Category: Blog

WatchThatPage is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page. You can specify when the changes will be collected, so they are fresh when you want to read them. The service is free!*

Law library news from California’s chicoer.com: Law Library to be Relocated From Courthouse Next Year – “Once hailed as the “biggest little law library” in the state, it is being relocated from the Butte County Superior Court in Oroville several miles to the downtown Carnegie Building on Montgomery Street, which once housed the city public library.”

Recent posted on various lists:

Announcing LexLibris, the University of Minnesota Law Library Blawg! http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lawlib/lexlibris/

You’ll find information about the blog, including how to subscribe for notification of new entries, in our first post at the link above.

We hope this new communication tool will be useful to the law school community and other interested readers. Please email lawlib@umn.edu with your comments, questions, or other feedback. Feel free to forward this notice to others who may be interested.

The NJLLA November luncheon and workshop will be held at Seton Hall University School of Law on Monday, November 13, 2006. The workshop, “Thomson University’s Librarian MBA Program”, will be conducted by Betty Jo Hibberd from Dialog. It provides practical “how-to” techniques in justifying your information services, going beyond numbers and connecting to the objectives of the organization as a whole. The time of the program is still being worked out, check the web site for the time.

Speaking of the web site, have you checked out NJLLA.org lately? Lots of new stuff is posted, including:

– An October program overview by Mary Ellen Kaas
– A link to a recent profile of new NJLLA member Molly Brownfield
– 2 new employment listings
– An article on how we can use wikis in the law library
– Information on free NJ administrative regs – thanks to GALIC!

From the Courier News Online: Kane Law Library Opens Self-Help Center.

For AALL Members: Participate in the AALL Online Election from Wednesday, November 1, 2006 to Friday, December 1, 2006. View the candidate biographies.

The University of Virginia Library has collected Administrative Decisions & Other Actions (by agency — by subject) on its Government Information Resources web page.

A little late but…

For the entire month of October, access to NYLJ.com will be completely FREE!

The September 2006 version of the 109th Congress Congressional Directory is available on GPO Access at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cdirectory.

A recent Search Tip from the West e-lert, Vol. 6, No. 7 :

Q. I’m an attorney trying a case in federal court, and the judge has made reference to an uncodified federal statute related to my case. Where on Westlaw should I search for the statute?

A. Occasionally, a truly substantive law isn’t codified, and can only be found in its entirety as a session law (also known as a public law) in the United States Statutes at Large, commonly referred to as the Statutes at Large, published by the Government Printing Office (GPO). You can find session laws from the Statutes at Large in four databases on Westlaw:

United States Statutes at Large 1789—1972 (US-STATLRG)
United States Public Laws 1973—2004 (US-PL-OLD)
United States Public Laws (US-PL)
U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News—Public Laws (USSCAN-PL)

Sometimes a legislative note following the text of a USCA section will alert you to the existence and location of an uncodified law. For instance, a law commonly referred to as the Hyde Amendment allows criminal defendants prosecuted by the government to recover attorney fees and other litigation expenses if the claims of the United States are proven to be frivolous, vexatious, or in bad faith. The Hyde Amendment was never codified. Nevertheless, a note following the text of 18 U.S.C.A. § 3006A summarizes the uncodified provision and provides the proper citation of the session law: Pub.L. 105-119, Title VI, § 617, Nov. 26, 1997, 111 Stat. 2519. On Westlaw, the citation is linked to the full text of the session law in US-PL-OLD.
In the absence of a helpful legislative note, one of the notes of decisions following a USCA section may reveal the existence of an uncodified law. Otherwise, you may find references to an uncodified law in secondary sources (e.g., treatises and practice guides) or periodicals. Try a Terms and Connectors search for the law in Texts and Periodicals—All Law Reviews, Texts, and Bar Journals (TP-ALL).