CityDictionary is a fun new online dictionary with a local flavor. From the creator:

It's for regional words/phrases/things/places, etc. that you think someone should know about a city. But it's more than just a city guide -- it's really a place to share insider information like nicknames for things, regional slang, etc. that you wouldn't know until someone explained it to you. You can also upload photos of things (whether or not you wrote a definition for it). Also, if you have a better definition for a word that already exists on there (or just think there is some key information missing), just add your own definition. You can vote on definitions, too, and the number of votes they have determines the order in which they appear under the word.

Although it's heavily Madison focused, CityDictionary is open to any city/town in the United States.

Thanks to my colleague, Vicky Coulter for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The SEC has begun offering RSS feeds of new filings. You can receive all filings received by the SEC or do a search by company, CIK or form type and subscribe to the results.

Source: Slaw

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems that David Hobbie over at Caselines is very impressed with PreCYdent. He ran a sample search in several databases, both free and commercial, and was surprised with the results:

I was stunned by the results of my search for IPJ on PreCYdent. The top six cases were the leading U.S. Supreme Court cases I studied in Prof. Reimann's jurisdiction class. Each of them is fundamental to an understanding of the application of personal jurisdiction in federal courts. I have never seen a such a highly relevant set of search results on any electronic case search engine. Not in Westlaw. Not in Lexis. Not anywhere....

A look on the PreCYdent team list and firm description site has a clue."PreCYdent search technology is able to mine the information latent in the "Web of Law", the network of citations among legal authorities. This means it is also able to retrieve legally relevant authorities, even if the search terms do not actually occur or occur frequently in the retrieved document."

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The following databases are available free this week (some longer):

• Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals - Ovid actually offers a free database every month - See their Resource of the Month page
• ebrary is offering complimentary access to library science e-books for a full year.
• Gale is offering access to a vast number of databases in areas such as history, health, nursing, science, literature, reference, and readers advisory, etc.
• Greenwood Publishing is also offering a number of databases in cultures, history, reference, and readers advisory.
• OECD.stat (statistical publications) is available for free for the first half of 2008 while it's still in Beta.
• Legal Dockets Online - login: nlw; password: free

Source: AbsTracked and my colleague, Nancy Paul

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New from the Milwaukee Public Library: 19th Century U. S. Newspapers

Consisting of just under 17 million articles, 19th Century U. S. Newspapers from the Thomson Gale Company is a genealogy or history buff's dream come true. Fully searchable by keyword, this database includes papers from across the U.S., and is particularly strong on the Midwest. Newspapers with significant runs include the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, Wisconsin State Register, Chicago Evening Journal, Hartford Courant, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and Frederick Douglass' Paper, to name just a few.

This database can be accessed at the Milwaukee Public Library or from home/office by City of Milwaukee library cardholders. It is also available on at the UW Madison campus libraries or remotely with a campus id.

Source: Now @ MPL

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Beginning with the 110th Congress, the Public and Private Laws on GPO Access have been digitally signed and certified. GPO has signed and certified the PDF files to assure users that the online documents are official and authentic.

"To help meet the challenge of the digital age, GPO has begun implementing digital signatures to certain electronic documents on GPO Access that not only establish GPO as the trusted information disseminator, but also provide the assurance that an electronic document has not been altered since GPO disseminated it." Read more at GPO Access' authentication efforts.

Source: FDLP-listserv via my colleague, Bill Ebbott

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Foreclosure Alarm is a new company based out of Madison which offers real-time notifications of all pre-foreclosure filings in Wisconsin. The data is derived from CCAP.

From the Attorney Benefits page:

• Search foreclosure filings based on county, zip code, partial zip code (for metro area matches), plaintiff names and event types.


• Subscribe to whatever counties in which you are interested. Receive instant email notifications whenever a pre-foreclosure filing is entered in the CCAP statewide system.


• After you've searched and found the list of filings you are interested in, simply click the export link at the top of the list. This will download a spreadsheet to your computer specifically formatted for easy mail merge with programs like Microsoft Word.


• With our Filing Watch, you can choose which event types you are interested in. Many events occur during the foreclosure process - many of which you probably aren't interested to know about. With our system, you can filter out these events and only keep track of the ones important to you.

Foreclosure Alarm is priced at $39.95/month for all features. A free trial is also available. They have created a short video explaining how it works.

I spoke with developer Philip Crawford yesterday about the differences between Foreclosure Alarm and CCAP itself. Although the data is derived from CCAP, Foreclosure Alarm's notification service is unique. While CCAP does offer RSS feeds now, they are only available for the basic search. There seems to be no way to get a CCAP feed based on a class code or case type search. Plus, Foreclosure Alarm also offers downloadable spread sheets for mail merging.

Philip also informed me that they are also considering the development of a more generalized notifications system which would incorporate all case types. I also recommended that they look into offering RSS feeds in addition to the email notifications.

Thanks to Carol Bannen for alerting me to this new service.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Due Process reports that law review articles from Hein Online are now being indexed by Google Scholar.

I've always liked Google Scholar, but up until recently I haven't found it particularly helpful for finding law review articles. Until today. I just noticed that Google Scholar now searches HeinOnline, which has one of the largest online collection of law review articles. I can't tell how much of HeinOnline is being searched by Google Scholar.

Google Scholar is different from Google because it searches only databases that have scholarly content and aren't searchable by Google as they aren't part of the free web. Google Scholar doesn't provide access to the full-text of these articles (your library does that), but it is an quick and easy way to search multiple databases at one time.

And if you didn't already know, the Wisconsin State Law Library offers remote access to Hein Online to firms or state agencies with less than 25 attorneys. If that's you and you have a WSLL library card, you can access the full text law reviews and journals in Hein Online from anywhere.

-----------
Update: 3/31/08
Read more about in the Hein Online Weblog

The indexing is still ongoing, as Google Scholar has not fully indexed all of the titles in the Law Journal Collection as of yet. Over the next 30 days or so they should near completion of the indexing at which point the entire HeinOnline Law Journal collection will be searchable in Google Scholar.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Per an email I received from developer Antonio Tomarchio, PreCYdent is reporting some new content:

• A collection of opinions from major states has recently been added with more to come
  
• Later this week, a GPO section will be added containing "all congressional records" I'm not sure what that means, but I'm eager to find out.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Out of the Jungle reports that "Westlaw has removed all Dialog content with the exception of the copyright databases." Worse yet, it seems that there was no prior notification.

It's uncertain whether this affects all Westlaw accounts or just academic ones. I've asked my Westlaw Librarian Relations rep about it, but haven't heard back yet. OOTJ also promises to report any updates.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google has added a new feature in which a secondary search box that appears within some of the search results themselves. See, for example, the search results for a "NASA" search.

Note the "Search nasa.gov" search box below the link. According to Google,

This feature will now occur when we detect a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within a specific site. Like the rest of our snippets, the sites that display the site search box are chosen algorithmically based on metrics that measure how useful the search box is to users.

I've not seen this yet for any other search I've done - have you?

Source: Search Engine Watch
----
Update: 3/12/08 Looks like Google within Google also appears for some university names, including the University of Wisconsin. I also saw it for the IMDB (Internet Movie Database).

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since its launch earlier this week, JD Supra is already creating quite a buzz around the blawgosphere. It's a combination business networking site and shared document repository for legal professionals - quite ingenious actually. And it's all free.

As a Business Networking Site:
JD Supra offers legal professionals and organizations a chance to showcase their work. Individuals, firms or organizations create profiles for themselves in which they describe their expertise, practice areas, educational background, etc.

Once the profile is created, individuals or organizations can post documents - court filings, articles & newsletters, and legal forms. "The more documents you post on JD Supra, the more exposure you receive. Each document you post advertises your experience and the quality of your work."

As a Shared Document Repository:
As more and more legal documents are shared, JD Supra is quickly becoming an important tool for legal researchers, too. It's not only that JD Supra is facilitating the sharing of legal content - there are other sites do that, like DocStoc or Scribd - but what makes it unique is that it is able to lend some authority to those documents by tying them to author profiles. As a librarian, I'm much more likely to rely on a source when I can verify the expertise of its author.

There are already lots of documents available, including numerous items from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Morrison & Foerster. Justia reports that they are in the process of doing a major data upload of the higher quality briefs and filings aggregated from Pacer.

As I said, JD Supra is creating quite a buzz, and rightly so. To read more, check out the ABA Journal, WSJ law blog, and Robert Ambrogi's Law Sites to name just a few.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With so many great resources available on the Internet at no cost, you may wonder how content creators can afford to offer them for free. Wired magazine has a very useful article which explains Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

Source: Vancouver Law Librarian Blog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google Street Views has made its way to Milwaukee. Simply do a Google search for an address in Milwaukee and click on the "Street Views" link in the resulting map. You'll see a panoramic view from the street like the one below. Notice that you can pan, rotate and zoom, as well as, move forward or backward down the street.

View Larger Map

Despite its usefulness for travelers, home buyers, etc., it's no surprise that Google Street Views has raised privacy concerns. See the related NYT article. Google does allow users to report inappropriate photographs.

Google Street Views is currently only available for major metropolitan areas.

Source: Wisconsin Law Journal blog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google recently announced that you can create forms using spreadsheets in Google Docs.

Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet.

Forms are great for collecting information and now you don't have to know anything about programming to set up one of your own. Very nice.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow - more big news today stemming from the availability of free federal case law. Fastcase has developed a new resource called The Public Library of Law which brings together a wide variety of free legal resources, including:

State Law for All 50 States:
• Supreme and Appellate Court cases from 1997 to the present
• Statutes from all 50 states
• Constitutions from all 50 states
• Court Rules from all 50 states
• Regulations and Administrative Codes from selected states

Federal Law:
• All U.S. Supreme Court Cases
• All Federal Circuit Courts from 1950 to the present
• The United States Code
• US Code of Federal Regulations
• Federal Court Rules

Free registration is required to view materials. PLoL also includes free links to paid content on Fastcase. See the PLoL user guide for more information.

Thanks to Tim Stanley of Justia for the heads up.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Appleton Post-Crescent has gathered together a number of Wisconsin-related public records databases, some useful, others, well, maybe more interesting than useful. They include:

• Banned Wisconsin license plates
• Delinquent Appleton accounts
• Disciplined doctors, dentists and other licensed professionals
• Smoking cost calculator
• New businesses in Northeastern Wisconsin
• Wisconsin school salaries
• Fox Valley delinquent taxpayers
• Wisconsin sexually transmitted disease cases
• Wisconsin teen mothers
• Wisconsin public library statistics
• Trophy deer, bear
• Records on car crashes with deer
• DNR hunting and fishing license sales locations
• Wisconsin fishing records
• Fox Valley unclaimed property

Source: The Wheeler Report

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Denise Howell over at Lawgarithims has good things to stay about Docstoc, a "user generated community where you can find and share professional documents." There are tons of sample legal and business forms to be had, not to mention law school outlines and bar exam resources. Seems a lot like Scribd but with more legal content.

The content is extensive to be sure, but the lack of authority scares me. I was troubled that so many Docstoc documents are of anonymous authorship, and even when authorship is listed, authority is certainly not guaranteed.

As a librarian, I'm constantly advising people to pay attention to the source when replying upon information from the Web. This is particularly important for legal information where so much as a misplaced comma can cost millions.

I'll all for social networking and building up the information commons, but legal contract language does doesn't strike me as something I'd be willing to trust to an unknown author. But, maybe I'm being overly cautious and not appreciating the whole social networking dynamic. What do you think?

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is a new public-domain law search engine on the block and it's a dandy.

Content
Like parallel projects, Public.Resource.Org and AltLaw, newcomer PreCYdent aims to compile public-domain cases and statutes for free availability on the Web. "We believe judicial opinions and statutes must be in the public domain, in practice as well as in theory. To us this means that effective legal research in all of these materials should be free to the user -- not expensive, not inexpensive. Free." Officially, the alpha version contains only U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals cases so far, but it looks like the US Code is available, as well.

Search Engine
There are several things that make PreCYdent stand apart from the other projects, however. Foremost is its sophisticated, yet simple-to-use Google-esque search engine developed specifically with legal resources in mind. "PreCYdent search technology is able to mine the information latent in the "Web of Law", the network of citations among legal authorities. This means it is also able to retrieve legally relevant authorities, even if the search terms do not actually occur or occur frequently in the retrieved document."

Social Networking
Another stand out aspect is PreCYdent's incorporation of social networking tools, such as offering users the option to add tags and comments to documents, and to rate their importance. "Our objective is to create a space where people interested in law will be able to share knowledge, find help and to exchange experiences. We are going to integrate our effort with successful social communities such as Facebook. "

For more on PreCYdent, see Robert Ambrogi's insightful analysis, as well as, Joe Hodnicki's interview with founder Thomas A. Smith, professor at University of San Diego School of Law.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite speculation to the contrary, The Wall Street Journal will keep a significant portion of its content behind its paid-subscription wall.

The Atlantic Monthly, however, has recently dropped its subscriber registration requirement, making the site free to all visitors. Back issues are available from 1995 to the present. Note that the search box, oddly enough, is at the bottom of the page.

Sources: beSpacific and Boing Boing

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cornell Law Library has recently enhanced their Legal Research Search Engine to include a few new specialty search engines. It now includes four search engines:

• Legal Research Guides (compiled by law libraries around the county)
• Legal Internet (sites indexed by InSite)
• Academic Blawgs
• and a combined search of the all of the above

You can also add these search engines to your Google homepage by clicking on the Google button under each one. Nifty.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From the HeinOnline Weblog:

Next month, HeinOnline will release an enhancement that will allow you to search an Index to Periodical Articles Related to Law Database. The database was created from the Index to Periodical Articles Related to Law publication, which is compiled and edited by Roy M. Mersky and Donald J. Dunn and has been published since 1958. [Read more from HeinOnline]

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned today that full-time professors of law, economics, or accounting may sign up for complimentary access to Tax Analysts Campus. The purpose of Tax Analysts Campus is to provide professors an opportunity to teach with, and students to learn with, Tax Analysts' news and research products.

These products include:

• Tax Notes Today (Daily)
  
• Tax Notes (Weekly)
  
• Federal Research Library
  
• State Tax Today (Daily)
  
• State Tax Notes (Weekly)
  
• Worldwide Tax Daily (Daily)
  
• Tax Notes International (Weekly)
  
• Worldwide Tax Treaties

Professors will receive a user name and password via e-mail to share with their students. Web access provided under Tax Analysts Campus is solely for educational use and may not be used to replace professional subscriptions or be used for business purposes. Length of access is limited to the academic year; annual renewal is required.

To access, professors should return a completed application via fax (703-533-4444) or e-mail (cservice@tax.org).

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A question about citation management software on the ALL-SIS listserv reminded me that I haven't yet posted about EndNote's addition of the Bluebook citation style. Previously, the only product of which I was aware that supported Bluebook was Citation Legal Edition. [What is citation management software?]

I learned about this back in August when Web of Knowledge started including EndNote Web in our campus subscription. Although the two products are designed complement each other, you can use them separately. So, despite the fact that there isn't a ton of legal content in Web of Knowledge, I can still make use of the EndNote Web piece.

According the to technician I spoke with at EndNote, the EndNote Web program comes with a standard set of output styles (which currently cannot be changed or modified like the desktop version of EndNote), which now includes the two Bluebook styles.

If you don't already have EndNote (desktop) or EndNote Web, you can get the free demo version of EndNote X1 and test out the Bluebook outputs.

Since I'd already built custom Bluebook styles in RefWorks (to which our campus also subscribes), I haven't felt the urgent need to play around with the Bluebook styles in EndNote. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone that has. Please share in the comments.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hein Online is now offering live chat search and tech support. Live help is accessible through the "Help" button found in the upper right hand corner, on the welcome screen, and in the technical and training sections of the home page.

If you aren't familiar with Hein Online, it is made up of several libraries, including law journals, CFR, Federal Register, codes, session laws, and much more. PDF page images are available. For more information, see Cheryl O'Connor's article in the Law School Newsletter.

Hein Online is available at the UW Law Library, Wisconsin State Law Library, Dane County Legal Resource Center, Milwaukee Legal Resource Center and Marquette Law Library. The Hein Online Law Journal Library is also available remotely to legal professionals with a Wisconsin State Law Library card.

Source: Hein Online Weblog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. The reports issued by CRS, which are created to inform members of Congress on issues of public policy, are excellent sources of in-depth, non-partisan information.

Unfortunately, while the taxpayer-funded CRS reports are unclassified, they do not become public until a member of Congress releases them. Fortunately, a number of libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. Open CRS, a project of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), brings together these collections.

Because there is no systematic way to obtain all CRS reports, not all reports appear on the Open CRS web site. But with the help of one anonymous lawmaker, we at least know what we are missing. According to a CDT press release, this lawmaker is providing a running list of new reports, making it possible to seek out the "fugitive" reports and upload them to the database. Looks like all known ones so far have been tracked down.

Sources: Virtual Library Cat's Eye View and beSpacific

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From CM Law Library Blog:

At last! You can now easily get to the digest topic outline on Westlaw via a link on the top of the Westlaw page that says "Key Numbers". [Read more]

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two business databases available to public library card holders have just been announced:

Value Line from the Milwaukee Public Library

Value Line, a popular online database for investors, is now available remotely through the Milwaukee Public Library's Website. All City of Milwaukee residents with valid library cards can use this great resource. To access this database from your home computer: Go to the Milwaukee Public Library's home page. Select "Research Resources," then "All Library Databases". Scroll through the alphabetical list until you reach Value Line. Click on the Value Line link. Enter your library card number and PIN, and you're in!

Value Line is also available at some Madison Public Library locations.

Morningstar Library Edition from the Madison Public Library

Madison Public Library and the Madison Public Library Foundation are offering a five-month trial of the Morningstar Library Edition financial evaluation service. Morningstar Library Edition incorporates the best of Morningstar data, analysis, technology, and information design. Individual investors can access and use all of the features and functionality in this online destination, including analyst reports of 2,000 mutual funds and nearly 2,000 stocks. An exceptional Education Center offers in-depth guides on five different topics that matter most to today's investor: retirement planning, college planning, investing during retirement, investing for beginners, and portfolio tips and tricks.

Morningstar Library Edition will be accessible from November 1, 2007, to March 31, 2008, to anyone who visits a Madison Public Library location. The service will also be available remotely to any City of Madison resident who has a current public library card. Contact Carla DiIorio at 266-6310 or email madisonlibrary@gmail.com to participate in this trial.

Morningstar is also available from the Milwaukee Public Library.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

West has unveiled a new Web search engine called Westlaw WebPlus. This legally-focused search engine filters search results based on legal relevance.

WebPlus is available from within Westlaw, although it may just be for law schools at this point (see image below), as well as independently on the Web. Using it in either platform is free.

There are some nice features including specifying whether you're searching for a legal Issue, person, company, government entity, etc. Search results can also be refined by subject, domain or file format, as well as by format (web, news or blog results).

Of course Westlaw WebPlus isn't going to replace other research tools, such as Westlaw, Lexis and other databases, or more traditional print resources. But for searching the legal Web, it's pretty nice. I'll definitely be adding it to my list of search engines.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

West has launched a fun new resource called Headnote of the Day in which "amusing, profound or otherwise interesting" headnotes are delivered to you by email (what, no RSS?). Headnote of the Day is a free subscription service.

From the press release:

"People are fascinated with the law," said Al Maleson, West Headnote of the Day developer. "The law is life and death, love and betrayal, marriage and family, crime and punishment. This is also what is captured in the free West Headnote of the Day, and why we think headnotes make good daily reading."

Thanks to Danae, one of our Westlaw reps, for telling me about this one.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to a grant from the US Dept of Justice, Wisconsin will soon be launching a new statewide victim notification system.

From the Wisconsin Radio Network:

[According to Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch], the project is intended to make sure all victims have easy access to the status of an offender or defendant as they move through the criminal justice system.

The state does already have a system in place that notifies victims about the status of an offender. However, Raemisch says it can be complicated and stressful for victims to use. The new system being developed would allow them to use register with just one source for information on an offender.

Thanks to my colleague, Bill Ebbott, for passing this on.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HeinOnline will soon be enhancing title browsing. From the HeinOnline Weblog:

We added the ability to browse volumes within a title without taking you to an entirely new page. On a collection's list of titles you will now see a "+" to the immediate left of each title which indicates that when it is clicked, the volumes relating to that title will open up underneath that title in reverse volume order so you see the most current volume first.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Westlaw representative informs me that there are two new databases of interest to Wisconsinites:

• Dockets-Wisconsin-Appellate and Supreme Courts (DOCK-WI-APPSCT)
• Dockets-Wisconsin-Circuit Courts (DOCK-WI-CIRCUIT)

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've recently discovered that JSOnline maintains a statistics portal called DataOnDemand. The data sets, which go back to June 2007, include:

• Annual pay for Milwaukee city employees
  
• FBI crime statistics
  
• U.S. housing unit estimates
  
• U.S. poverty estimates
  
• School instructional hours
  
• Dam inspections
  
• Wisconsin bridges
  
• Property taxes
  
• Wisconsin fuel pump inspections
  
• State subsidies to businesses
  
• Wisconsin population

The data sets relate to stories published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The source of the data appears at the bottom of each data set.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HeinOnline will soon be adding a new search feature called Title Lookup whereby you can locate a title anywhere in HeinOnline or you can use it to locate a title in a specific library.

Title Lookup is available on the HeinOnline "Welcome" page and in each HeinOnline library. You can enter any term you wish to search. Surrounding terms with " " will perform a phrase search.

Here's a screen shot from the HeinOnline blog:

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HeinOnline has launched a blog to provide product information to users.

According to Hein:

This blog will offer insight to our newest products, notify customers of our latest interface enhancements, and share tips to help improve customers research experience.

Anyone from students and librarians to professionals world-wide will be able to use our blog to communicate with our development team, share tips with other subscribers, or simply to read what other HeinOnline users are saying.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to my rep, LexisNexis Fifty State Surveys of Statutes and Regulations are now available on the Law School menu. The LexisNexis 50 State Surveys deliver an easy to access, easy to understand overview of legislation, regulations and even court rules, all organized by topic.

Use the following path:
Legal > States Legal - U.S. > Combined States > Statutes & Legislative Materials

I love that 50 states surveys are available on LexisNexis - and Westlaw, by the way. I used to cringe when I'd get a request for a 50 state survey of state statutes because they are fairly difficult and laborious to compile. But, now, it's quite easy - assuming that Lexis or Westlaw has one on topic.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In addition to the password protected LexisNexis, there is also a campus wide product called LexisNexis Academic to which the UW Madison Libraries subscribe. Anyone may use this service at no charge at any campus library. Although it doesn't offer everything in full Lexis, most of it is there.

LexisNexis Academic recently underwent a redesign and the layout is now quite similar to full LexisNexis. But in addition to the layout changes, it seems that some new sources were added. Most significant is the full availability of Shepards. Previously, Shepards was only available for US Supreme Court cases, but now it's comprehensive. Another addition are selected municipal codes.

Also, according to product manager, Alistair Morrison, American Law Reports and American Jurisprudence on available on LN Academic, but probably only until the end of the year. That may have something to do with the removal of ALR from all Lexis products.

To see what's available for Wisconsin, go to the "sources" tab and then "find sources" Do a search for the keyword "Wisconsin". You might find something else you didn't know what available. I did - the Wisconsin Administrative Code archive. I'm not sure if that's new or not.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Information Today reports that as of January 2008, American Law Reports (ALR) will be available exclusively on Westlaw.

From the article:

It isn't the first time that users have had products pulled out from under them. Lexis took away Shepard's Citators--and in fact, Westlaw's novel and award-winning KeyCite was a response to that. Factiva has been an exclusive at one time or another on each system. Various newspapers and journals have also been moved back and forth, lock, stock, and barrel...

Competition now demands (and Lexis has already announced) new products to fill the gap left by ALR... According to Michael Saint-Onge, my LexisNexis consultant, we "really have a two-pronged answer. Cases in Brief, which gives the in-depth analysis of specific cases (and the larger legal issues underlying the case)" is one... The "second part of the answer hasn't been released yet: It's the remake of Search Advisor, which is being revamped and should release in late September or early October."

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Shifted Librarian reports that EBSCO has finally embraced RSS. To test it out, do a search in an EBSCO database, such as Academic Search Elite which is freely available to all Wisconsinites via Badgerlink.

On your search results page, notice the orange RSS button which appears at the top. Click on this will give you a customized RSS feed based on your search terms. It also gives you the option to receive an email alert.

I'm very pleased with this. EBSCO has made it easy and intuitive to generate a custom feed. Lets hope that more vendors follow suit.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I noticed a while back that Shepard's coverage was expanded in the new beta version of LexisNexis Academic. In the current version, only U.S. Supreme Court cases can be Shepardized.

There was some discussion today on the AALL Academic Law Libraries SIS about coverage. Apparently it includes all case law, but no statutory coverage.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looks like The New York Times may stop charging readers for online access to its TimesSelect service which features Op-Ed columnists and other content, says the New York Post.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter...

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would only say in an e-mailed statement, "We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com."

Source: Boing Boing

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Madison Public Library reports that it has expanded its online collection of Madison City Directories. Coverage now spans from 1850-1911. The collection also contains historical county plat maps from South Central Wisconsin.

In addition to their usefulness for historians and genealogists, these plat maps and city directories are also an important resource for legal researchers seeking historical land use and ownership information.

City directories provide an alphabetical list of citizens with their addresses and occupations, a classified business directory, lists of city and county officials, churches, schools, societies, streets and wards. See, for example, the following entries from the 1911 for Robert M. La Follette's home, law firm and magazine.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wendt Library Blog has some good hacks for Google Scholar for UW-Madison users.

By simply changing your preferences, you can beef up your search results by adding full-text links from UW-Madison library databases. And now, you can export your search results to RefWorks.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections has recently digitized the full text of the Wisconsin Blue Books, going back to 1853. Read more about it in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin Historical Society has recently digitized the full text of The Wisconsin Magazine of History from volume 1 (1917) to volume 83 (1999). The journal is freely available on the Wisconsin Historical Society's Web site.

Not only is this good news for historical researchers, it holds special significance to me personally. My very first article was published in The Wisconsin Magazine of History. It was my senior history thesis at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and is entitled, "'This Naughty, Naughty City': Prostitution in Eau Claire from the Frontier to the Progressive Era." The research was fascinating, as you can imagine. And seeing it in print gave me the confidence to continue writing articles.

Notice what the women in the photo are wearing. I've recently learned that stripped stockings were a dead giveaway as to a woman's profession. Of course, being photographed with the liquor bottle on the table next to them was also a tell-tale sign.

Thanks to Bill Ebbott for letting me know about this digitization effort.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been reported on the GOVDOC-L listserv that Hein Online is scheduled to release some significant collections soon, including the following:

• Congressional Record
• Annals of Congress
• Register of Debates
• Congressional Globe
• Journals of the Continental Congress
• American State Papers

According to the post, this collection will begin to appear in June 2007, with the remainder of Congressional Record volumes available sometime in the year 2008.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The New York Times reports that Reuters agreed today to a "$17.2 billion takeover by Thomson that would vault the combined entity ahead of Bloomberg to become the world's largest financial data and news provider."

''The companies will be separate legal entities but will be managed and operated as if they were a single economic enterprise,'' the announcement said. ''The boards of the two companies will be identical and the combined business will be managed by a single senior executive management team.''

The combined Thomson Financial unit and Reuters financial and media businesses will be called Reuters.

Thomson's professional businesses -- legal, tax and accounting, scientific and healthcare -- will be branded as Thomson-Reuters Professional.

Thanks to my colleague, Eric Taylor, for the tip.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have a Google account (like Gmail, Google News, etc.), you might be surprised to learn that Google is keeping track of your Web activity. We're taking every day, every site, every search going back years (mine goes back to 2005). They call it your Web History.

Here's the explanation from Google:

You know that great web site you saw online and now can't find? With Web History, you can view and search across web pages you've visited in the past, including Google searches. Web History also provides interesting trends on your web activity, such as which sites you visit most frequently and what your top searches are. Finally, Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you've searched for and which sites you've visited.

OK, now while I admit that could be useful in some situations, mostly I just find it creepy. Worse yet, if you happen to find out someone else's Google password, you can view their info, too. Or, if you share a computer with someone else (like a family member) and you don't log out, you can see their searches - or they can see yours if you use the computer when they are still logged in. Heck, you can even create a Web History RSS feed.

Fortunately, you can delete your search history, either specific searches or the entire search history.

Source: LawLibrary Blog

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Wisconsin State Law Library has recently begun offering remote access to Hein Online. This service is only available to firms or state agencies with less than 25 attorneys, however. If that's you and you have a WSLL library card, you can access the full text law reviews and journals in Hein Online from anywhere. Sweet.

Add this to WSLL's remote access to LegalTrac and you're pretty well set up for law journal searching. See their full list of electronic resources.

See this month's WSLL @ Your Service for instructions on how to access full text law journal articles via Hein Online by searching the library catalog.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sabrina Pacifici with help from the team over at Justia has launched a redesigned LLRX. They've done a great job of spicing up the look and feel to highlight the first rate content for which LLRX is so well known. Kudos all around.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Amanda Werhane over at Wendt Library Blog has compiled a useful list of library services available to UW alumni and Wisconsin residents. Check it out.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know I've mentioned it a couple times before, but I wanted to give another plug for Current Law Journal Content (CLJC) from Washington and Lee Law School. With CLJC, you can search and subscribe to current tables of contents from over a thousand law journals (including Wisconsin Law Review, Wisconsin International Law Journal, and Wisconsin Women's Law Journal). Search results include the article citation along with a link to the article in Westlaw (password required) and WorldCat (which will show the nearest library that has the journal).

You can also elect to receive customized alerts by email and RSS. To create an email alert, you must create a profile. Just click on the journals that you want and enter your email at the top. By clicking subscribe, you'll receive a weekly email with the journal table of contents.

With RSS you can customize even further, although it is fairly complex. You can customize your RSS feed by journal, country, author or search terms. [A BIG thanks to John Doyle for recently developing those last two!!]

You do need to construct your own feed - here are a few examples:

• For articles from a specific journal: http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/xml.aspx?issn=1052-3421 [insert your own ISSN] -or- http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/xml.aspx?title=wisconsin+law+review [insert your own journal title]
  
• For articles by a specific author:
  http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/xml.aspx?search=au(john smith) [insert your own author name]
  
• For articles matching your keyword search:
  http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/xml.aspx?search=criminal [insert your own search term(s); note: multiple terms will be "anded"]

If you are a RefWorks user, you'll be happy to know that John has recently created a special RSS feed format for importing into RefWorks. Just paste "&outformat=refworks" on to the end of your feed. For example, http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/xml.aspx?search=au(john smith)&outformat=refworks

At the UW Law Library, we've been working with RefWorks to develop a faculty bibliography. Being able to not only receive notification of new articles by our faculty, but to have the citation information directly imported into RefWorks via CLJC will be a time-saver.

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Update: Customized RSS feeds just got a lot easier! Per my suggestion, John has added a RSS button to the search results page. Just do a search and click on the RSS button to subscribe to the results. I LOVE this!

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a very useful article in today's Wall Street Journal on Why You Should Spy on Yourself. [Article link is to WSJ.com (subscription required). Wisconsinites can also access the article on Badgerlink (via ProQuest)]

The article lists services, free and fee, which you (and others) can use to check your credit history, criminal history and online reputation.

The author suggests these tips for running a background check on yourself:

• Order your credit report. These are from major credit-reporting agencies Equifax, TransUnion and Experian and can be obtained from www.annualcreditreport.com or 1-877-322-8228.
• Order a free annual public-records report (consumers are entitled under a 2004 federal law) from Acxiom Corp., ChoicePoint, LexisNexis and other reporting agencies. The records include lien searches, bankruptcy judgments, real-estate ownership records, insurance information, professional licenses and other government data. For a free report, go to www.ChoiceTrust.com for information. Contact LexisNexis at 1-877-913-6245. And Acxiom, which provides material to people only when a background search has also been ordered by a corporate client, is at 1-888-3ACXIOM.

  Source: TVC Alert

  Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From TVC Alert:

Consumers and other non-subscribers to LexisNexis may now obtain select public records, verdicts, settlements and other case information through LexisONE. There is a fee for accessing this information, but the site offers several pricing options. See TVC for more.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tony Chan, information specialist at Quarles & Brady LLP, Milwaukee and LLAW Government Relations Committee Chair, has written an excellent article on Gathering Competitive Intelligence for Litigators and Business Lawyers. In the article, which appears in the April 2007 Wisconsin Lawyer, Tony covers:

• Online Sources of Public Records
  
• Background Checks
  
• Finding Company and Industry Information
  
• Opponent or Co-counsel records

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Libraries Unlimited is providing free access to ARBAonline during National Library Week April 15-22, 2007.

Derived from the trusted reference standard American Reference Books Annual, ARBAonline features about 17,000+ reviews of reference works published since 1997. Written by librarians for librarians, ARBAonline's reviews cover reference sources from more than 400 publishers in over 500 subject areas.

Posted by Bonnie Shucha at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)