FMI - For My Information

If you are searching cases and want to limit your results to those documents that mention your terms a number of times, try using the term frequency features in Lexis and Westlaw. 

The Lexis field restrictor atleast requires that your terms appear a minimum number of times in a document.  The following search will retrieve cases that mention the phrase “bad faith” five times: atleast5(bad faith).

For Westlaw, put your search terms in the search box and click on the Term Frequency button to the right of the search box.  A list of your search terms is displayed, each with a drop-down box listing an at least number.  Select the terms you want to restrict and the corresponding numbers.  Click here for Westlaw Term Frequency instructions and a screen shot.

At this time, you’ll only find Westlaw’s Term Frequency button in case law, news and secondary sources.  It’s not available in statutes, administrative codes, public records or pretrial documents such as briefs or pleadings.

Green initiatives have been getting a lot of coverage lately, and recently NPR did a story on e-cycling, After the Techno Lust, There’s Always E-Cycling.  According to the story, “In 2005, the EPA estimated there was about 2.2 million tons of e-waste. And about 80 percent to 85 percent of that ended up in landfills,” with mercury, lead and cadmium winding up in the groundwater and the air. “Renee Montagne discusses various e-recycling efforts with technology expert Mario Armstrong.”  From the article you can link to a variety of e-cycling resources.

I love the simplicity and comfort of Google, but have to always remind myself that no one search engine covers all the web.  There are many other search engines out there, and thanks to LibrarianInBlack for pointing out to the latest Top 100 Alternative Search Engines from AltSearchEngines.  Yes, there are some conflicting opinions about whether there really are even 100 good search engines, and you can read the comments on the post for that discussion. 

Meanwhile, there are dozens of places to explore the many facets of search, but here are a couple you may want to check out: ResourceShelf and SearchEngineLand.

If you need to survey the laws of multiple states on a particular subject, check out this recent LLRX post, Reference from Coast to Coast: Learning to Love Those 50 State Surveys.  You’ll find some very useful sources including the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Haven’t bought a 40″ Sony Bravia LCD TV?  No plans for a home-theatre system? Here’s a story from Yahoo! News on what you can do now to prepare your older, non-digital television for 2009 when stations will stop broadcasting analog signals:  How to convert to digital TV.  In short, you’ll need a converter box to receive a picture, and if you apply now, you can receive two $40 coupons to offset the cost of the $50 to $70 box.  The program is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.  Here’s the site to apply for the coupon http://www.dtv2009.gov.

For more on the topic, check out this article from Scientific American, U.S. Lacks Plan for Digital TV Switch: Study.

Traffic increases from search engines has led The New York Times to stop charging for online access to TimeSelect and other portions of the site, according to a NYT article published September 18, Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site.  TimesSelect includes “the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives.” Other portions to be made available September 18 at midnight include “its archives from 1987 to the present [...] as well as those from 1851 to 1922.  Some materials from 1923 to 1986 will still be subject to charge.

The change, according to The Times, was that “many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com.  These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.”

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

So, Lexis or Westlaw may be perfect for searching across the archives of a number of newspapers at once, but if you are looking specifically for a New York Times article, check the NYTimes.com first.  You may just find it for free.

There are a few resources you can check for information about state court judges in New Jersey.  The first place to start if you know the year in which the judge was appointed  is the web site of the New Jersey Judiciary.  Biographical information can often be found in the press release issued by the court. 

Another source to check is the New Jersey Court Guides at the web site of the New Jersey Law Journal.

Although these guides are not updated past the date of publication, they are based on interviews with the judges and include reviews of significant cases presided over by them.  A subscription to the New Jersey Law Journal is required for access.

Guide to the New Jersey Supreme Court, February 16, 2004

Guide to the Superior Court Appellate Division, March 15, 2002.

And don’t forget, information about their temperament and judicial philosphy can often be gleaned from the opinions they’ve written.   To find opinions written by a particular judge, select the appropriate court database in Lexis or Westlaw and use the following fields in your search:

Lexis:         writtenby(smith)

Westlaw:   op(smith)

For some helpful tips on searching the library’s online catalog and then deciphering those call numbers, take a look at Betsy McKenzie’s post from Out of the Jungle entitled Finding helpful stuff in the Library — Part I.  There’s a very nice description on the structure of a call number which can help a library patron understand why books wind up where they do on the shelves. 

Here’s an excellent article by Jenkins Law Library’s Internet Librarian, Dan Giancaterino, about the online resources available from your local library. The article, Better Than Google: Libraries Offer Online Databases With Quality Information — For Free, was published in the Spring 2007 issue of The Philadelphia Lawyer, p.56, and discusses how you might find information on 14 million companies from ReferenceUSA, the schematic for your car’s electrical system from the Auto Repair Reference Center and the full text of articles from the New York Times, all for free.

If you have a membership cards for your local library, such as the Free Library of Philadelphia, you can access databases and services covering news, biographies, science, and more, from home or work. From the Free Library’s site, you may even download audiobooks and music to your pc and transfer to your MP3 player.  Click here for a list of databases available at the Free Library.  You are eligible for a membership card if you “live, work, pays taxes, or go to school in the City of Philadelphia.”  Click here to apply for a card, or check out your local libray today!

A new website, OpenCongress.org, consolidates information about congress, legislation, and the news and blogs that cover them.  The web site is the topic of the radio broadcast this week, Good Day Sunshine, on On the Media from NPR, in which the origins and functionalities of the web site are discussed by host Bob Garfield and the Sunlight Foundation’s technology advisor, Micah Sifry.  Here’s an excerpt:

If you’re wondering what your Congressperson has been up to lately, you can spend hours poring over hard-to-find government databases. Or you can visit a brand new website, where it’s all in one place…

They discuss Thomas, the government’s source for congressional information, and how OpenCongress.org, differs from it, including the addition of an RSS feed to track changes to a bill.  Another excellent story from NPR, and worth a look or listen.

Looking for a way to convert your videotapes to DVD?  David Pogue of the New York Times reviews the Sony DVDirect in his article, A New Box From Sony Turns Videotapes Into Shiny DVDs.  A little videoclip shows you how it works.

You can now set up a feed to track new court filings for specific companies, writes Steven Cohen of Library Stuff at Justia - Be Still My Heart!  Corporate counsel can stay ahead of lawsuits and law firms can add to their client development toolbox with this new and free service.  Excellent!

For a review of some recent posts about things you an do with Google, check out WisBlawg’s post, Google Tips and Tricks.   Bonnie Shucha from the University of Wisconsin Law Library cites to several sources which discuss ways to use Google beyond the simple search, including:

• Four Little-Known Google Tools from BatesInfo;
• Simply Google from Usability Views; and
• Google’s own Advanced Search screen.

Looking for information about New Jersey Statutes?  A wealth of information can be found in a number of places, starting with the web site of the New Jersey  Legislature.  You can find a link to the New Jersey Statutes, view or listen to live proceedings or archived proceedings of the Legislature back to the 2000-2001 Session, access the text of House and Senate Bills back to the 1996-1997 Session, or view the Chapter Laws the final version of the bill that became the law. 

If you want to pursue the history of a law to determine the intent of the legislature, the New Jersey State Library is the place to go.  Legislative histories back to 1998 are available online.  Histories prior to 1998 are available from the Law Library.

Members of the the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) are eligible for free access to New Jersey and Federal legal research information via NJ CiteLine, according to the NJSBA. Coverage includes court opinions, statutes, rules and regulations. LexisNexis and the NJSBA “teamed up to provide NJSBA members with [this] customized FREE legal research member tool [which is] available exclusively to NJSBA members, helping us to support lawyers in their practices.” A NJSBA ID number and password are required to register. 

This recent article by Law Librarian, Mary J. Koshollek, lists many ready-reference resources “divided into several categories, that are some of the best resources for providing factual, accurate, and up-to-date information on any topic.”  including dictionaries, directories, atlases, almanacs, statistics, encyclopedias, and more.  The article, Reference Sites on the Web, is published in the December 2006 issue of the Wisconsin Lawyer.  Thanks to Law Librarian Blog’s Joe Hodnicki for reporting on that.

Looking to learn more about “The Invisible Web,” those web pages not retrieved by search engines?  The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web from the Online Education Database is worth a look.  Particularly interesting is the section entitled, 15 Invisible Web Search Tools, including:

• GPO’s Catalog of US Government Publications
• Bankrate.com for finance and investing
• The Online Books Page for online books.

 Thanks to Librarian in Black for reporting on this one.

ResearchBuzz reports on a new search engine from Justia that searches legal blogs only.  Take a look at BlawgSearch.  In addition to the search block on the home page, you will see search terms used by recent visitors, the most popular blawgs, legal blogs broken down by category, and recent posts from all 600 blogs covered displayed in one feed.

Does your law library subscribe to HeinOnline?  If so, you have access to a fantastic resource for federal legislative histories.  HeinOnline’s Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories database is derived from Nancy Johnson’s print publication, Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books, which is often the first step for researchers who are hoping to divine the legislative intent behind the language of a law.  In addition to providing you with the citations to sources of the legislative history for public laws however, HeinOnline provides links to the full text of the congressional documents, legal periodicals, treatises and looseleaf services which are often seen as the holy grail for many a researcher.  What a useful resource.

Check out this excellent review of web-based sources you can use for searching the news. Cindy Chick at LawLibTech’s recent post,  Old News? Google News! talks about the differences between the premium news aggregators, Lexis and Westlaw, and the free web-based aggregators such as Yahoo News and Google News.  What’s the difference? The short answer: historical archives versus up-to-the minute news coverage.  But with Google’s new Google News Archive Search, you can go further back in time, some 200 years.  Although you may be prompted to purchase many of the articles from Google News Archive Search, membership at your local public library may get you remote access through an online subscription such as Americas Newspapers. 

Here is a new story on crafting a state legislative history.  A recent article by Hatch Parent’s head legal librarian, Stephanie Ball, was published in the Sept/Oct 2006 AALL Spectrum.  Telling a State Statute’s Story describes the method of documenting legislative intent, which can be ”one of the most challenging requests for a librarian,” but that can ”often mean the difference between winning and losing a case.”  The article uses the legislative process for California as an example. 

When it comes to using search engines, we should always be looking for incentives to step outside our comfort zone.  Love Google, always have; love its simplicity, gmail, GoogleEarth, and am a big fan of my personalized Google Homepage for news at a glance and all manner of useful widgets.  That said, check out LibrarianInBlack’s post on Ten Reasons Librarians Should Use Ask.com Instead of Google.   It’s always a good idea to run your searches through a different search engine if you really care about your results. Thanks to Nicole at What I Learned Today for that!

The New Jersey Digital Legal Library at the Rutgers School of Law Library-Newark hosts the archived webcasts of oral arguments of the NJ Supreme Court beginning in 2005, and older than 30 days. Webcasts of the oral arguments held within the last 30 days are available on the New Jersey Judiciary Website. These are actually videos of the oral arguments.  In addition to the arguments you will often find links to the opinions under appeal and final Supreme Court Opinion for each. You may access the records by browsing by case title, browsing by argument date or searching by keyword. 

Conducting a state legislative history can often be a tedious and fruitless exercise…but sometimes you get lucky.  A recent thread on GPLLA-L, the listserv of the Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association, provides some tips for compiling  Pennsylvania Legislative Histories for pre-1965 legislation.   

Susan Zavacky, Librarian at the Legislative Reference Bureau in Harrisburg says of locating legislative debates, “As a very general, simple rule of thumb - ANY Final History of House and Senate Bills PRIOR to 1965 should not be trusted to list floor debates. Research for these years should ALWAYS include a look in the Journal Indices. Additionally, for many years, the organization of the Indices varied - and some of these variables, in of themselves, are treasure troves of “finding tool information. As a further point of information, the book “House History” was first available in 1915. Both House and Senate Histories were produced beginning in 1917.”  Head of Information & Research Services at the Jenkins Law Library, Nancy Garner, concurred, stating that “the Jenkins reference staff checks the indexes to the House and Senate Journals when compiling
Pennsylvania legislative histories prior to 1969.

The debate portions of many Pennsylvania Legislative Histories have been compiled by the reference staff at Jenkins for legislation going back as far as 1836.  A list of available Legislative Histories can be viewed on the Jenkins web site. Full access is available to Jenkins members free of charge; nonmembers can order through the Jenkins Document Delivery service. 

Check out this research guide at the web site of the Jenkins Law Library for more on the subject: How to Compile a Pennsylvania Legislative History. 

The Centered Librarian reported recently that you can access over 10,000 Old-time Radio Shows - FREE! from the OTR Network. Listen to radio shows such as The Jack Benny Show, Abbot and Costello, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and over 11,000 others.

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project to “collect and preserve audio- and video-taped oral histories, along with documents such as letters, diaries, maps, photographs, and home movies, of America’s war veterans and those who served in support of them during World War I, World War II, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars.” You can view collections or obtain a Project Kits (information and forms you need to participate as a volunteer interviewer) from the web site at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/.

The new Law Library Journal issue has an article by Mary Whisner about a blog she writes as Assistant Librarian for Reference Services at the Marian Gould Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington School of Law.  The blog is Trial Ad Notes, and the article is A Blog’s Life, 98 Law Libr. J. 559 (2006).  It is a fascinating read!  We follow Mary from the concept of starting a blog as a way of providing a current awareness service to “an untapped market,” the law school’s trial advocacy instructors, to execution, evolution, and beyond.  Interesting to see that she faces the same challenges that we face in the law firm market. The brevity of a blog post is appealing; the challenge is getting the attention of your patrons…and keeping their interest.  By the way, Footnote 5 mentions a blog by Trevor Rosen at a Baltimore law firm: Maryland Law.

The Observer marks the 15th anniversary of the web with a review of Websites that changed the world. The top three of the 15 sites listed, according to journalist and author John Naughton, are eBay, Wikipedia and Napster. The sites on the list “have become the virtual wallpaper of our lives,” according to Naughton. The Observer is said to be “Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper,” and Naughton, who writes a column for The Observer, wrote the book, A brief history of the Future: Origins of the Internet. Thanks to Slashdot for mentioning that story.

Have you noticed the new link to Video on Google’s home page? Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for reporting on that at Google Video Added to Google Home Page. The move shifts Groups and Froogle to the “more” tab. By the way, it is worth checking under “even more” once in a while. Links to Finance and Calendar, to be sure, but also a reminder that Labs is there.  It’s good to keep an eye on what’s in the works at Google. And do Personalize Your Homepage to ”see information you care about on your Google homepage.”

Technically this s not a library resource, but still… see Little Miss Sunshine if you can. A dysfunctional family goes on a road trip in a yellow VW van bus in this independent film starring Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette and Alan Arkin. Paul Dano and the 7-year-old Abigail Breslin are just wonderful as brother and sister in this dark, but very funny film. Here is the web site and here are some real reviews: ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘: A Busload of Belly Laughs from the Washington Post; A kind of beauty emerges from ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘ from the Los Angeles Daily News; and ‘Sunshine‘ warms with dark laughs from the Boston Globe.

Yahoo! Finance is a useful source for basic company information. For a sample Yahoo! Finance company profile, see this one on Dell. Click on the links on the left for Historical Prices, Headlines, Company Events, Insider Transactions, SEC Filings, and more. New features from Yahoo! Finance were recently reviewed by Business Week Online at Still a Fan of Yahoo! Finance. Source: A Review of Yahoo! Finance from the Ohio University Libraries Business Blog.

Congratulations to Another Chance to See on its second birthday! ACTS follows the stories of those endangered animals originally reported on by author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Cawardine in the BBC radio series and companion book, Last Chance To See. Adams, famous for his book, The Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Cawardine, reported on their journeys around the world in the 1980s for a glimpse of animals which at that time were on the brink of extinction. Another Chance to See brings up to date the stories of animals such as the aye-aye lemur, northern white rhino, mountain gorilla and kakapo parrot, and reports on how many of each are left. The news is not always good, but the endeavor is priceless. Learn about how the building of the Three Gorges Dam in China is affecting the Baiji dolphin, find links to rare photos of Dian Fossey’s orphan gorillas, and find out how you can help Save the Rhino by purchasing a shirt or CD. You’ll also find a collection of links to recordings of Douglas Adams’ lectures and original radio broadcasts of Last Chance to See. The subject the serious, but as always, Adams is funny and insightful.

In addition to reporting on the prospects of endangered animals, Another Chance to See offers ways one can help to save species which are threatened by industry, environment and economy. In celebration of its second birthday, ACTS creator, Gareth Suddes has redesigned the site and added a new feature, a fundraising campaign to Save the Rhino; at last report, there were only two northern white rhinos left. Another new feature is a Google Earth download to better visualize where in the world these animals are. Congratulations, Gareth, on a job well done for a very good cause!

More on the generation gap…An article from the Akron Law Review, Forty-Two: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Teaching Legal Research To The Google Generation, discusses the legal researcher’s increasing reliance “on computers to answer complex questions ” and how that impacts legal research.  Issues dicussed include “balancing precision and completeness,” “the economics of legal research” vis-a-vis the cost of print materials versus Internet-based resources, and “teaching legal research as a client-based activity.” The preprint version of the article is available at bepress Legal Repository. The citation to the published article is:

Gallacher, Ian.  Forty-Two: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Teaching Legal Research To The Google Generation 29 Akron L. Rev. 151 (2006).

“Jurors are more complex in their decision making than their age portrays,” according to The Newer Generations in the Jury Box: Who Will Favor Your Cause? which is featured in the June issue of the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine.  The article, which compares Generation X and Generation Y jurors, is one of several articles in this issue on Closing the Generation Gap: What you need to know about managing the multigenerational law firm. Another article, Leading a Different Generation: Maybe Play is the Thing, discusses the characteristics of the newest generation of attorneys — the children of baby boomers — and how they differ from their predecessors in the law firm.  Thanks to WisBlawg from the University of Wisconsin Law Library for that.

Check out The Happy Planet Index which “combines environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives”. Of 178 countries ranked in this index the place to be, apparently, is Venuatu. Source:  Tony Long, Living Well is the best revenge from Wired. 

Library Stuff and Stephen’s Lighthouse report on this week’s release of the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s study, Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers.  Here is one statisitic from the study: 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others. (I do it to keep my stuff in one place…and to share practical knowledge or skills with others).

The Tips of the Trade page of Google’s Librarian Center offers “tips, ideas, and stories about innovative ways [librarians have] used Google tools to help their patrons find the information they’re looking for.” Stories include uses for Google Alerts, Google Reader,  Google Maps, and more.  Also included on this page is a link to a Google Movie featuring  testimonials by librarians.  Click on the popcorn. Thanks to It’s All Good for that.

Have you noticed that Google and others often lists PDF files in search results?  Downloading these files can take some time, but if you just want to take a quick look, select View as HTML, which appears right under the link. The formatting may not be perfect, you’ll see enough to decide whether you want the PDF file.

The 2005-2006 edition of the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and more.  The manual can be searched or browsed. 

U.S. Milestone Documents, 1776-1965 is a collection of the top 100 documents chosen by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration which chronicle
U.S. history from 1776 to 1965. Documents include the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Plan of 1787, and the patent for the Cotton Gin.

If you want to get copies of one or several citations from Lexis or westlaw, here are two easy and convenient ways to get them using the specialty web sites, Lexis’ Get&Print.com and Westlaw’s Find&Print.com.  You can retrieve cases, law reviews and statutes from these sites.  You can even Shepardize or Keycite.  All you need is your Lexis/Westlaw password and a client/matter number.  You can choose to print, email, or download your results. Once you’ve entered the cites and selected your delivery option and they’ll all be processed at the same time.  For more, here is the Documentation for Lexis Get & Print and the Documentation for Westlaw Find and Print.

World War II era newsreels such as Marines Raise Flag Over Iwo Jima [Etc.] 1945, Funeral of President Roosevelt [Etc.] 1945, and NASA History videos such as The John Glenn Story 1963, are among the videos from the National Archives and Records Administration that are now available online thanks to a project from Google Video.  These public domain videos are being added “in stages to put as many as possible of the National Archives’ 114,000 film reels and 37,000 videos online, according to this story from CNET, Google puts National Archives video online.  Thanks to Library Crunch and K&E Research Services for that.

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for the pdf of 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google. Number 16 is Google Q&A, which says that some answers are built directly into the Google.com web search. "It answers certain questions right above the search result, so there’s no need for you to visit a web page – the answers themselves are extracted from web pages." Examples of some questions: When was Star Wars released? and Who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Number 21 is Google Search Tips, which suggest that you can have more fun searching Google by becoming a better searcher. Tips include using the tilda before a word to search for synonyms of a search term and searching phrases by either enclosing them in double quotations or using a hypen between words.

Take a trip down the Thames River in words and pictures. ThamesPilot includes a "collection of images and documents that chart the rich history of the River Thames, from source to sea." You'll take a tour of the riverside pubs, learn about the river environment and wildlife and explore the river in art. Thanks to LII.

Bypass the menu systems you inevitably face when calling Customer Service 1-800 numbers. Check out GetHuman, where you will find directions for getting to a human operator at over 300 companies.

CNet, which reviews media and technology, put together a web page called Digital Home DIY, “a step-by-step guide that make home tech projects easy.” These do-it-yourself projects include archiving VHS video to DVD, turning a computer monitor into a TV, setting up a wireless computer network, recording TV on your PC, connecting an iPod to speakers, and more.

Planning a summer vacation with the family at one of our National Parks? Take note of the rustic designs of National Park Service structures which emanate from a movement called PARKitecture, which is discussed at PARKitecture in Western National Parks. It “celebrates the concept of designing with nature through the exhibition of black and white photographs and measured drawings of representative structures and sites in ten well-known parks…Architects, landscape architects and engineers combined native wood and stone with convincingly 'native' styles to create visually appealing structures that seemed to fit naturally within the majestic landscapes." Western National Parks covered include the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Petrified Forest and Glacier, among others.

“Searching” for beach reading? Check out today’s NPR’s story, Swell Books for Summer Loafing, where you’ll find a list of recommended books from three independent booksellers.

This week PC World released its Top 100 Technology Products of the Year. On the list: CraigsList, Apple's iPod Nano and GoogleEarth for satellite imagery

Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System is the main portal for Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas and Appellate Court information.  You can access Web docket sheets and local rules for many Pennsylvania courts.  More counties are going on line all the time! County dockets - This has been a long time coming!