Oregon Legal Research Blog

Liz Pulliam Weston’s Money-Talk column in Sunday’s (1/28/07) Oregonian included a Q&A on a hospital bill payment problem, variations on which we in law libraries hear a lot. The answer was illuminating – and good advice. (My link to this Money Talk column is to the one in the LA Times – the Oregonian link couldn’t be made. This link is actually to 1/21/07, when this column originally appeared – it’s the second story down in Weston’s column.)

In a nutshell, the Q was: “I paid the hospital, which cashed the check but never credited my daughter’s account. I tried to resolve the issue by phone, but the hospital turned the account over to a collection agency.”

In a nutshell, the A was (and read the whole thing – I’m saving it in my reference file): “It’s too late now, but in the future you should begin a paper trail immediately, particularly when dealing with a medical bill. Hospitals and other providers are often quick to offload problem accounts to their collection departments and to outside collection agencies.”

Have you tried out Wikiseek? The Librarian of Fortune has:

“But I just discovered Wikiseek and I’m about ready to swoon in excitement. It’s a search engine, yeah, but it only indexes pages within Wikipedia and the sites that are linked to from Wikipedia articles ….”

The latest issue of ABA’s Family Advocate also just arrived and its cover story is “Electronic Evidence.” (Prepare to get a little frustrated. The ABA home page is a little tough to figure out and navigate. Use the Search box for the best results.) This current issue of the Family Advocate is jam-packed with all sorts of practical advice. You might also want to read, “Instant Headaches” in Law Technology News at the same time (register for free). Just when you thought it was safe to play in the email e-discovery wading-pool, you will learn that you now have to learn to swim in the deep end of instant-messaging (IM) e-discovery diving-pool.

You can view OSB E-Filing Task Force Report at the OSB web page, here. And, the latest issue of the OSB Intellectual Property Newsletter, from the OSB Intellectual Property Law Section is out. This is the Winter 2006, vol. 6, no.2. Oddly enough, it’s not online, which is a pity because the issue is on Open Source in Practice, a timely topic. A print copy may be available at your local law library (zzzzzz).

Librarians have to think like their library patrons and this can be very difficult sometimes. But we do try. Non-attorney legal researchers, and some attorneys, also seem to think that “Everything is Online.” Not only is this not true, but even if it was true, a search engine isn’t necessarily the best way to find it.

From an interesting Sunday Times (UK) article (via Library Link of the Day) on the Google Unbound Conference:

‘“A search engine,” says John Sutherland, professor of English at UCL, “is not an index.” … An index is the work of a mind with knowledge, search engine results are the product of an algorithm with information. Parents will already have seen the power of the algorithm. Google has supplanted the textbook as the source of homework research.”

Sister Helen Prejean will be speaking at the U of O in Eugene, on Friday, Jan. 26th. Details below from the Eugene Register Guard story, here.

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN LECTURE
Friday: 7 p.m., Room 175 of the Knight Law Center,
University of Oregon,
1515 Agate St.;
free and open to the public
Lecture title: “From Revenge to Reconciliation: Changing the Paradigm of Justice”
More about Prejean: www.prejean.org
More about UO’s dispute resolution program: www.law.uoregon.edu/org/adr

Today’s Oregonian also has a nice story about the Grant High School constitutional law team heading to the national championship, We the People. Hurrah for them, their advisors, the Classroom Law Project, the participants’ parents and siblings, and their friends.

Disclaimer: As you have figured out, I read the Oregonian (in print yet – how retro is that?) What can I say? It’s not the Guardian or the Independent, but it’s MY city’s paper. Also, more to the point, it’s delivered to me before 5 (I love my carrier!), I have a VERY long commute, I like newspapers (I also read the Portland Tribune and the Willamette Week (who doesn’t?)), and I like the Oregonian. (This doesn’t mean I couldn’t be critical about them. I use and like Trimet but could write pages and pages on what they do wrong.)

Today’s Oregonian has an editorial by Linda Flores on putting the question to the voters. about changing our biennial legislature to an annual one. She refers, among other things, to SCR1, here. (You can track down more 2007 Legislative bills here.) Much more will be said about this issue over the next few months, and much has been said before, but it’s an interesting issue to research and think about – at least to us wonks. But I’m one of those who found the Portland Charter Review interesting, so what can I say.

I heard on the radio today that the Oregon Constitution needs a fix because of this section 6, from Article VIII:

Section 6. Qualifications of electors at school elections. In all school district elections every citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years and upward who shall have resided in the school district during the six months immediately preceding such election, and who shall be duly registered prior to such election in the manner provided by law, shall be entitled to vote, provided such citizen is able to read and write the English language. [Created through initiative petition filed June 25, 1948, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 1948]

Note: The leadline to section 6 was a part of the measure proposed by initiative petition filed June 25, 1948, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 1948.

I don’t remember which radio station reported this story. I bounce around the stations a lot, from the program presenter with the squeaky voice to the ones who snarl, to the smarmy one, and sometime to the snarky one. It’s rough being up well before dawn cracks. And I do miss Bob Edwards.