one from Shepards pondering "Were the Pilgrims Communists?"

A brutal selection process resulted in a collection of 64 books - 8 divisions with 8 books each - going head-to-head to determine our favorite book.

Vote for your favorites in each round. Total votes will determine which books move on.

The eight divisions are:
Fantasy
Horror
Sci-Fi
Classics
Romance
Mystery
Contemporary Literature
Non-Fiction

Hat tip to my colleague, Lisa Pfaff.

The list was first created by Betty Karweick for our Legal Research and Writing program years ago. I've updated the list for 2013 using suggestions from members of the Law Librarians Association of Wisconsin.

Thomson Reuters has officially gotten out of print publishing for law schools. On Friday, February 2nd, the publishing wing of the legal research giant was sold to Eureka Growth Capital, a private equity firm located in Philadelphia. It seems that paper publishing is not something that Thomson Reuters will be involved with in the future, at least for legal research. According to spokesman John Shaughnessy, "It's a segment of the market that, longer-term, we didn't see as within the core of our legal research offerings...", suggesting that Thomson Reuters will be focusing solely on electronic content in the near future.

Westlaw Next and other e-resources that Thomson Reuters provides will continue to be available to legal researchers. The publishing wing, which was sold for an undisclosed sum, will continue to publish various textbooks and study guides, but will now go under the name "West Academic Publishing". Thomson's legal business, of which the publishing was only a small part, will continue with sales of software and online databases.

For more information, see Eureka Growth Capital's press release or read the brief articles covering the sale in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal or Wall Street Journal Blog.

According to the about page, "the Digital Commons Network brings together scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, providing open access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work."

The main Network covers all subject areas included in the Digital Commons repositories. However, legal researchers may be most interested in the Law Network, which is a subset of the full product.

Once in the Law Network, you can do a broad search for scholarship in all legal subject areas, or you can narrow your search by practice area first (on the left). On the right side, there is a display of the most popular institutions, authors or articles in that subject area. This is based on the number of downloads.

There are also several options to follow content by email. You can follow all new scholarship or just content in a specific practice area or choose to follow the most popular institutions, authors or articles.

The Wisconsin State Bar launched a completely redesigned website on February 4th. Located at http://www.wisbar.org, the new site is the first upgrade since 2005. Combining resources that can be used by both the public and by members, the new site also features an intuitive navigation bar, improved lawyer searching and a distinctive home page for members to view all of their purchased content. While the transition has led to some issues, the website does improve it's navigability and usability.

The biggest change that visitors will notice is the enhancement of the home page and the addition of the navigation bar. The site is divided into five categories: About us, for Members, Marketplace, News and Publication, and for Public. Hovering your mouse over each of these options gives you a drop-down menu that allows you to select an even more specific area of the content to explore. With the advent and continuing popularity of Google-type searches, some users may find the search box to be more helpful. Located at the top right-hand side of the site, simply type into the box what you are looking for, and the entire site will be quickly searched.

Gaining access to member content is obviously one of the most important elements to the Wisconsin Bar website. When you sign into your account by clicking on "myStatebar" at the top right, you will be taken to a personalized home page that lists all the resources you have access to, which may include Books Unbound and Fastcase Legal Research. This page is customizable, and users can follow legal news that may be of interest to them. Users can also interact with other legal professionals by posting comments to news stories and adding more information to their profile.

Giving staff at a busy law office or library access to the resources is critical. After clicking the "myStatebar" link on the top right, State Bar members can then click on "myStaff", which is the farthest selection on the right. Here bar members may add staff, thereby sharing access to resources, such as Books Unbound, that are available to the member. Currently, the "myStaff" is still being designed and built, but once the final touches have been made behind the scenes, it will be possible for members to allow their entire staff access to the resources using only one log-in.

The transition hasn't been entirely smooth. Access to Books Unbound for both the UW Law Library and the State Bar Library has been affected. We are working with the State Bar to resolve this issue. Some areas of the site are still under construction, such as the above-mentioned staff access. As with many new sites, it takes time to get used to where the new locations for links are located. Nevertheless, the new website is an improvement over the previous one, and once these issues are worked out, should be helpful to visitors.

Improving and maintaining website navigation and content is a great challenge for any organization. The Wisconsin State Bar has redesigned their website to be more intuitive and to provide a 'one-stop shop' experience for legal professionals and the public. While the site is still a work in progress, check it out for yourself at http://www.wisbar.org. The staff at the State Bar wants your feedback on what you think of the new website. Email any thoughts you may have to WisBarFeedback@wisbar.org.

On Jan. 8, city officials announced the launch of its open data ordinance and a more accessible open data platform. Thus far, only one other city in the country, New York City, has implemented an ordinance mandating widespread government release of data, according to officials.

The city, officials said, is making open data projects a high priority. The new ordinance will require agencies to eventually release most of their data in raw format and make it available for download through the city's new open data Web portal.

Though the city made open data available in the past, the effort was far less comprehensive and the data was not in a format that developers could easily use, said CIO Paul Kronberger. "We recognize that this data has been created with public funds," he said, "so it rightfully belongs to the public and should be made available to the public."

Almost all city data will be made available, he said, with the exception of personally identifying information and any data prohibited to be released by existing regulations. In some cases, the city will further support software developers by providing access to APIs through the new portal, Kronberger said, and will look for opportunities to work with local developers.

Another benefit to the Web portal, Kronberger said, is that the city will field fewer formal requests for data because it will already be openly available to those who need it on the portal. Not all city data will be made available at once, but the city plans to gradually make most data available, Kronberger said.

Section I lists all women members alphabetically by house and indicates their party, district, occupation, and terms of service. Section II lists the members serving in each session.

The study is somewhat limited in that it only compares the results from one case, but it is still illustrative. The authors found that LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg performed better than their lower price counterparts, Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker. No big surprise there. However, the authors so suggest some workarounds to help expand results.