On the countdown to the 2010 Legislative Session, I offer this:
While listening to a particularly interesting Oregon Legislative Committee hearing (yes, they can be interesting), I noticed how wide-ranging the questions from Legislators were. So, I made a list of the types of information that were asked about during this single hearing:
(See also, How To Testify Before a Legislative Committee.)
GPO Access will soon become FDsys (GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys)). It is still the Government Printing Office website, but new and improved and with a confusing name, FDsys. Two out of three isn’t bad at all and the important part is good content and a friendly interface.
Two useful articles from LLRX:
1) The Government Domain – Congressional Documents on FDsys: the Basics, by Peggy Garvin, July 27, 2009
This was an interesting list and worth passing along – and clearly useful for all, not just libraries:
13 Ways (and 147 Tools) to Help Your Library Save Money on Technology
(Thanks to iLibrarian for the lead to the Librarian in Black link.)
The 2009 Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) are online – hurrah! – just in time for the start of the Oregon 2010 Special Legislative Session, when we start all over again – aghhhh!
Did you ever wonder what a U.S. Supreme Court law librarian job description looks like? Here’s your chance – and it’s a part-time job too (well, at least you’ll be paid for only 30 hours a week).
Direct link or link from Law Librarian Blog:
“Provides complex, interdisciplinary reference and highly technical research support services; uses resources in newly emerging information sources in all formats; creates new methods and formats for assembling, organizing and delivering knowledge and information to Court constituencies; participates in the design, implementation, and maintenance of a complex relational database incorporating imaging, indexing, data migration and file transfer across the Court intranet and extranet; serves as an expert in all aspects of the evaluation, navigation, access and retrieval of worldwide online and Internet resources and services; works under great time pressures; performs collection development and related collections services duties; conducts tours, briefings and orientations; and undertakes broad programmatic responsibilities for long-term projects and programs which impact the overall effectiveness of the Research Department. “
Not unlike the iPad rollout, the new-interface rollouts for Lexis (aka New Lexis) and Westlaw (aka Westsearch or WestlawNext) are creating a lot of buzz.
Whether or not there is substance, improvement, change, or anything worthy of all the hoopla remains to be seen. We remain hopeful, although some of us still pine for the precision and speed of the old Westlaw (aka native Westlaw).
Law librarians, and librarians generally, are skeptical people by nature and training, usually reserving judgment until we see if performance matches hype. We also look askance when someone (Lexis and Westlaw aren’t the first and won’t be the last) says that their new search engine is “Just Like Google.”
Visit the Concordia University Law School website to learn the status of this future Boise, Idaho law school. You can sign up to receive news updates.
Link to their fact sheet and press releases from their homepage.
You can report a crime and print out a crime report:
Portland Police Bureau Citizen On-Line Reporting System is open for business:
From their website:
Citing to digital legal resources with specificity (and confidence in the URL’s permanence) is tricky business.
Documents and websites have a habit of moving around cyberspace – a lot. Corporations aren’t the only non-human entities that have “people“-rights to move cross-country, so to speak; digital documents change their addresses (URLs) as frequently as human-people do and there is no law stopping them from doing so.
KCLL Klues has this blog post, with references that will give you a good start when researching this subject:
The Washington County (Oregon) Sheriff’s Office is offering the following classes:
1) Parent University (series of classes)
2) Robbery Prevention and Awareness Training for Retail Businesses
Oregon Legal Research Blog