I attended an L-net (Oregon Library Network) meeting last week and in addition to catching up with other “virtual reference” librarians, I learned about these:
1) The search engine Duck duck go dot com is useful for adults too, and not just because there is no advertising. Try it out with this search: legislative history, but try others as well, including Oregon (and then drill down). Interesting ….
2) Oregon Authors dot org is a good website, especially for writers in Oregon-land!
We have haiku and we have six-word stories – and we have Baseball in under 150 Words (and don’t forget Rafe Esquith’s beautiful 132-word description), so why should we all be wailing about 140 character Tweets? (And, here (from Future Lawyer) is one reason to know how to Twitter. No one is forcing you, but it might be a very good thing to know, not unlike knowing how to drive a car with a manual transmission.)
I’m wondering, though … can I respond to a legal research question in fewer than 141 characters – and have the question answered satisfactorily, if incompletely?
It does depend on the question and on the glibness of the response too, I suppose. The classic example is the response to the Question: How Does One Get to Carnegie Hall? Answer: Practice, practice, practice. (Elephant jokes also have wonderfully pithy responses.)
“Oregon AG Public Records and Meetings Manual” and Superseded ORSs
My Oregon public law librarian “Please, sir, I want some more” Wish List is not long:
1) Superseded Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS). Is there a reason why the Legislature cannot put the superseded ORSs on the Legislature’s Bills and Laws website? Do they know how important superseded statutes, laws, and calendars are to lawyers (and to their clients)? They (superseded ORSs) are priceless! Ask any lawyer, especially after Gaines.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle … your body.
Margie Boule’s May 12th, 2009, column in the Oregonian reminded me that donating organs is about as Green as a Green Person can get (though maybe not this Green Person).
When it comes to organ donation, they’re passionate about their lives’ work, by Margie Boule, The Oregonian, May 12, 2009
This is the time of year when we start getting questions from people wanting the 2009 Oregon statutes or laws.
This is also the time of year when we explain:
1) The 2009 Oregon Legislature is still in session and unless there is a serious emergency requiring immediate legislative action, no 2009 Oregon legislation will have an effective date (click on Other Information) before July 1, 2009 and likely not before January 1, 2010:
If you want or need to track Oregon consumer law legislation, here are two recent bills that may be of interest. And, here is the press release: Senate votes to strengthen Oregon’s Lemon Law, another tool for tracking legislation (and part of a law’s legislative history, though who knows if copies of the press releases are always put in the bill files).
SB 515 (html or PDF): “Changes period in which remedy is available to consumer for motor vehicle that does not conform to manufacturer’s warranty.”
HB 2268 (html or PDF): “Requires vehicle repair shop to prepare estimate of work that vehicle repair shop proposes to perform on motor vehicle before beginning work. Specifies contents of estimate. Requires vehicle repair shop to obtain separate, specific authorization for certain types of work if work is estimated to cost motor vehicle owner or owner’s designee more than $200.”
“Social director” used to be viewed as a job for the boss’s wife or a job for paid “social butterfly.” but the 21st century “social media” director has education, imagination, writing skills, and respect. The life of a PIO will never be the same again.
Multnomah County has opened up a job for a “Chair’s Office Communication Director/Multnomah County Social Media Coordinator.” It closes on 5/20/09, so don’t dawdle.
“Do you tweet and use Facebook? Are you experienced with building social communities? Can you crank out news releases, editorials, and web content on tight deadlines? Have you been a one-person video crew? Are you a stickler for grammar and punctuation? Do you know your way around web tools, web development and search engine optimization?
The questions about complying with Oregon’s Smokefree Workplace Law (2007 SB 571, 2007 Laws Chap. 602) are thick on the ground, or in the air.
As is true with a lot of new laws, no one is completely sure how this law will all play out in real life. A lot of planning went into its drafting, and now that it has gone into effect, people are still asking those “what if” questions.
If you have a question about the Smokefree Workplace Law:
KCLL Klues posted this Positive Law and other U.S. Code Mysteries a little while ago and it reminded me that some of my own readers are new to legal research and also curious about such things. What IS positive law anyway?
No, positive law isn’t law in your favor, but that’s not a bad guess. Nor is it law that says, “yup, it’s yours, all yours, and you can do what you want as long as you don’t scare the horses,” rather than those pesky “thou shalt NOT” laws. It’s also not the opposite of negative law!
(Just as “legal” isn’t really the opposite of “illegal” though we’ve come to accept it that way. It’s all legal on this legal research blog, and it’s all lawful too, but not all legal blogs behave lawfully.)
I like looking at new law book catalogs, especially those with the scholarly books I don’t get to see or read much anymore. Some people dream of bigger houses, faster cars, expensive jewelry, extensive travel. I am one of that other group who dream of more time to walk, read, sleep, perchance to eat — in a nutshell, I dream of a little more leisure time (who doesn’t!). (For those of you still laboring under such a delusion, no, librarians do not get to read much on the job.)
I saw these titles in the Hart Publishing catalogue; they will serve a reminder that titles are as important as the literature they cover (as in, you can tell a book (and a comic book) by its cover).
My favorite: “I Have to Move My Car: Tales of Unpersuasive Advocates and Injudicious Judges” by David Pannick, QC. From the publisher’s blurb:
Oregon Legal Research Blog