Articles Posted in Uncategorized

Every once in a while we get questions about The Flag. It’s amazing how many rules there are on displaying the flag, and how many of them are ignored (gotta love that First Amendment). But librarians don’t enforce rules (except in our own libraries). We just show people how to find them. I always thought that it might be fun to have my own flag and found this, Good Flag, Bad Flag, for some ideas (as if I don’t have enough problems – now I need to design a flag? 🙂

The March 1st, 2007, Street Roots has a nice tribute to Monica Goracke, of the Oregon Law Center, for the “Know Your Rights” training she held with the Street Roots vendors.

I like Street Roots and if you don’t buy it yet, you might want to start. Their insert, The Rose City Resource, is priceless, especially for those of us who work with the public. If you’ve never been part of creating one of these guides you might not be aware of the astonishing amount of time and labor that goes into creating a good one. Street Roots also has book reviews (this issue’s is one by Robin Lindley of the book by Steven H. Miles, “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and the War on Terror.” (It will be online soon; right now, buy a print copy of the newspaper.)

Saturday’s Oregonian, 3/3/07, reported this story (an earlier one, here). There are times when my blork-imposed ban on editorializing leaves me frustrated, but before the steam starts coming out of my ears, I do and will admit we need to know more about this particular case:

Story: “Ruling Leaves Sedated Victims in the Dark,” by Anne Saker.

“If a doctor sedates a patient then touches her inappropriately without her knowing, does the patient have a right to learn about it later? A Multnomah County judge has apparently decided that she does not.”

…

“He is foreclosing the possibility of victims obtaining information that may be important to their physical health, and he is foreclosing any possibility that these victims could be compensated for the harm that was done them,” Beloof said. “He has created an entire class of patients of this doctor who may wonder forever if they were one of the people victimized by him.”

Via Library Link of the Day, an interesting story: “Push for Open Access to Research.” It’s a small world; read all about it.

A corollary to this Get What You Paid For post is Use What You Paid For. Visit your public library’s web page and look at the databases you have free access to and that would cost you a small fortune to subscribe to individually. For those of us who use the public libraries in Washington County or Multnomah County, remember that we have access to TWO county’s database collections. You just need to get yourself a library card from a public library in each county. Even if you don’t live in either of these counties, you can buy access, i.e. a library card, for $70/year. If that’s not a bargain, especially for students, researchers, writers, small businesses, and others, I don’t know what is.

Shlep has a nice post, and a full array of excellent links, to the U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in the Winkelman case. I’d posted previously about Winkelman, here. If you do follow pro se litigant rights issues and don’t follow Shlep, now’s your chance to bring yourself up to date.

The Oregon Supreme Court decision in State v Crosby (S53295) was released today.

The new Bedsworth is out. What can I say? Life is good.

Do you want to record a podcast, not just listen to one? Did you know it can take up to 6 hours to edit a 15-minute podcast? It can if you do it right. Do, ah, um, a, like, do you, uh, really, like well, want all those, uh, well, you know, do you really really want THOSE awful things (ums, wells, etc.) in your podcast? (They are bad enough from radio announcers who should know better, but even worse with less seasoned speakers.) Then edit them out.

If you want to know how law librarians (who like their ducks in a row, please) learn how to podcast and how you might do so yourself, see this terrific article by Rita Kaiser of the King County Law Library in the Law Librarians of Puget Sound (LLOPS) Winter 2007 newsletter, starting on page 7. There are lots of other articles out there in cyberspace by lawyers who podcast, including but not limited to this one and this one.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday in Whorton v. Bockting (05-595) decided:

“Crawford announced a new rule of criminal procedure that does not fall within the Teague exception for watershed rules.” Findlaw version of Whorton, here. Official slip opinion, here.