Articles Posted in State Government & Legal Resources

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The Oregon Legislature passed 2011 HB 2244, re definition of a public record, and it was signed by the Governor on August 2, 2011:
Effective Date:  August 2, 2011.  Chapter: 645 (2011 Laws).
“Relating to public records; creating new provisions; amending ORS 192.005 and 192.502; and declaring an emergency….”  (HTML and the PDF version of the enrolled bill.)
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“Everyone is invited to the 2nd Annual Oregon Archives Crawl on Saturday, October 15th. Start at any of the four host locations (Portland Archives and Records Center, the Portland State University Millar Library, Multnomah County Central Library or the Oregon Historical Society) and get ready to dive head first into history. Each host site will share space with other local archives and heritage organizations, many returning and a few new ones.
Some of this year’s participating organizations include Oregon Health and Sciences University, the Genealogical Forum of Oregon Library, Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, the Multnomah County Records Program and the Dill Pickle Club. With over 30 organizations as part of the Archives Crawl, there is something for everyone!
Crawlers can tour some of the facilities and get a glimpse of where all these treasures are stored, see how Portland has changed over the years through photos and maps, and touch artifacts ranging from police dockets dating back to the late 1800s to medical artifacts from OHSU (maybe even a skull). Join in on fun family activities that connect you to our rich history and learn how and where to do your own research.  Remember: you don’t have to be a history scholar to be interested in history, or to do research!  All of the participating archives are open to anyone with an interest in history.
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You will not find a link (as of today) to Oregon appellate court cases at the OJD Self-Help website.
You will find a link from the OJD homepage, their Appellate Case Info page, or their Publications page.
This is not a horrible thing. Really!
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One of many things that pro se (aka self-represented) litigants have a difficult time learning is that even if you read the laws, the rules, the cases, and the jury instructions, you still can’t predict the outcome of your case.

Many people want black and white rules and think there is a simple answer to, for example, the question “what is the statute of limitations on x ?”  They also think that if the statute says x and y, then x and y are The Law.
Lawyers, and law librarians, are faced every day with someone, statute book and statute in hand, asking “what does this mean?”  Who knows?  We can respond “ask the Legislature – they wrote the statute,” but in all seriousness, they often don’t have a clue either.  They certainly don’t know how a judge will interpret the statute. Or how the next judge will, or the appellate court …. 
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I got one of those Nanny-scam email messages.  You know the ones:
“My name is xx, I need a babysitter for my twins for our next holiday. This will be for next month from 10th September 2011 to 30 September 2011. Please kindly state your price if you accept to do it. Kindly reply to xxx@domain.com“
As much as we would like to respond with a “you can’t afford me” or “$1,000” an hour you kindly kinda scamming spammer,” I recommend you either delete it or report it, if you want.
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Law librarians are asked lots of landlord-tenant questions by public librarians and by law library patrons.  Here is our latest list of contacts:
IF YOU HAVE Oregon Landlord-Tenant Law QUESTIONS:

We BLOG about Oregon landlord-tenant law and on a wide range of related issues: renting to relatives, Landlord School, service animals, renting a room in someone’s house, etc.  Click on the landlord-tenant law tags below or on the right-hand sidebar.
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The Washington County Law Library has a new legal research guide on appeals, available on our website in a number of places: the What’s New page; the Subjects Guide page; and our lovely Document Index.  If you are ever at a loss to find a document on our website, the Document Index page includes every document uploaded to the website.  You can also use the labels on the right-hand sidebar of this blog to find posts about appeals. 

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If your own website or Favorites list has the old URL, you might want to update it manually, but the search engines catch up fairly quickly. (We have a lot of research guide and website updating to do ourselves.  Oh boy.)
One’s quixotic search for PURLs (persistent uniform resource locators – see also the Wikipedia article) is foiled again.  It takes research, time, expertise, and money to transition to PURLs and no one has that nowadays so most of us are stuck with link rot.
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I first wrote this blog post in 2007 and it’s high time for an update:

 
As you might imagine, libraries get lots of questions about building codes, specifically asking if we have them. The short answer is, no.  (If the answer you get is yes and you need the information for a client, please read on.)
 
You see, it’s next to impossible to keep building codes up to date in a small library, in almost any library for that matter.  But we can refer you to a better source of information. Here’s some advice I published a few years ago in a bar association newsletter and it is still good information:
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