Articles Posted in Uncategorized

A new book out by a fellow law librarian: “What Good is Legislative History? Justice Scalia in the Federal Courts of Appeals,” By Joseph L. Gerken, Reference Librarian University at Buffalo Law Library.

A brief review can be found at the Law Librarian Blog (and you can also search the title on the Internet search engine of choice for more information).

Law librarians spend a good part of their professional lives teaching or performing legislative history research, or trying to locate legislative history documents, so it is near and dear to our hearts. The question of whether or not legislative history should be relied on by the courts to acertain legislative intent has been around for a long time (and not just in the U.S. – it was a big, a huge, deal when some judges in the U.K. courts started using legislative history instead of relying only on the actual text of the statute).

The latest volume of the Oregon Law Review, vol. 85, no. 4, 2006, has one article (out of six total) about Oregon law. It is the Comment “Missing from Oregon’s Takings Clause: The Right to a Jury Trial of Compensation in Eminent Domain Proceedings,” by Sarah Peterson.

You can read the full article online at the Oregon Law Review website. Click on Current Issue and then “download full issue.”

FutureLawyers has a link to a free tutorial on “Researching Companies on the Internet.”

(I presume FutureLawyers mean “Using the Internet to Research Companies” rather linking you to a tutorial that will show you how to research “Internet and Internet-only” companies. A small grammatical clarification, but sometimes small confusions can make for major misunderstandings. Of course, only us fussbudget sorts would even have noticed such a small thing! So visit FutureLawyers and enjoy, with impunity.)

An end to “robo” calls in Oregon: SB 863

Oregonian story, here.

Do Not Call Registy links: federal and Oregon

Steve Wax has been reapppointed to a seventh term as the Oregon Federal Public Defender. Oregonlive story here. Steve also has an entry in Wikipedia, here.

This, my, blog is about Oregon Legal Research, but if you want a quick and dirty way to track Oregon Legal News as it’s reported in Oregon blawgs (aka law blogs), go to Justia’s BlawgSearch and type Oregon into the search box. Try other searches as well and check out the blawg’s other features. Very nice.

Keep in mind there is no simple, one-stop, way to track all Oregon legal news, so keep surfing the local newspapers, the blawgs, the legislative sites, the lawyer blogs, etc.

Is there an efficient and simple way to save MS Outlook messages in a non-Outlook format?

I’m not branching out into law firm technology, but this question is a common one and a favorite tech blogger, I Heart Tech who serves the legal community addresses it in her usual straightforward and easy to understand style. There is also at least one comment with another solution and other suggestions may follow.

Library Law has had some interesting posts this past week (and in previous weeks, but I’ll try and focus here:-):

Library Law June 13th post: Why is there no free public access to the annotated U.S. Constitution that is compiled by the Congressional Research Office (CRS)? This question is part of a larger ongoing battle to get all CRS reports online, free, and available to the public.

Library Law June 8th post: Do you have a right to view unclothed people on your own laptop while in the public library? This is just one library law case of several that can be read at a Justia database. Summaries of the cases and links to pleadings and other case documents are simply and perfectly displayed. If only ….

The creation of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon is a remarkable achievement. The organization and management (not to mention diplomatic!) skills needed to coordinate the formation of such an umbrella organization are formidable. Read the Oregonian story (6/14/07, byline, Wade Nkrumah) on the new association and information on the sponsoring organization, TACS, here.

Those of us who serve the nonprofit world value highly what we call the Oregon nonprofit bible, the TACS Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Handbook and look forward to even more information and support from the Nonprofit Association of Oregon.

Factoid: if the information cited in the Oregonian story is correct, about 141,000 Oregonians are employed by nonprofits.

You have to love chefs who also know something about how laws are made and are willing to speak out. It makes my little law librarian heart all warm, fuzzy, and hungry. The Oregonian’s FoodDay today (6/12) has a nice interview with Chef Higgins about Chefs Who Lobby and who know about the law, habitat, and good food.

I’ve posted before about food law and most recently about my visit to the Western Culinary Institute in downtown Portland.

And remind me when 1,600 law librarians descend on Portland in July 2008 for the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, maybe we should ask some of these chefs to talk to us about Food Law, hmmmm …..