Serial Set Now Available on LexisNexis Congressional

LexisNexis Congressional now includes full text access to the United States Congressional Serial Set (1789 to 1969). The Serial Set, considered one of the most important historical collections of federal publications in existence, contains reports and documents either produced or ordered by Congress, as well as presidential communications and treaty materials. It includes Congressional reports on public and private legislation; Congressional journals, directories, and manuals; annually submitted reports from Federal executive agencies; survey, research, and statistical agency publications; and selected reports from non-government agencies. All documents are fully searchable and in PDF format. For more details about the contents of the Serial Set, click here.

Attention Students! Library Carrel Reservations

Why Sign-Up for a Library Carrel?

All students at the Law School are eligible to reserve open carrels on the first, fourth and fifth floors of the library on a first-come, first-served basis.

It is not necessary to have a reserved carrel to use the library, but its another tool available to assist with research and study. Open carrels are great for storing library materials when doing legal research.

Schedule for Carrel Reservations:

Open carrels are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Just stop by the Circulation Desk to reserve your carrel. Carrel reservations are for one academic year.

Third and fourth year law students and LL.M. students: Reservations begin today!

Second year law students: Reservations begin Tuesday, September 15th

First year law students: Reservations begin Tuesday, September 22nd

Please stop by the Circulation Desk for more details.

Tracking Congress with Web 2.0

Congress is back today from its August ("Townhall Meeting") recess and Advanced Legal Research classes are starting up. There is no better time to look at how to track Congressional activity via Web 2.0 tools.

Interested in a particular bill? Using these two sites you can have information about any bill sent to you via email or, using your RSS reader, it will magically appear on your desktop.

1. GovTrack.us. This is an official government site. They freely admit to using material from Thomas, the Library of Congress site. But, GovTrack.us makes use of a series of Web 2.0 tools to allow tracking bills, resolutions, the activities of members of Congress, voting records, and actions by Congressional committees. As you can see, they added most of these tools this summer. The most interesting is a widget to allow you to have automatic feeds posted to your website or facebook page.

2. OpenCongress.org. This is a private site posted by the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. The interface is different from GovTrack.us. OpenCongress.org, however seems to have a slightly easier to use RSS feed mechanism with a completely intuitive "subscribe to this bill" feature that sends updates about a particular bill right to your reader. This site also have a "Battle Royale" feature that aggregates users' reactions to a particular bill (approval ratings, comments, tracking and so forth).

It is worth taking a look at this post by Peggy Garvin on LLRX or this one by Jason Sowards on the RIPS blog to get a fuller picture of these two sites.

Don't have a reader? Try the reader that comes with MyYahoo or iGoogle. Don't like the interface? Branch out and try Bloglines, Google Reader, Newsgator, Netvibes or one of the dozens of free RSS aggregators.

Labor Day Weekend Hours

The Library will be closed on Monday in observance of the Labor Day Holiday.

We are are open regular hours tomorrow (9:00-5:00) and Sunday (1:00-9:00).

We hope everyone has an enjoyable holiday.

Sacred Cows Begone: More Firms Forced to Pick Lexis or Westlaw

When the money flows, large law firms and their libraries provide access to all manner of sophisticated legal and financial research databases, reports law.com today.

"[C]osts for electronic re­sources other than LexisNexis and Westlaw rose in 2008, with the average firm spending just over $1 million, compared to some $929,000 in 2007."

Many of these resources seemed indispensable, until the economy crashed. Now a growing number of law firms are being forced to make the ultimate choice: Westlaw or Lexis. They can no longer afford or justify access to both.

Last year just 12 percent of firms said they intended to move to a single-vendor strategy. This year, 31 percent did. "In good times, we could all have Coke and Pepsi," says a library chief. "Now management is more willing to say that we'll make do with one."

Some firms, even BigLaw, are looking for cost-effective alternatives. Earlier this year Locke Lord Bissel & Liddell made news when it published a memo requiring that all non-billiable research be done first in Loislaw.

All non-billable legal research involving case law, statutes or regulations at both the state and federal level should first be performed using Loislaw. Loislaw should also be used for billable research where appropriate, resulting in a much lower cost to the client. If additional research is required on Lexis or Westlaw that research must be billed to a client/matter. [Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell Memo]

Fortunately for you, UConn Law School Library provides access to Loislaw. Please ask at our reference desk if you have any questions about Loislaw or any other non-"wexis" legal research alternatives.

Guantanamo: Abuse of Executive Privilege?

The West Hartford Town Hall Forum is hosting Wells Dixon, Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, on Monday, September 21 at 7:00 pm where he will discuss executive privilege and prisoner abuse at Guantanamo.

Wells Dixon is a West Hartford native and attended West Hartford schools. He graduated from John Hopkins University and University of Colorado Law School. He is a former law clerk to the Honorable Christopher Droney of the US District Court for Connecticut. At the CCR he works on the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative callenging the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He lectures and comments frequently on national security issues, executive detention and torture. Wells Dixon says the government seems to have given drugs to detainees whose extended captivity made them distraught or rebellious. “Many of these men have become desperately suicidal,” Dixon says. “And the government’s response has been to administer more medication, often without the consent of the prisoners.”

Read this Washington Post article for more information.

Location: 50 South Main Street, West Hartford Town Hall. Free validated parking available at the forum. Cost: Free to the public. For more information, contact Flo at 860- 232-8993.

Hat tip to Susan Severo.

U.S. Patents Visualized

Typologies of intellectual property graphically represents patents filed with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). From the About Us page:

This webapplication provides a way to navigate, explore and discover the complex and interconnected world of ideas, inventions and big business. Patens are categorized by classification (subject of the patent), agents (lawyers), company, inventor and country. Within each category, unique icons are generated based on the values of each instance, and how they relate to other categories.

Every icon, patent or list item is clickable and amounts to a new relational search query. This enables you to create an endless route through the data, finding some great inventions along the way.

Hat tip to Computational Legal Studies.