The U.S. State Department starts a blog, Dipnote (source, beSpacific).
Well, what can I say? I wouldn’t name a diplomatic blog Dipnote (even, especially, if it is an insider kind of thing, which they do admit to in their first post) but I suppose if the State Department wants to it must be ok, but please don’t ask me what I really think until I leave work – it’s hard enough to keep straight face as it is, though maybe that’s the point. Make ’em laugh and make ’em cry.
The Law Library of Congress has revamped their web page. Law librarians and legal researchers get excited about the darndest (darnedest? 🙂 things.
While searching for information on Arthur Leff’s classic, “Swindling & Selling,” my hyperlink tracks led me to wikihow ( and How to Import Old Public Domain Books to wikihow) and to How to Draw a Monkey and then on to where I really planned to go, Stanford’s Copyright Renewal Database (an interview, by Mary Minow of Library Law, with the database’s founders can be found here).
Ain’t librarianship (and research) grand! Now, if only someone would reprint Leff’s Swindling and Selling. Sigh.
ALR will be on Westlaw ONLY, not Lexis, starting January 2008. An August 20th, 2007, Information Today article sums up what will happen and provides links to background and related stories, including the products Lexis will roll out to fill the gap.
From the Information Today article, by Carol Ebbinghouse:
“American Law Reports (ALR) resources will be available exclusively on Westlaw beginning in January 2008. This date coincides with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the ALR series that began with Legal Research Annotated (LRA). The move by Thomson West’s Westlaw legal information service to pull its ALR content from competitor LexisNexis will not be a popular one with Lexis users—especially this Lexis user and her patrons! LexisNexis plans to offer new and upgraded services in response (see below), so the one-upmanship battle between the last legal information empires left standing grinds on. In its wake lie the customers, reeling from the never-ending cycle of having valuable information pulled out from under them again and again and again….”
The Oregon Supreme Court has a new rule about filing digital briefs, ORAP 9.17.
From the OJD web page:
The Oregon Supreme Court recently amended ORAP 9.17 to require that a party filing a brief on the merits in the Supreme Court also email to the court an electronic copy of the brief in portable document format (PDF). The electronic copy is in addition to filing paper copies. ORAP 9.17(5) applies to any brief on the merits filed after May 1, 2007.
The requirement applies to intervenors and amicus curiae but exempts a party confined in a state institution and not represented by counsel. Any other party who lacks the technology to comply with the amendments may move for relief from the requirement.
I found this question, What is Baker’s Law?, in list of Q&A compiled by a group of librarians who participate in online reference (aka digital ref, e-ref, the Oregon ones, Lnet and Ask Us (from Multnomah Co). It caught my eye partly because it reminded me about a recently characterized genre of fiction: Misery Lit. Anyone who reads fiction will recognize this genre. While some love it, some of us (me! me! me!) run, hellbent, in the other direction.
Anyway, here’s the answer to the What is Baker’s Law? question:
“I am assuming that the question is “Looking for Information about Baker’s Law.” As Paul Dickson reports in his book, “Official Rules” (NY, Delacorte Press, 1978), Baker’s Law is one of the “laws” that appeared beginning after WWII to explain the “perversity of nature”, Murphy’s Law being the most renowned. Baker’s Law, according to this book, is “Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.” The law is attributed to columnist Russell Baker, hence the name. It is also listed on the website “Murphy’s Laws and Corollaries”: http://dmawww.epfl.ch/roso.mosaic/dm/murphy.html [February 2002].”
Today, Monday, September 17th, is U.S. Constitution Day. We are celebrating Constitution Day this year here in Hillsboro. I’ll be handing out free pocket and wallet-size U.S. Constitutions in my Law Library (all day) and on the Washington County (Oregon!) Courthouse steps from Noon – 1 on Monday, September 17th. See our web page for more information.
Oregon Legal Research Blog