Sifry's Alerts: David Sifry tracks the blogosphere with lots of colorful, imformative, fun charts. Tip of the hat to Sabrina at BeSpacific.com.

http://worldcat.org/ - start page

http://worldcat.org/whatis/default.htm - description - "WorldCat is the largest library network in the world. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their free resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information."

In this CNN article, "VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said that Unisys Corp., a subcontractor hired to assist in insurance collections for VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reported the missing computer last Thursday. [August 3, 2006]" In an interesting twist, this was a desktop computer, not a laptop, that was AWOL.

Update: In this Computerworld.com article, it's a laptop that's missing.

According to Business Week, some of the food colors you see are, well, a bit buggy. For example, some pinks and reds come "from the female cochineal beetles and their eggs". Food activists are trying to prod the FDA into making manufacturers list the ingredients in a more accurate manner, rather than just the generic artificial color blurb.

If you have the stomach for it, read the rest of the article.

An article posted on Law.com from the Texas Lawyer ("In Case of Emergency: Will Your Company Be Prepared? Tips and a legal primer to help GCs in emergencies, no matter what kind" by Michael P. Maslanka and Burton D. Brillhart, Texas Lawyer August 7, 2006) has a discussion of things general counsel should be aware of when planning for disasters, both natural and man-made.

My favorite line: As the librarian in law school told one of us, "If there's a need for something, there's a service to provide it."

August
Date: Wednesday, August 16th
Place: Belo
Time: Noon-1:15 p.m.
Speaker: Lori Ann Fox, CT Corp
Topic: Delaware's Business Entity Laws

September
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 20th
Place: Haynes and Boone
901 Main, Conference room 29 A/B
Time: Noon-1:15 p.m.
Topic: The Next Generation of Law Librarians
Guest Speaker: TBA
LUNCH PROVIDED BY DALL
RSVP Required

October
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 18th
Place: Jackson Walker
901 Main, Conference Room: 57C
Time: 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Education Seminar
Topics: How To Sessions
1. How to update your info on the Union List (Guest Speaker Katy Gill)
2. How to use SurveyMonkey (Guest Speaker Barbara Fullerton)
3. How to use the new WorldCat (Guest speaker from Amigos)
LUNCH PROVIDED BY DALL
RSVP Required

November
Date: Tuesday , Nov. 14th
Place: Munsch Hardt
500 N. Akard Street
Time: Noon-1:15 p.m.
Topic: Identity Theft (Guest Speaker from the FBI/CIA)
LUNCH PROVIDED BY DALL
RSVP Required

December Holiday Party
Date and Time: TBA

Seen on a law-lib message today from David Dillard: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/14151

Bibliography (with some links) to marketing libraries articles.

Do you have a favorite public librarian that has done much for the commuity? Then they should be nominated for the New York Times' Librarian Award! In its sixth year, the awards program will honor 21 public librarians from across the country. Winners will be announced in December and each receive $2,500.

Enter your favorite at  http://www.nytco.com/community/librarianawards06.html.

In the previous entry, the obit for Mr. Kilgour mentions his "cooperative is known to librarians everywhere simply as O.C.L.C."

This statement lead me to think about the new access to Worldcat that OCLC is opening to anyone who has an Internet connection that will be release sometime this month. The website will let people search the entire database.

http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/dotorg/placeholder/default.htm.

OCLC will also be offering a free search box to put on your Intranet or Internet pages and browser plug-ins.

Wow, I can remember when I first access this product on a VAX or UNIX connection in text format!

Just a note: For our October DALL meeting, I have invited a guest speaker from Amigos to talk about this new access to an old favorite service.

From the NY Times

Frederick G. Kilgour, Innovative Librarian, Dies at 92

Frederick G. Kilgour made catalogs from thousands of libraries around the globe instantly accessible.

It's free at the moment (during August 2006), but be prepared to pay for the new section of SH 121. Details on rates, toll options, maps, etc. may be found at http://www.texas121.org/index.htm.

Information about the North Texas Tollway Authority may be found at http://www.ntta.org/.

Information on Texas toll roads in general may be found at http://www.texastollways.com/.

Read about the changes happening with the LC Cataloging system at http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/07/28/library. How will this effect law librarians?

The LC announced its first major change in May, which called for an end to the creation of “series authority records." Could this be the end to distinguishing different volumes of law in a series?

Many librarians have signed a petition against this move. View the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/MARC830/petition.html.

On occasion I need time zone information so I can make sure I met my appointments. I use this tool, Time Zone Converter, which helps me keep track on the correct time. I simply put in the time of the appointment in U.S. Central Time, select which time zone I need to convert and ZAP...I have my new time. NOTE: it also tells me if Daylight Savings Time is effect for that region or country.

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

I saw this on the Dallas Morning News Views Blog- a link to total property values for cities and school districts in Dallas and surrounding counties. See it at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/07-06/0727values.pdf.

Comment from Michael Landauer, who blogged it for DMN:

"Of the 15 North Texas cities with over a billion dollars in taxable property, nine of them are first ring suburbs of Dallas, three are first-ring suburbs of Fort Worth and three are outliers: Coppell, Waxahachie and Colleyville."

Looking for EU law online? Check out EurLex which is published by the European Union Publications Office.

From The Scout Report:

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone [Windows Media Player] http://hotzone.yahoo.com/

In recent years, it has been difficult for journalists to report stories from areas involved in civil war, armed conflict, and general conditions of despair and hardship. Despite these adverse conditions, a few journalists have set out to document some of the stories that can be found in these places, and Kevin Sites is one such journalist. Beginning in 2004, Sites set off to document stories in Iraq, Somalia, Uganda, Cambodia, and about a dozen additional places. Drawing on a wide range of technological resources, Sites has documented the sex trade in Southeast Asia, the struggles to establish a democratic state in Myanmar (Burma), and the lives of students in Syria. On this site, visitors can watch video clips from each region,learn about the equipment he uses to document these stories, and also read about his mission and goals for this project. Reading Sites' diary entries is a particularly valuable experience, and visitors are encouraged to leave their own comments. Overall, this is a fine site, and one that might serve as a model for others hoping to do similar work.

From Scouts Report:

The Late James "Scotty" Doohan to Make a Space Journey, But Not Quite to the "Final Frontier" 'Star Trek' James Doohan Set for Space in October:  http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/movies/news/n9767.htm

Space date set for Scotty's ashes:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5212644.stm

Celebrating the Legendary James Doohan:  http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/features/specials/article/6527.html

An Interview with James "Scotty" Doohan:  http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue26/scotty.html

Space Services:  http://www.memorialspaceflights.com/

Star Trek: New Voyages:  http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

Amazon.com: Purchase Circles

The online bookseller Amazon.com "is now calculating thousands of specialized bestseller lists," based on its sales. Find lists for geographic areas around the world, companies, education institutions, nonprofit and professional organizations, and more. Note: groups only display when purchase quantities in that area reach a preset level determined by Amazon, so a group may not show at all times. 

URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/community/community.html

I saw this at BeSpacific.com - the House passed a bill amending the Commuications Act of 1934. The bill would require libraries receiving the e-rate funding to block chat and social networking sites.

Update: I saw another blog entry about this bill at LibrarianInBlack, which lists the 10 reps who voted against this measure.

Have you ever wonder what to do with your Librarian Action Figure? Is it taking up space on your desk or shelf?

A few librarians have been taking photos of their Action Figures in different locations and situations and posting them on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/nancypearl/pool/

mmmm...I think I need to have the Librarian "fight" with the Bionic Woman and post my photo! Who will win?

Jennivid Towlin writes:

It just came to my attention today that West issued a revised edition of the Federal Civil Judicial Procedure and Rules book. Not that I keep up with procedural minutia, but was there that much substantive changes to justify a whole new book instead of sticky inserts?"

I can remember when it was a huge deal to search listservs (Usenet groups), images, etc. Now as librarians we cannot forget to search some of the new web applications like Wikis, MySpace (which now has over 80 million pages),  Blogs, and Videocasts for important information for our research projects.

Here is a small list of search engines for these applications:

Wikis: Wiki Wax http://www.wikiwax.com/ Qwika http://www.qwika.com/ FUTEF  http://futef.com/, allows searching by keyword and category (still in beta)

Blog: Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/ Technorati  http://www.technorati.com/

RSS, Video and Podcasts: Rocketinfo http://www.rocketnews.com/info/portal.jsp

Podcast: Podcast Directory http://www.podcast.net/ Podscope http://www.podscope.com/

Podcast (in English and Spanish): Podzinger http://www.podzinger.com/

Video: Blinkx http://tv.blinkx.com/

Flickr Search: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/search/

Sometimes it is difficult to remember how to dial an international call, especially when you are given only a partial phone number. I discovered this website: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/dialing.html?p2=136.

First, select which location you are dialing from (hey, there is one for U.S. A. Texas-Dallas) and then you select which country you are calling. Next type in the phone number. Then click on "Show Dialing Codes". The next page shows you how to dial the number.

Other stuff on the website: personal clocks, world clocks, time conversions, etc.

Wonderful!

From Mary Alice Baish, Associate Washington Affairs Representative, American Association of Law Libraries

 The Library of Congress wants to gain a better understanding of who  its patrons are, what services they use, and the quality and value of those services. If you are a user of the Library of Congress, either on site or via the Web, please take a few minutes to share your  feedback using the online survey at:

 http://osincsurvey.com/run/osl03loc

 This user survey is being conducted by Outsell, Inc. on behalf of the  Library. All responses will be kept confidential. Only grouped data  will be reported; your responses will not be singled out in the analysis.

Do you use instant messaging but cannot download the software? Not a problem with AIM Express. This application allows you to AIM or Instant Message without installing any software.

http://www.aim.com/get_aim/express/aim_expr.adp

Just click on the "Start" Button and put in your AOL or AIM user id and password and you are set to go!

The San Jose's Mercury News has reported that Stanford University has created an online game called "You be the researcher." Wow, try it out at http://mercurynewsphoto.com/conflict/main.html.

According to Cyberjournalist.net it is "part of a serieson conflicts of interest between medical companies and Stanford University School of Medicine researchers." http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003627.php

Remember "The Game of Life?"

The AALL Placement Committee has created a website for information on jobs in the law librarian field. And RSS Feeds are available for various career-related websites!

http://www.aallnet.org/committee/placement/index.htm

Do you need some good resources for identity theft? There are resources for victims, consumers, scam alerts, and much more. Continually updated.

Try http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.shtml.

Alvin Podbody, Director of Libraries at Baker Hostetler, has written an intriguing article for law librarians. He addresses the change agent issue and as law librarians are we asking the right questions of the right people.

See http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1153386330662.

Have you been surfing the web looking for RSS feeds for your news reader? Are you shocked when you cannot locate a feed for your favorite blog or website? Look no further!

Feedyes can help you create RSS feeds for your website. Simply go to http://feedyes.com/, register at no charge, and follow the instructions. Hint: it is a good idea to tag it and to change the miminum headline length to 5 and the maximum headline length to 300.

If you need help, let me know!

Is it my imagination? Does Yahoo have a new look? The search page looks alot like another popular search engine's webpage.

http://search.yahoo.com/

The New York Times has an article title Technology Rewrites the Book, about ordinary people using web sites or free software to create real books. The article mostly describes a new service (http://blurb.com) but also discusses general applications of books on demand.

My question: will these books have a unique ISBN? Suppose students or others start using them as sources, how would they be cited? But I can see good applications, like small non-profit associations printing handbooks or collections of newsletter columns...

According to a story in the Dallas Morning News (free registration required), our nine days of 100 + weather is nothing compared the the summer of 1980, when we had 69 days of 100 + temperatures. I do remember that summer vividly, as well as the t-shirts proclaiming, "I survived the summer of 1980."

Selected scorchers quoted:

• 1980 - 69 days - high 113
• 1998 - 56 days - high 110
• 2000 - 46 days - high 111

Stay cool, y'all.

I remember a similar tool  introduced a few years ago. A message on the AIIP listserv tripped my memory and I thought this would be a good tool to share. It is call DataFerret. It searches across various government databases and you can download it at no charge. Here is a list of databases (datasets) the tool will search http://www.thedataweb.org/datasets.html.

The website describes DataFerrett as "a unique data mining and extraction tool. DataFerrett allows you to select a databasket full of variables and then recode those variables as you need."

Download the tool at http://www.thedataweb.org/download_ferrett.html. There is also a Mac version.

For more information http://www.thedataweb.org/index.html.

Consumer Affairs has an article about Choicepoint and how they are doing some "housecleaning" to improve its "identity" in the marketplace. As we all have heard, in the past year, the company paid over $15 million due to data breaches and identity thefts.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/choicepoint_makeover.html

Effective Aug. 31st, Judge Barefoot Sanders, 81, is leaving his job as the senior judge of the Northern Texas U.S. District Court.

It was great to see all the DALL members at AALL! I hope you all will help us write some comments and articles for the newsletters and blog! If you would like to send Jennifer or I some information about your AALL experience, please send it to either one of us so we can blog it for the group.

Thank you!

Did you know that the National Archives Records Administration has a section devoted to photos from World War II?

Check it out at

http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/thumbnails/index.html.

AALL has ended I think everyone from DALL had a great time in St. Louis. We tried a lot of different restaurants, went to some meetings, saw friends, etc.I'll have some information for you as soon as I can get it written. IMHO, the best session I attended was a panel discussion on the next generation of law librarians.

And, the informal bloggers meeting was a hit. We were expecting maybe 5-6 law librarian bloggers, but had 30 in attendance! Wow!! More on that and other sessions later...

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Dallas-Ft. Worth is now ranked as the fourth largest metro area in the U.S. (See former story on the blog about the U.S. Census Bureau's Rankings.)

The article is in the Dallas Business Journal at http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/07/10/daily40.html?from_rss=1.

First, if you haven't paid your dues yet, you are in luck. No late fees until August 31, 2006. Forms may be downloaded from http://www.dallnet.org/application.asp.

Second, if you're not sure about the status of your membership, contact our friendly treasurer, Kathy Clement.

Third, if you've looked at the directories and seen a mistake, contact our friendly treasurer, Kathy Clement. She'll send me the corrections along with the info on the members who paid after June 30 of this year.

Fourth, except for correcting spelling errors or typos, the usual update schedule for the directories is every 2-3 months.

Thanks!

The Washington Post has a chart of the top 100 executives by total compensation at http://projects.washingtonpost.com/post200/2006/executives-by-compensation/. Thomas J. Fitzpatrick of SLM Corp. leads the pack with $39,629,325, with a base salary of $682,500.

Seen first at BeSpacific.com.

In today's American Lawyer there is a great article on Law Librarianship.

http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1152534922043

This is the lead article for the fifth annual survey of law firm librarians about books, library space, electronic research, budget, etc. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for links to charts.

AALL has a download page for the entire program materials packet, or a drop down menu to choose individual programs. Both are linked here: http://programmaterials.aallnet.org/download_step1.asp.

Don't forget to visit the AALL 2006 Blog: http://aallgateway.blogspot.com/.

I was reminded today of a web site that shows how to get to a real live person on many company toll free numbers, from credit to utility companies. Try it yourself, I wish I had before calling several companies recently. http://gethuman.com/us/.

Tip of the hat to: Mom.

AOL is considering giving its Internet services for free to users. Possible revenues would come from advertising. See the story on WSJ at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115215133247699165.html?mod=djemalert.

In PACER's July issue, there is an annoucement about some new enhancements on the system:

*Customers can view a document just by entering the document number

*Login screen changes: Requiring a client code!

Check out the annoucement at: http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/announcements/quarterly/qa200607.pdf

It caught my attention! The article is good and gives a great history of the company and the family.

http://tinyurl.com/m6lyn

Phil Bush from Legal Dockets Online (http://www.legaldockets.com/files/blogger.html) blogged this piece about Tarrant County and access to court records. It might be of some interest to us.

The article is from the Fort Worth: Star-Telegram

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14947047.htm

"Once again, access to court records is being debated, not only in Tarrant County but all over the country, including the Texas Supreme Court and Legislature."--from the leading paragraph of the article.

July 1st marked a big day in China...

The first train from Beijing to Tibet rolled into Tibet on July 3rd. This project took over 5 years to complete and some of of the track cost $2 million per mile. Total cost: over $4 Billion for the finished project!

Why oxygen masks? Passengers climb to a peak of 16,640 feet and cross over snow-covered peaks. The train covers 2,500 miles in 47.5 hours.  

Opening of this rail will bring in new businesses, tourism and opportunity to China and Tibet.

Wired has a great story about how the rails were built. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/chinarail.html

For DALL/SWALL Members

This year's Joint reception at the AALL Annual Meeting in St. Louis, sponsored by Jones McClure,  will be on Sunday, July 9th from 5:30-6:30 PM at the Renaissance Grand Hotel -
Landmark Ballroom 1.

Need Spanish books? Can't make it to the Guadalajara or Monterrey Book Fairs? How about Dallas?
The Dallas Public Library is hosting an international book fair to promote love for books, reading and writing. The Book Fair will also be a forum to debate books, and there will be information on how to publish a work and what it takes to become a journalist. Known authors will talk about their experiences with the audience. There will be a book sale, live music, theatre and film.

The event will include panel discussions on how to publish your book and on immigration law, workshops on writing poetry and fiction. Over 45 authors will be reading from their books and signing books. Fifteen
cultures will be represented at the fair. The cultural program includes artistic performances, film, theater, music and children activities including story time, puppet shows, theater, face painting, balloons, piñata-making, arts and crafts.

1st International Book Fair
J. Erik Jonsson Library
1515 Yound St
Dallas, Texas 75201
July 14-16, 2006

For complete information visit
http://www.dallasinternationalbookfair.com/ or contact Dallas Public
Library at 214-670-1400

Kathy just sent me the membership lists as of 6/30/2006. You may find them in our Members' Only section (password required).

• Members as of 6/30/2006
• Firms as of 6/30/2006

If your entry is incorrect, please contact Kathy Clement at treasurer at dallnet.org. If it is missing, either a) the form and money has not been received yet or b) Kathy hasn't had a chance to update the list yet.

The searchable directory will be updated in the near future, probably by the end of the week.

As a prior environmental law librarian, this issue of closing the EPA libraries, is very frustrating to me. We are losing valuable documentation and resources, including human knowledge.

10,000 EPA SCIENTISTS PROTEST LIBRARY CLOSURES http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=706

"In his proposed budget for FY 2007, President Bush deleted $2 million of support for EPA’s libraries, amounting to 80% of the agency’s total budget for libraries."

Read the scientists' protect letter: http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_28_6_union_protest_ltr.pdf

...And with Dallas as being rated as one of the Top Cities for Air Pollution and dry eyes (See Dallas Business Journal article at http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/06/26/daily15.html?from_rss=1)

Did you know St. Louis is considered home to many blawgers?

There will be a wonderful opportunity to meet law librarian bloggers and St. Louis bloggers during the AALL conference.
We will have an informal gathering at 5 p.m. on Monday, July 11th for drinks, etc. at a place near the conference center. Bloggers are invited to meet each other and share their ideas. And, even if you do not blog, you are invited to participate!

St. Louis’ blawgers include Dennis Kennedy of http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/ , Matt Homann of http://thenonbillablehour.typepad.com/ and http://www.lexthink.com/ , Evan Schaeffer of http://www.legalunderground.com/ , and George Lenard, http://employmentblawg.blogspot.com/ .

The location will be announced at a later time. Please plan to attend on Monday, July 11th from 5 p.m.-6:30 p.m.

For more information, please contact Barbara Fullerton at 214-800-4576 or bfullerton@10kwizard.com .

From an email sent by Dr. Yvonne Chandler, UNT.

Clang, Clang, Clang Went the Trolley!!

For All UNT/SLIS Legal Eagles
You are invited to attend the
University of North Texas
School of Library and Information Sciences
Alumni and Friends

"Meet Me in St. Louis Celebration"
at the
Amreican Association of Law Libraries
Annual Meeting

Renaissance Grand Hotel
Landmark Ballroom - Three
800 Washington Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
on
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
6:00 - 7:30 p.m.

RSVP (940-565-2445) or email chandler@lis.admin.unt.edu.

All I can say is...Wow! Jane Reynolds at Jenkens turned me onto this report! The report, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, is a great way to find hidden gems on the Internet. Published in e-form every Friday, the report gives you information about research, general interestest, network tools and news.

http://scout.wisc.edu/

To sign up for the weekly e-report: http://scout.wisc.edu/About/subscribe.php.

PodShowPDN is relatively new. This service provides you a way to manage, deliver and track over 10,000+ shows, millions of episodes and millions of downloads. At this site, you can create, publish, download and upload podcasts.

" Industry experts estimate that U.S. podcast audience is now between 10 and 15 million people, and a conservative research analyst projects the audience to reach nearly 57M by 2010."--from a news release at http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-14-2006/0004281446&EDATE=

http://www.podshow.com/

You may recognize some of PodShow's other directories: PodCastAlley.com and IndiePodder.org.

http://www.podcastalley.com/

http://www.indiepodder.org/

The U.S. Census has just released reports on the Fastest Growing Cities in the United States.  Forth Worth and Denton are ranked 18th and 19th in the "largest population increase of any city of populations over 100,000 between 2004 and 2005". Grand Prarie comes in at 24th.

http://www.census.gov/popest/estimates.php

I recently joined the Dallas chapter of the ASTD, the American Society for Training & Development, and what a find! I believe this is something librarians and information professionals should explore. Networking with other trainers from corporations, small businesses, and government entities can give you some fresh ideas. And you know that as librarians, training is one of our Top 10 responsibilities.

So, check it out. The Dallas/Ft. Worth chapter has about 450 members. And there is also a national association.

Cost to join is about $90/year for the local chapter. Meetings are usually once a month and cost is about $30 for dinner and the speaker/event.

 http://www.dallasastd.org/

From the Houston Chronicle: http://www.chron.com/news/specials/enron/.

Articles, trial transcripts, podcasts, photos, timelines, video, and much more. All about the fall of Enron.

Do you need maps on where meat is consumed or how about tourism profits or toy imports or attended births? This website is for you!

Worldmapper: http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/

Check out the index and categories. More maps will be added later this year. Maps are available in PDF and Excel.

Are you interested in seeing commercials before they air? This website screens commercials. Watch the new Folger's Coffee commercial titled "Happy Morning."

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/2971/

To see other "Screens", click on the Screening Room graphic in the righthand column. Check out the Comcast commercial. There is also a search engine on the site. I like the advanced search features. http://www.boardsmag.com/search/?link=top

"Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has asked that college students refrain from citing Wikipedia as a source of academic research...He also expressed little sympathy for any college student who would still rely on an encyclopedia for academic info."

Read the article at http://tinyurl.com/jnwl2.

It will allow "Texans who are in business to estimate how much they will pay in taxes to the state under the new business tax increase."--Dallas Business Journal

http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/franchise/calculator/

Reference: new House Bill 3 which amends Texas Tax Code Chapter 171.

Press Release by the Governor: http://www.governor.state.tx.us/divisions/press/pressreleases/PressRelease.2006-05-18.1748

Amazon has just launched their online grocery store. No fresh foods or vegetables or frozen items, just non-perishable merchandise available for purchase. And you can also sign up for the Amazon Prime, the premium servicethat allows shoppers to pay $79 a year so you can receive free two-day delivery on most items.

http://www.amazon.com

The folks over at Google have a new addition to their Google Book service: the searchable works of William Shakespeare (see their blog entry). It's in beta. Since these are scans of actual books, some might still be under copyright, thus the disclaimer:

Note that some print versions of Shakespeare's plays may not be in the public domain everywhere in the world. Where copyright status is in question, the publication will not appear in Full Book View. We hope you bear with us as we confirm the status and, whenever appropriate, change the display.

This is a good tool to use to track historical and future storms.

http://ibiseye.com/betapublic2/index.aspx

Warning! It does take a few seconds to open. Powered by Google.

From Legal Dockets Online Blog:

"The County Clerk's Office of Fort Bend County is now asking lawyers and all others who file civil cases to keep personal identifiers, such as Social Security numbers, out of civil filings."

http://www.herald-coaster.com/articles/2006/06/08/news/news02.txt

The Joint conference of Librarians of Color will be in Dallas at the Adam's Mark Hotel on Oct. 11-15th, 2006. Early bird registration ends on July 14th. The theme of the JCLC is “Gathering at the Waters: Embracing Our Spirits, Telling Our Stories.”

"The JCLC is co-sponsored by the five caucus associations of color, AILA, APALA, BCALA, CALA and REFORMA. Other sponsors will be solicited for JCLC programs and events."--from the website.

http://www.ala.org/ala/olos/jointconferenceoflibrariansofcolor/jclc2006.htm

Interesting article by Roy Balleste, Jason Rosenberg, and Lisa Smith-Butler in the June 2006 issue of AALL Spectrum. In it, they discuss using audio and video podcasts in the law school setting to disseminate recordings of classes, symposiums, and other educational endevours.

Roy Balleste, Jason Rosenberg and Lisa Smith-Butler, Practicing Law Librarianship: Podcasting, Vodcasting, and Law Libraries: How to understand the newest "it" technology and use it in your library, 10 AALL SPECTRUM, 8 (2006)

also available on AALLNET (pdf, nearly 8 MB)

Google Labs has announced their limited test version of Google Spreadsheetswhich will allow users to update and share spreadsheets online. Once pushed out to the general public, this online service will let you access saved spreadsheets from any computer that has online access, as well as let others collaborate on them with you.

New York Times articleon digital publishing, partly comparing it to the music downloading revolution. (free registration required) My take: sounds cool, I'd like to see magazines done this way, but for novels? I still prefer books.

I still  like to use this directory when looking for information on the web. Recently it has been updated with new county, zip code, and city maps.

http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/index.htm

The Library of Congress has established a Web Capture program (http://www.loc.gov/webcapture/) to collect and preserve digital source materials.

Snippet from their intro page:

In 2004, the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives created a Web Capture team to support the goal of managing and sustaining at-risk digital content. The team is charged with building a Library-wide understanding and technical infrastructure for capturing Web content. The team, in collaboration with a variety of Library staff, and national and international partners, is identifying policy issues, establishing best practices and building tools to collect and preserve Web content.

Just a reminder:

June 1, 2006 - Laurie Evans, Dallas Public Library Director. Laurie will discuss some of the issues she has faced since becoming Director last year, including massive budget cuts, keeping the users happy while cutting the collection, and other items of interest.

As usual, all of these meetings will be held from noon to 1:00 pm at the Belo Mansion at 2101 Ross Avenue in Dallas. If you have not attended a DALL general meeting in awhile, we'd be overjoyed to see you there! If you've never attended a meeting, please come and join us!

Need charts from the DMN DFW Top 200? Go to http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/2006/dfwtop200.cgi and click on the Get Charts menu. There will be a link at the bottom of the page to download to Excel. (Free registration required.)

I heard Susan had an excellent presentation at last week's DALL meeting. Here is a link to her sites from a joint presentation she did with Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian) at Texas Library Association in April.

http://60sitesfortla.pbwiki.com/

The programs for this year Internet Librarian is now available at http://www.infotoday.com/il2006/program.shtml. And it looks like the gadget program will be back on Monday afternoon. I'll be presenting with Sabrina Pacifici and Aaron Schmidt (Walkingpapers.org).

With all the media surrounding this movie, I thought I would share something with you I saw in last Thursday's USA Today article. It was a review of the movie by Cladia Puig.

Here is a quote from the story:

"The script additions are pedestrian and unintentionally comical. In the midst of searching for clues, Langdon announces: "I need a library. Fast!"

mmmm....

Seen on Law-Lib today:

The Law Library of Congress announces a new electronic publication, the Global Legal Monitor, which will track new legal developments from around the world.  The first issue of the Global Legal Monitor may be accessed from the Law Library of Congress's opening Web page, at: http://www.loc.gov/law/public/law.html, by clicking on the link labeled "NEW:  Global Legal Monitor (GLM)."

Luis M. Acosta
Legal Information Analyst
Law Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., S.E.
Washington, D.C.  20540-3120

http://tinyurl.com/qardq - registration required

Musings of Wired's "senior maverick" Kevin Kelly on the Google book project, other similar projects, and what it all might mean.

http://tinyurl.com/h8z6l - registration required - New York Times article

"Justices Set Aside Patent Ruling Against eBay
The New York Times
 
By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: May 15, 2006
In a significant victory for eBay and the technology industry, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that judges do not have to automatically bar companies from using patents that they been shown to have violated."

The article goes on to describe the four facts that a patent holder must prove before an injunction can be granted:

• irreparable injury
• no other adequate legal remedies
• take into account the balance of harm to both parties
• the public interest would not be hurt by an injunction

eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, 05-130 - slip opinion

Need something to do this summer that does not cost alot of money? How about seeing a free or "nearly" free movie? Here is a list of theatres in our area. Just click on the link and find Dallas/Ft.Worth. A list of movies and times will appear.

From http://www.twobitoperation.com/blog/2006/05/12/coming-soon-to-a-theatre-near-you-free-movies-this-summer/

Also Addison has free Friday evening movies. These are outdoors and on a big screen. Come and bring a picnic.

Cinema in the Circle, 4970 Addison Circle Dr.

June 17 Adventures of Robin Hood

June 24 Hook

July 3 Apollo 13 (movie follows fireworks)

The new book titled Voices, is about the Alds, "a warring people who believe demons that will destroy the world are found in books and other writings. All the city's libraries, the great treasure trove of knowledge of ages past, are burned, except for those few volumes kept in a hidden room of the Waylord, the conquered ruler."

Le Guin says, "Voices is a book that has a lot to say about books," she said. "Its readers are going to read about a girl to whom reading is hugely important. Writing may be our second most important invention after speaking, ... but it's much easier to lose. Books can be banned, burned. People can be killed for reading a book. Sometimes, the hero we most need is a librarian."

From SciFi Wire http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=36021

Read more about at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0152056785/002-6372774-1226429?v=glance&n=283155.

Execs speak on costs/benefits of SOX controls.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/051106-sox-costs.html 

The USDA has a list of farmers' market in the U.S. Just click on the state you are interested in and it will take you to a city directory. For the Dallas area, there is, of course, the downtown event. In the surrounding areas, Ft. Worth has 2,  etc.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/States/Texas.htm#C

In an earlier entry I talked about voting for the Webby Awards. Today an annoucement has been released on the winners of the awards. In the Law category, the Webby Award goes to Justice Learning with a People's Voice Award to Jurist. In the News category, the Webby Award goes to BBC (hurrah!) and in Politics the high award goes to OpenSecrets (I voted for Govtrack so I'm a little disappointed on this one.).

Check out the winners at http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10

From Firstgov.gov- links to directories including:

Elected Officials – Governors, President, Representatives, Senators, State Legislatures
U.S. Blue Pages
Comprehensive Phone Directory of Federal Officials in Congress, Executive and Judicial Branches
State and Territorial Contact Directory
Contact Links Organized by Topic
Contact Links Organized by Agency
Toll Free Numbers, by Agency
Federal Employee Phone Directories, by Agency
Military Personnel Locators
Congressional Pictorial Directory
Presidential Appointee Directory
Hurricane Telephone Hot Lines

This is sooo cool. Sent to me by Sue Miller:

From the BBC.

The Camel Mobile Library is setup by the Kenya National Library. It serves the desert population. Each box holds about 200 books and the caravan goes to 12 different sites. Over 3500 people use the mobile library.

More jobs posted to our joblinkpage...

Coming to an inbox near you - dues forms for the 2006-2007 membership year...

Watch for election results...

In honor of their 10th anniversary, The Wall Street Journal Online edition is offering 10 days of free access to their site. The details are at

http://online.wsj.com

I just discovered that one my favorite Bill tracking sites has been nominated for a 2006 Webby Award...Govtrack.us. http://www.govtrack.us/ It is listed under the "Politics" category along with other nominations: Mother Jones, OpenSecrets, Roll Call and Street Fight.

Check out the rest of the categories: Law, Newspaper, Magazine, Radio, Religion, etc. at http://webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10.

What's a Webby? According to their website a webby is "the leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, functionality and creativity. Established in 1996 during the web's infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 500-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities."

Winners will be announced sometime in June or July.

The 2006-2007 Internet Marketing Attorney Awards are now posted at http://www.internetmarketingattorney.com/reviews.htm.

There is a review of the Top 250 law firms and how their Internets rate. The winner is Holland & Hart with a total of 45 out of 50. Check it to see how your firm rated!

(Cont'd from Jennifer's earlier posting)

On Tuesday morning, I heard from Yvonne Chandler that Julie Andrews, one of the main speakers at this year's TXLA annual meeting in Houston, was going to be coming in with a lot of security, etc and limos and staying at the Four Seasons. Well, on Tuesday afternoon, Sabrina Pacifici and I were having lunch at a restaurant across the street from the hotel and 6 limos pulled into the hotel's driveaway. Of course, it had to be her! We plastered our faces against the restaurant's glass window, trying to get a peek. But alas, the bushes hid the view and our face and fingerprints were left on the glass.

It was good to hear her speak before 5,000 librarians on Wednesday morning. Her intro was 15 minutes long and so was her speech.

The important thing I learned was that her and her daughter have started a publishing company and look for inspiring children writers and publish out-of-print books. Their website can be accessed at http://www.julieandrewscollection.com

Catherine Whitney of TKLAW.com also said Julie and her daughter were on the Today Show this morning promoting their books. They have a new one out about a "mousical". The website also has a link to a new song recorded by Ms. Andrews. I have been trying to access the site for a few days now and I all I get is this message:

"Due to high volume, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Please check back later."

"Judicial Facts and Figures is a set of tables containing historical caseload data primarily for the fiscal years 1990, 1995 and 2000 through 2005.  All tables are in PDF. This publication includes data on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts."

http://www.uscourts.gov/judicialfactsfigures/contents.html

I saw this and could not resist bookmarking it. It's a look at well done law firm sites, with a pithy description of why they are so nifty.

Micah's Nifty 50
From InternetMarketingAttorney.comTM

http://www.internetmarketingattorney.com/nifty_2006.htm - 2006 list

http://www.internetmarketingattorney.com/nifty.htm - index to lists from 2001 - 2006

From a CNet article:

"Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: April 23, 2006, 6:00 AM PDT
Last modified: April 24, 2006, 10:00 AM PDT

update For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers."

cnet url: news.com.com/Congress+readies+new+digital+copyright+bill/2100-1028_3-6064016.html?tag=nefd.top

tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/f3mce

The annual Texas Library Association Meeting will be in Houston this week and some of our DALL members will be speaking at the conference. Susan Skyzinski is speaking on "60 Sites in 60 Minutes" and Barbara Fullerton is speaking on "Gumshoe Librarian" and "Cybertheft."

Check out the website for times and dates: http://www.txla.org

Did you know that Queen Elizabeth will have two birthday celebrations? One for her actual birthday (April 21) and one in June. Find out more at http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp.

The Pulitzer Prizes have been announced! And for the first time, the award includes entries from online elements.

http://pulitzer.org/2006/2006.html

Close to home: In the Journalism category, the staff of The Dallas Morning News won for "Breaking News Photography" for their photographs of the events after Hurrican Katrina engulfed New Orleans. 

• Paper clip for a fish-shaped pen
• Fish-shaped pen for a clay doorknob with a funny face on it
• Clay doorknob for a camping stove
• Stove for a generator
• Generator for an "instant party"
• Instant party for a snowmobile
• Snowmobile for an all-expenses-paid trip to Yahk, British Columbia
• Yahk trip for a panel van
• Van for a recording contract
• Recording contract for the year of free rent in Phoenix

His name is Kyle MacDonald and it all started with a paper clip last year. His objective is to get a house.

Read the article from CNET News: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6061438.html?part=rss&tag=6061438&subj=news

Read more about it at MacDonald's blog http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/.

I saw this first over at BeSpacific.com this morning, the Supreme Court ruled that unpublished opinions may be cited, unless Congress overturns this.

BeSpacific.com - Citation to Unpublished Opinions Will Be Allowed in Federal Courts Next Year: http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/010978.html

From Jurist - Paper Chase http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/04/supreme-court-says-unpublished.php

Text of proposed Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 32.1 http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/Reports/AP10-2005.pdf#page=2

From Resource Shelf (http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/04/whois-lookup-service-whoissc-becomes.html)

WHOIS.SC now has a new look and is now named Domaintools.com. If you do not know, SC stood for shortcut. You may look up current information at no cost but historical information is priced at about $15/month.

According to Gary Price's log, "They also offer a new feature, "Name Server Spy"that monitors and graphs domains transfered, added and deleted over time. Over 4 years worth of data available."http://www.domaintools.com/

TI is celebrating their 75th Birthday. Remember your first calculator or that Speak and Spell gadget? How about your first AM/FM radio? Happy Birthday!

http://news.com.com/2300-1008_3-6057742-1.html?part=rss&tag=6057742&subj=news - or http://tinyurl.com/hh262

Now Naturehas responded to Britannica's claim that Nature didn't play fair. (See my March 24, 2006 entry for links to articles).

Check out the cartoon to Apple in celebration of their 30th Birthday on April 1st.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/806.html

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

The DALL April meeting will take place next Thursday, April 6, 2006 at the Belo Mansion at noon.

Our featured speaker will be Christine Peterson, author of the Library Technology in Texas blog located at http://libtechtx.blogspot.com/

http://tinyurl.com/nun35 - http://www.virtualchase.com/tvcalert/transfer.asp?xmlFile=mar06/31mar06.xml

Genie Tyburski has a really good column today, including links to stores on phishing scams using BBC stories.

And if you are wondering about the link at the head of this entry, I've been using TinyURL and SnipURL for some of the really long links to articles lately. Sometimes the characters ? and = in a link do strange things to the RSS feed for this blog.

From the Dallas Business Journal:

"That means some businesses -- such as most law firm and physician partnerships, which pay little or no taxes now -- would be covered under the new business tax system. Meanwhile, large companies that have been paying higher state corporate franchise taxes for years could see a tax break."

Don't forget to turn your clocks forward one hour this Saturday! Daylight Savings begins April 2nd. And next year, it will start even earlier--in March!

Read about it at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/daylight_time.html

We've all heard bits and pieces about the various data breaches over the past year. This chronologywas put together by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and details when, where, what, and how many. It also has links to source materials.

Seen at http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/010843.html.

On April 1st, Apple turns 30! Can you believe it? When the Apple first appeared I was 12 years old but I did not touch my first Apple computer until I was 22. I was working for a newspaper and the owner had bought 3 new computers and we started putting together the layout of the newspaper on a MacIntosh. It was a long way from cutting and pasting long strips of type from a typesetter on a "tear" sheet.

Read the story at http://blog.wired.com/apple_os/.

Posted on Larry Bodine's Blog is an article and press release about a new LawBiz Management Special Report on how much a lawyer wastes clearing out his/her e-mail box. The cost--$80,000/lawyer on profitability.

http://pm.typepad.com/professional_marketing_bl/

If you do not have access to FirstSearch or OCLC, try Open WorldCat. To find a book, go to Yahoo! Searchor Googleand enter a search phrase that matches the title of a library-owned item. The returned search results include a link to the Open WorldCat "Find in a Library" Web service. For example I was looking for The Bankruptcy Yearbook And Alamanc. In Google, I typed in the keywords "Bankruptcy  Yearbook and Almanac" and "find in a library". Here is my result: http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/23031104. I can then search by state or zip code to find a library near my location that has the book.

For more information on how this works: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/how/default.htm.

Podzinger http://www.podzinger.comjust announced that they have "added the ability to search for video podcasts on its Web site. The site, powered by BBN Technologies, uses speech recognition technology to make multimedia content full-text searchable." http://news.com.com/2110-1025_3-6051484.html?part=rss&tag=6051484&subj=news

Researchers and consumers can signup for new podcasts using RSS.

Congratulations to Sabrina I. Pacifici!

She is listed in the 2006 "Movers and Shakers" section from ALA's Library Journal. Sabrina is the editor and publisher of LLRX.com and beSpacific.com.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6312497.html

And, you can catch Sabrina's presentations at SWALL and TLA in April. At SWALL she will be speaking on Competitive Intelligence and Search Engines. At TLA, she will be speaking on Gumshoe Librarian websites and Cybertheft issues.

This (BusinessWeek article ) explains why we've seen such a spike at the pump this week. Personally, I filled up over the weekend and paid $2.19 per gallon, and filled up again yesterday morning and paid $2.49 per gallon.

According to an article from the BBC, "The maker of the Blackberry e-mail device has reached a $612.5m (£349m) settlement to end a dispute that could have closed the service in the US. The settlement brings to end four years of legal dispute in the US between the two companies. RIM said it had already put aside $450m for a possible settlement with NTP, and that the additional $162.5m would be recorded in its next quarterly report due in April."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4773006.stm

From the Law Librarian Blog....

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2006/03/opening_public_.html

Opening: Public Services/Reference Librarian & Tarlton Fellows (Texas)

The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas invites applications for professional public services positions at the Library.  The Library hopes to hire both a public services/reference librarian and one or more Tarlton Fellows.  Tarlton Fellowships are awarded to recent law school graduates interested in pursuing careers in law librarianship.  Candidates for both positions must have received the J.D. degree.  Both positions provide opportunities for motivated and intelligent individuals to contribute substantively to the public services initiatives and operations of a Library renowned for its leadership and innovation.

Detailed information about the public services position and the Tarlton Fellowship is available at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/archives/proflibn030906.htmland http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/archives/fellow030906.html, respectively.  We encourage interested individuals to submit applications and we encourage you to pass along these opportunities to individuals who may be interested in them.

Jeanne F. Price, J.D., M.L.S.
Associate Director for Patron Services, Research & Instruction
Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research
The University of Texas School of Law
727 E. Dean Keeton Street
Austin, TX 78705-3224
(512) 471-7148
Fax (512) 471-0243
jprice@law.utexas.edu
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/

From Peter Scott

ALA librarians have created a community "Wiki to develop a guide to the conference that reflects the knowledge of our diverse membership. Anyone with knowledge about New Orleans, the ALA Conference and participating in ALA is encouraged to contribute to the wiki. The conference will take place from June 22-28, 2006."

http://meredith.wolfwater.com/ala2006/index.php?title=Main_Page

If you are planning to go to SWALL this year or just curious about what is going on, head on over to http://swall2006.blogspot.com/. If you are planning to go to SWALL and wish to contribute, contact Barbara Fullerton to see if she needs any additional bloggers.

Knight Ridder finally found a buyer for their newspapers: McClatchy Co. The sell price: $4.5b.

The group will own 32 daily papers adn 50 other titles. The new owners will also sell off San Jose Mercury News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Read more about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4802304.stm.

From Internet Legal Research Weekly:

PACER will now offer free access to federal district court opinions. This only applies to courts that have installed version 2.4 of the CM/ECF software, and to opinion filed after said software is installed. Federal
district courts are still the only place where it's very hard to search for opinions online. I'm really looking forward to this new feature; hopefully it will allow us to more easily search for district court opinions.

http://www.pacer.uscourts.gov/announcements/general/dc_ecf_opinion.html

If you're ever asked which states have minimum wage laws, which ones don't, and which ones have higher rates than the federal standard, go to this chart at the Department of Labor. Easy to follow and read.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/america.htm

From LII New This Week:

As of July 1, the Librarians' Internet Index is facing a 50% budget cut. They are asking for input on their situation in their 2006 Annual User Survey. It takes less than 5 minutes and you can take it here.

A little late posting this, but you may now use your BlackBerries in peace.

http://www.forbes.com/home/facesinthenews/2006/03/03/rim-blackberry-settlement-cx_de_0303autofacescan11.html

This CNN storydescribes a recent study that shows cell phones cause more interference with aircraft navigation systems than previously thought.

UPDATE: The press release from Carnegie Mellon describing the study can be found at http://www.cit.cmu.edu/default.aspx?id=331

saw this from BYTES IN BRIEF(r) is a publication of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

On February 9th, search engine giant Google unveiled a new desktop search tool that accesses more private records than ever for those who choose to use it. Google Desktop 3, the latest version of software that helps users find files on personal computers, has a new feature that can track data from multiple PCs. To do that, it copies personal text files to Google servers, which eventually route them back to the PCs. Previous versions merely indexed files, without storing copies at Google. Google Desktop makes copies of all text files on your PC unless the preferences settings are tweaked to identify which ones shouldn't be copied. Further information may be found at http://desktop.google.com/?pr=hpp-gds-en-us-v3-1

K. Matthew Dames of Copysense has written a series of articles about copyright issues recently. The most recent one is titled Copyright: Demystifying Fair Use. In the article, the author discusses the four factors mentioned in section 107 and gives examples of each factor in weight fair use. Worth a look.

A tip of the hat to Genie Tyburski for pointing to this article in her March 2, 2006 TVC Alert Research News.

I've discovered a new site for gadgets and they are located right here in Dallas. The online store sells cheap stuff and offers a daily item for sale. The website says that "Woot started out as a market-testing type place for an electronics distributor, but has taken a life of its own."

Check the website daily for specials or subscribe to their RSS feed: http://www.woot.com.

They also have some wacky writers for their site.

I've recently subscribed to Motley Fool's RSS Feeds and found this bit of information that could involve many of us working until the age of 80!

:-)

Work Till You Die: A Fool's Top 10 List

http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06022705.htm

Just a reminder that National Library Week is almost here! It is April 2-8. For information, graphics, ideas and posters for your library see the ALA site at http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/campaign/nlw/NLW.htm.

Thursday, March 2, 2006  5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Belo

• We need 4-5 volunteers for registration
• Involves checking in students, distributing their tournament materials (t-shirts, lunch tickets, etc.)
• Reception following – stick around if you can!

Friday, March 3, 2006   8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Crowley Courthouse - Central Jury Room

• Any time you can spare, but expecting quite a crunch during the noon time hours
• We need volunteers to serve as Greeters
• Requires greeting/checking in teams’ visitors (mostly parents) – look up school on tourney grid with team letter assignment, assist with badges – badges must be marked at this point with the appropriate letter to have access to their team’s courtroom

Saturday, March 4, 2006   7:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

• We need volunteers to serve as Greeters for either the morning sessions
• Requires greeting/checking in teams’ visitors (mostly parents) – look up school on tourney grid with team letter assignment, assist with badges – badges must be marked at this point with the appropriate letter to have access to their team’s courtroom (most of these were there on Friday, but may need to be re-lettered and re-badged if they have lost or forgotten their’s from the day before)

Thank you!

http://reference_question_of_the_week.classcaster.org/blog/ - Reference Question of the Week. Stated purpose:

"This blog shares common questions and answers handled by an academic law librarian. The blog is intended to aid our students and to collaborate with the law librarian community. We do not answer questions for the general public. We will not respond to comments nor will we monitor the same. This blog is not affiliated with any vendor or sponsor"

For all you weekend Harley riders!

I saw this on one of the blogs (bespecific.com) this morning and thought it would be a good one to share.

Motorcycle state laws and events for each of the 50 states from the American Motorcyclists Association http://home.ama-cycle.org/amaccess/laws/result.asp?state=TX

Good afternoon fellow law librarians! Please excuse the cross-posting, but I wanted to make sure all members received this email. I have good news and bad news today.
 
First the bad news - the DALL meeting that was scheduled for tomorrow is being rescheduled again. I apologize for all this rescheduling, but getting a speaker in during this month has been impossible.
 
To that end, we are going to shoot for a meeting in early March. A request to a speaker has gone out, but nothing has been solidified. As soon as a speaker is confirmed, you will receive another update.
 
The good news - the April 6 and June 1 meetings have been scheduled! The details on those speakers are below.
April 6, 2006 - Christine Peterson, Library Technology Trainer for Amigos Library Services and author of the blog "Library Technology in Texas". Christine will speak about experiences as a Librarian blogger, and about the latest Library technology mentioned on her blog. If you would like to check out her site, please visit it at: http://libtechtx.blogspot.com/
June 1, 2006 - Laurie Evans, Dallas Public Library Director. Laurie will discuss some of the issues she has faced since becoming Director last year, including massive budget cuts, keeping the users happy while cutting the collection, and other items of interest.
 
Plans are also being made for the August and October DALL meetings. If you have suggestions or requests for those meetings, please send them to: profdev@dallnet.org
 
As usual, all of these meetings will be held from noon to 1:00 pm at the Belo Mansion at 2101 Ross Avenue in Dallas. If you have not attended a DALL general meeting in awhile, we'd be overjoyed to see you there! If you've never attended a meeting, please come and join us!
 
Thank you.

A couple of good posts from Laura at the Oregan Legal Research Blog:

http://oregonlegalresearch.blogspot.com/2006/02/g-mail-and-non-subscribers-and-then.html about Gmail and generally on use of non-professional looking email addresses

http://oregonlegalresearch.blogspot.com/2006/02/google-and-caution-should-go-together.html about Google Desktop and warnings that it searches EVERYTHING

New computer makes headlines!

Feb. 14, 1946 is the date the public was made aware of computers. Journalists say a Philadelphia newspaper published the first article that featured information about a large machine. If you have about 9 minutes, watch the video at http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6038193.html?part=rss&tag=6038193&subj=news. The weight of the computer: 28 tons. Cost to create: $487,000.

"J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were about to unveil, for the first time, an electronic computer to the world. Their ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, could churn 5,000 addition problems in one second, far faster than any device yet invented. "--cnet news.com, Feb. 13, 2006. http://news.com.com/ENIAC+A+computer+is+born/2009-1006_3-6037980.html?tag=nefd.lede

Wow, my first computer was the 1985 Macintosh. Great machine. I was working for a newspaper at the time and the PageMaker software was fantastic!

From the Dallas Business Journal

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/02/06/daily50.html?from_rss=1

The Texas Attorney General just filed a suit against a data broker and his companies: Worldwide Investigations, USA Skiptrace, and AMS Research Service.

"The lawsuit alleges that for $125, the company will obtain a person's phone record history, including the number of calls made and received, the duration of calls, dates and times, and other private information. The purchaser of such information is required to fill out a form on USA Skiptrace's Web site and pay for the service using credit card information. The purchaser provides the cell phone number, name and address of the person whose phone records are being sought."

A copy of the lawsuit is here at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/releases/2006/020906skiptrace_pop.pdf?PHPSESSID=qaqnl3heou17mnqeniltefkt60

Restraining Order http://www.oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/releases/2006/020906skiptrace_tro.pdf

Last month the FTC released its list of top complaints. Number one complaint: Identity Theft! In 2005 the FTC had more than 686,000 complaints filed with the agency. The number one complaint (can you guess?)...identity theft.

Other Top Categories of Complaints

• Internet Auctions - 12 percent
• Foreign Money Offers - 8 percent
• Shop-at-Home/Catalog Sales - 8 percent
• Prizes/Sweepstakes and Lotteries - 7 percent
• Internet Services and Computer Complaints - 5 percent
• Business Opportunities and Work-at-Home plans - 2 percent
• Advance-Fee Loans and Credit Protection - 2 percent
• Telephone Services - 2 percent
• Other - 17 percent

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/01/topten.htm

I read on the BBC website that Ask.com is "deleting" their Jeeves icon. At the end of February, users will no longer see the picture of Jeeves. Jeeves has been on their website since 1996.

Goodbye Jeeves! You will be missed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4701474.stm

Details in this article from Computerworld.

 http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2006/0,4814,108500,00.html

This article from the most current issue of the ALL-SIS is being linked to from a number of blawgs, so it's our turn. Rob Hudson, Faculty Services Librarian, St. Thomas University School of Law, does a survey of law student blawgs and provides interesting snippets of their feelings about law libraries. I'm sure most of us will not be terribly surprised, but it's an interesting read.  http://www.aallnet.org/sis/allsis/newsletter/25_2/Blawgs.htm

Computerworld offers a simple FAQ on the twists and turns of NTP's suit against RIM, the makers of the BlackBerry. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,108445,00.html

Links to testimony on the Net Neutrality hearings yesterday in the U. S. Senate.

http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1705

JFK School of Government Library (Harvard) offers this list of links to various think tanks.

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/library/orgs_tanks.htm

Retail Gas Prices

Just a few years ago, average retail gas prices for regular unleaded were in the $1.55 range.

Curious what other library associations are doing for educational events? Check out the AALL Calendar of Events.

http://www.aallnet.org/calendar/

I just saw this in the NY Times and was sadden by the news. On Friday, Jan. 27 Western Union sent its last telegram. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/06/technology/06telegram.html

as posted on law-lib:

-----

The Research Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries is accepting applications through April 1, 2006 for research grants from the AALL/LexisNexis Research Fund Grants Program, totaling up to $5,000.

The committee will award one or more grants to library professionals who wish to conduct research that supports the research/scholarly agenda of the profession of librarianship. The grants program funds small or large research projects that create, disseminate, or otherwise use legal and  law-related information as its focus. Projects may range from the historical (indexes, legislative histories, bibliographies, biographies, directories) to the theoretical (trends in cataloging, publishing or new service models in libraries) to the practical (implementation models for collection, personnel or infrastructure management). The AALL Research Agenda offers suggestions for possible research projects.  To review AALL's Research Agenda, please go to http://www.aallnet.org/committee/research/agenda.asp

The AALL/LexisNexis Publishers Research Fund Grant Program was established in 2000 with a generous contribution of $100,000 from LexisNexis.  The Research Fund will provide grants to library professionals who seek to conduct research that is critical to the profession. The Research Fund provides a secure financial base, enabling the AALL Research Committee to carry out the Association's Research Agenda.

 
The submission deadline for applications is postmarked by April 1, 2006. Grants will be awarded and announced in May. Allocation of the research grants will be at the sole discretion of the AALL Research Committee. For more information about the grants, please contact Eloise Vondruska, Chair of the AALL Research Committee, at e-vondruska@law.northwestern.edu

The grant application and complete guidelines are available at http://www.aallnet.org/about/grant_application.asp

Eloise Vondruska
AALL Research Committee 2005-2006, Chair
Pritzker Legal Research Center
Northwestern University School of Law
357 E. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611

312/503-7369 (voice)
312/503-9230 (fax)
e-vondruska@law.northwestern.edu
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawlibrary/

The Patriot Act has been extended for another five weeks.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/02/patriot.act.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

From Wired News: Pirates: It Takes One to Know One.

Results of an Ipsos poll during January showing that 92 percent polled never downloaded free music, and that three quarters said that cd's are too expensive. Quick, interesting read.

From engagdet: http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/02/analog-tv-shutdown-all-but-set-for-2009/

Sad news for all with analog televisions!

Feb. 17, 2009. This is the date set for all broadcasters to shut their analog broadcasting. What does that mean for us? Well, its goodbye A/B switch on your cable tv. But not to worry...the government has us covered. They will be setting aside $1.5 billion in subsidies to help consumers get converters to allow older analog sets to receive digital broadcasts.

Boy, that plasma television will sound good in 2008.

Please mark your calendars: the February meeting for DALL has been moved back to Thursday, February 16.  It will be held in the Baker Botts Pavilion at the Belo.

Thank you.

Amanda Lefebrve, Program Chair

Many of you might have heard about Library Elf. "Elf is a web-based and email tool for library users to keep track of their library borrowings. Elf is like a personal assistant, whose task is to help one keep track of what one has on loan from the library."--from the website

http://www.libraryelf.com/

Libraries in our area that use Elf:

• Richardson
• Irving
• Flower Mound
• Lewisville
• Carrollton
• Fort Worth

Read the interview with the creator at Pop Goes the Library: http://www.nexgenlibrarian.net/popculture/2006/01/interview-with-jeff-chow-of-library.html.

One of my favorite technology cartoons is from the creator's of JoyofTech.com. Here's a great one for tomorrow!!

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/782.html

During the next few months the Enron trials will be dominating the newspapers, blogs, airtime, etc.

One person has found a way to make a profit from all this chaos. Sandra Lord, a Houston resident, is offering tours of the famous places of Enron. The tour titled "Lifestyles of Houston’s Rich and Infamous — The Enron Tour” is a five-hour excursion that includes the headquarters, former residences of Lays, Skillings, and Fastows, and a small computer store on Houston’s east side that has Enron’s famous rotating “E” sign.

Tours are $30/person.

Read more about it at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13129-2013495,00.html.

I saw this on Inter-Alia- askSam.com has the full text of the State of the Union addresses from 1790-2005, browseable or searchable, on their web site.

http://www.asksam.com/ebooks/StateOfTheUnion/

Fluff warning: not law related...

Some designers from the design firm Vestal Design built a bar from used books that had been discarded from Stanford Library. See the finished project and the "in the making" pictures at http://www.vestaldesign.com/projects/bookbar/.

See the whole post at http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2006/01/now-hat-trick-why-law-libraries.html.

Monica Ortale, from the Fred Parks Law Library at South Texas College of Law, sent the following email to the HALL-L listserv and granted me permission to reproduce it in our blog.

Jennifer

-------

As some of you know I've been working on converting the TRCP to an electronic format. Well the bulk of the work is now done, and while an "official" announcement to the legal community may appear later, I thought I would give you the heads up -- the site includes all the rules in all their versions since 1941. Click on the rule and then see the dates it was amended.

I'm now working on a bibliography and am anticipating delivery of the notes, etc. of the Rules Advisory Committee (which I will scan and convert to electronic) - so basically, enhancements are forthcoming. The web address is http://www.stcl.edu/library/TexasRulesProject/MainIndex.htm.

If you spot typos, etc., or have suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks! Monica --

Monica M. Ortale, M.L.I.M., J.D.
Faculty Services and Reference Librarian
The Fred Parks Law Library
South Texas College of Law
1303 San Jacinto
Houston, Texas 77002

USNWR put out a list of the best and worst careers. Librarians were fifth, right under professor. Attorneys were listed as the top worst career. See:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060105/5careers_excellent.htm- best careers

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060105/5careers_poor.htm- worst careers
 

From the "Out of a Jungle" blog

Just for the fun of it, I've made a webpage that dispenses advice on what U.S. legal periodicals should be purchased with any user-selected budget. It's at http://law.wlu.edu/library/mostcited/selecting.aspAside from entering what you want to spend, you may specifically select any of the listed periodicals for inclusion (you'd do that if you wished to include to some lower cost-effective-ranked journals, perhaps because of their jurisdictional or subject interest). Once you submit the page it will return with a title listing of: (a) the periodicals you actively selected (if any) and their total price, (b) periodicals, in cost-effective order, that are within your budget (c) excluded periodicals, in cost-effective order, outside your budget (d) other U.S. periodicals from the "most-cited" list that are excluded because they have an unknown or a zero price The lists don't include non-U.S. titles (except for a few that are published elsewhere but have strong U.S. connections, e.g. the official journal of a U.S. association that might be published in England or the Netherlands). Journal prices are those paid by U.S. academic libraries. The price figures come from those paid by W&L Law Library, or as shown on the journal's webpage, or as given in Ulrich's Periodicals Directory. If anyone wants to correct a price I'd be happy to receive corrections.

John Doyle Washington & Lee Law School

Interesting link: glossary of legal terms provided by the library of the U. S. Courts.

http://www.uscourts.gov/library/glossary.html

• From now on, I will be posting the "what's new" type of entries here on the blog.
• The December/January issue of the DALL Advance Sheet is now available.
• The membership directories have been updated with December data.

Remember the Sony Walkman? Remember your first Kodak Instamatic? The TRS-80? The first PalmPilot? Take a fun walk down memory lane in PC World's list of the greatest gadgets over the past 50 years. 50 Greatest Gadgets

Consumer Reports has a new pdf comparing various travel web site engines.

Consumer Reports Travel Report

The ZGuide finally arrived! It is a pocket guide to the American Lawyer rankings. It contains the AMLAW 100, AMLAW 200, and the Global 100. For ordering information contact:

Mozhgan Mizban

3701 Sacramento Street, No. 444, San Francisco, CA 94118; 415-379-6500 mizban@zeughausergroup.com

I'm not a big fan of fruitcake, but I am a huge fan of the cartoons by The Joy of Tech. Here's a great one for fruitcake lovers:

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/762.html

Happy Holidays!

The voting is in for the Best Law Blog. Check it out at http://weblogawards.org/2005/12/best_law_blog.php.

Unofficially Law Dork is the winner. Totals are not final until the votes are certified. This will be done no later than Monday, Dec. 19th.

And, speaking of the Best Legal Blog...Dennis Kennedy is getting ready to annouce his winners by the end of the year. Look for more information on this! I believe last year's winners were law librarian Sabrina Pacifici of bespacific.com (http://www.bespacific.com) and Tom Mighell. If you remember Tom is a lawyer here in Dallas and has the inter alia blog (http://www.inter-alia.net).

I was asked today to look for "Z Guide for Leading Law Firms". I had never heard of this title! With a large amount of help from my librarian friend in California, I discovered it is the "Zeughauser Guide to Leading Law Firms," also known as the ZGuide. It is the same size as the Zagar but much thinner.   Funny thing is that it is not advertised on their website http://www.zeughauser.com and it is not much help to google it.

The ZGuides are now in their third year of production and it is available to firms on the West coast. I'm not sure yet of the cost. My contact is sending one with the information. I'll post it as soon as I receive the item.

Vote for your favorite Law Blog at:

http://weblogawards.org/2005/12/best_law_blog.php

Polls close on Dec. 15th, 2005. You may vote once every 24 hours in each poll.

Finalists:

SCOTUSblog
The Becker-Posner Blog
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Althouse
Patterico's Pontifications
Stop The ACLU
Overlawyered
TaxProf Blog
The Volokh Conspiracy
Confirm Them
How Appealing
Conglomerate
Sentencing Law and Policy
Law Dork
BeldarBlog

This is from today's Information Overload Blog by Scott Vine:

"Evan Brown (who is very good for those of you not readers of his blog) over at Internet Caseshas a post about an interesting case involving a young school librarian, who rescued some of his Libraries back-issues of the National Geographic which were bound for the bin, and then sold them on eBay. Sounds bad, but he used the proceeds along with $300 of his own cash to buy the School six computers."

The librarian was arrested for theft, but later the school withdrew the charges and the librarian resigned.

Read more about it!

Iron Mountain acquires Vault Corporation.

LiveVault, whose technology powers Iron Mountain's Server Electronic Vaulting service, is the leading provider of disk-based online server backup and recovery solutions for small and mid-sized businesses and corporations with remote offices. More details on Iron Mountain's announcement of the definitive merger agreement with LiveVault Corporation can be found at: www.ironmountain.com/about/newsroom.

--from today's news release

McLennan County District Courts is scheduled to go online this weekend for e-filing. Case File Xpress has two new trainers for Texas:  Chip Grover for the Dallas area and Gail Lungaro for the Houston area.--Case File Xpress

http://www.casefilexpress.com

Check out the new look on Martindale! To search by law firm, corporate, goverment entity or law school, click on the "advance search" link.

http://www.martindale.com

Brazoria County and District Courts are now accepting e-filings in civil, family and probate cases.--Bearingpoint.com

Ann Jeter brought this to my attention--another article about Choicepoint. I believe Choicepoint is having everyone change over to Autotrak by the end of the year. Is this correct?

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051122/dctu028.html?.v=29

By now I think everyone has received their letter from LexisNexis about the changes for Accurint. Pricing rates will become effective Jan. 1, 2006. Here's some examples of the price increases: a Person Search which costs 25 cents will now be $1. The Comprehensive Report which is now $5.50 will be $8.50.

According to the letter, Accurint will be offering a few different plans:

• "Pay As You Go"
• 20% Discount Plan--for a $20 monthly minimum applied toward your amount owed, you will receive a 20% discount on yur total monthly invoice
• 25% Discount Plan--for a $55 monthly minimum applied toward your amount owed, you will receive a 25% discount on yur total monthly invoice
• 40% Discount Plan--for a $300 monthly minimum applied toward your amount owed, you will receive a 20% discount on yur total monthly invoice

Discount plans are for a term of 12 months.

Background:

AALL has long been on record as opposing several provisions of the USA Patriot Act that erode the privacy and confidentiality of library users. Specifically, we have opposed Sec. 215 that gives the government the power to access information from libraries about patron records without probable cause. The conference report would extend the sunset for Sec. 215 for seven years rather than for the four years in the Senate version of the bill.

We have also opposed Sec. 505 that allows the FBI to issue its own National Security Letters under gag order to compel production of Internet use records from any entity that provides the public with access to the Internet with no requirement that there be specific facts connecting the records sought to a suspected terrorist. The press reported last summer that the FBI is now issuing more than 30,000 NSLs a year.

Action Needed:

Please help educate your representatives about the growing opposition to the report so that the key members of the House and Senate who are pushing for balance and protection of civil libraries in the reauthorization bill will have the crucial support they need when Congress reconvenes in two weeks.

Using the talking points below, tell your representatives that you support the following changes to the conference report because the report as drafted does not provide any meaningful safeguards to protect the privacy of library users. These changes will bring the reauthorization bill more in line with the version passed in the Senate that provides some level of checks and balances. Changes needed to Section 215 to provide for a minimal level of accountability on how these broad powers are used:

The conference report requires only that the FBI show reasonable grounds to believe the records are relevant to an authorized investigation in order to get an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Secrecy Act (FISA) court for records under Sec. 215. It's important that the reauthorization bill require law enforcement to demonstrate a connection between the records sought and a terrorist organization or a suspected terrorist.

The Senate bill includes a 4-year sunset to Sec. 215 rather than the 7-year sunset agreed to in the conference report.

Changes needed to Section 505 to provide for a minimal level of accountability on how these broad powers are used:

Neither the USA Patriot Act nor the conference report provides for any sunset for Sec. 505 even though it is warranted so that Congress can monitor its usage. There should be a 4-year sunset for Sec. 505 to ensure proper government accountability.

Lastly, it is important that we thank the six Senators who came out in strong opposition to the conference report and are pushing for these changes. If you are in any of the following states, please be sure to call your Senator to thank them for their leadership on this issue: Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Sen. John E. Sununu (R-NH), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO).

Thank you!

Timothy L. Coggins

Chair, AALL Government Relations Committee

Mary Alice Baish

AALL Washington Affairs Office

From the Lonestar Times

http://lonestartimes.com/2005/11/22/texas-high-court-rules-in-school-finance/

"The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that local property taxes used to fund public schools violate the state Constitution, according to a court advisory issued Tuesday.

The court gave the state until June 1 to fix the constitutional problems with the system." Read more from the article. The story is also posted on the today's Austin Statesman at http://www.statesman.com/

Opinion: http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/historical/2005/nov/041144.htm

I can see lots of special sessions ahead!

posted for Barbara Fullerton:

Summary from the US Courts web site: http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsItem=105

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit today announced its plan to return the court's operations to its New Orleans headquarters. The court has operated since Hurricane Katrina from the Bob Casey United States Courthouse in Houston, Texas. The return plan contemplates shutting down the Houston operations at close of business on Friday, December 16, 2005 and reopening for business at the John Minor Wisdom Court of Appeals Building in New Orleans on Monday, January 9, 2006. Emergency matters will continue to be accepted for filing during the period of shutdown in accordance with the court www.ca5.uscourts.gov.

continue reading at  http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsItem=105

posted for Kevin Miles:

Reminder:: There are only a few seats left.

You are invited to a DALL Technology Committee Luncheon on Monday, November 21st, 11:30 am to 1 pm.

The place will the main conference room of Fulbright & Jaworski, 2200 Ross Avenue, Suite 2800, Dallas, Texas 75201.

The main conference room on the 28th floor has been reserved.

Patrick Fuller and Janet Bennett will present new FIRM 360 content and demonstrate new ways to develop meaningful competitive information.

Please send your RSVP to Kevin Miles.

I know it's rather late in the week, but apparently the Wall Street Journal is offering free access to its online journal this week. http://online.wsj.com/public/us

Found via Ken Leebow's Revolution 3.0 blog at http://revolution30.blogsome.com/

Angela asked me to post a blurb about this to the listserv and the blog. Ann Seidl, MLIS, is writing & directing a documentary about librarians titled The Hollywood Librarian: Librarians in Cinema and Society. Ms. Seidl is looking for contributions to help pay for the project. Part of the email she sent to several listservs explains what the money will be used for:

So, I am looking for 2,000 librarians and librarian lovers who want to  contribute $50 to the film budget. Will you be one?

I have met many, many librarians who want to be part of this historic and monumental librarian film project, and I am moved to tears by their generosity. Please be assured that not a penny of the film's budget is being wasted or used frivolously. We librarians deserve a first-rate film, and we are getting it. This documentary is being shot on high-definition film with a Panasonic Vericam, by an experienced cameraman and sound designer. It will be edited by a top-notch editor with state-of-the-art digital editing technology. Your contribution will go toward buying film stock, travel costs, salaries for the film crew (my salary is 95% deferred at this point), tape dubbing, equipment rentals and to begin the copyright clearance process.

Additional information may be found at http://hollywoodlibrarian.com/sponsor.html.

Job posting in Houston at our joblinks page.

Posted for Kevin Miles

You are invited!!

The Dallas Technology Committee is hosting a program at Fulbright & Jaworski, on Tuesday, OCTOBER 25, 2005, from noon to 1 pm in the 28th Floor Main Conference Room.

LivEdgar, a premier online service for securities documents, will present a new Court and Agency document retrieval service on

Tuesday, October 25th, from noon to 1 p.m. in 28 Main.

What you can expect to learn about:

• Dockets
• Briefs
• Memoranda of Law
• Motions 
• Answers 
• Indictments
• Transcripts 
• Disclosure Statement 
• Depositions
• Plans or Reorganization 
• Opinions 
• Expert Witness Testimony
• Complaints 
• Orders 
• Articles of Incorporation

Come see why LivEdgar might become a major source for your document retrieval and research needs as they bring you experience, reliability and speed to the job, ensuring that it gets done right the first time.

Lunch will be hosted by LivEdgar, and will come from Treebirds (Treebeards was sold; the name was changed).

Please send your RSVP to Kevin Miles.

I'm not sure how long the link will be good, but there's an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Thoughtful Design Keeps New Libraries Relevant". http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=w0rdrsriteh79dxsa29ypcl0rzkolq51.

Although this might not impact firm librarians directly, it will help us understand what experiences our newer associates have in college.

You should be able to see a poll under the calendar on the right column, asking if you want to be automatically added to the DALL listserv when you pay your dues each year. Please take a moment to vote: you have your choice of Yes, No, and Undecided.

Thanks.

Jennifer

Webmaster, listserv manager & Secretary

The blog Out of the Jungle has the preliminary results of a survey of law library related blogs. The results so far may be seen at http://outofthejungle.blogspot.com/2005/09/who-is-blogging-preliminary-results-of.html. So far, only 2.17% of respondents are from law library associations, so, once again, we are on the leading edge of technology.

Jennifer

Welcome to the DALL Blog. As you can see, we already have a number of entries, and will be blogging more in the future. Stay tuned for further details.



By the way, if you are a Bloglines subscriber, or get your blog feeds through some RSS reader/service, be sure to click the RSS icon for the feed URL.
Jennifer

We now have 84 current members; look for the updated membership directories by next week.

• firmor
  
• memberdirectories
• or Search Form

Managing Your Work Style to Reduce Stress: How to Approach Work with Humor and Wisdom

• Identify the traits of a high-stress and a low-stress work style and indicate which style reflects your own work behavior
• Describe each style's impact on self and co-workers
• Learn strategies for fine-tuning your perspective, tapping into your wisdom and applying humor to reduce stress at work

September 1, 2005, Belo Mansion, 12:00.

• Next General Meeting
  • Thursday August 4, 2005
  • 12:00 – 1:00 pm at the Belo Mansion
  • Speaker: SIMA – Everything you wanted to know about the DALL Union List
• Next Fun Event
  • Thursday August 25, 2005
  • Cocktails at the Belo Mansion 5:30 to 7:00 pm
  • Come relax with your colleagues

With about half of the membership now paid up, I've posted the first editions of the 2005-2006 membership directories.

To see the individual members, go to Members for firms and companies, go to Firms.

The directories will be updated again after August.

Speaking of blogging, there is an interesting article in the June/July issue of Online Magazine on searching for comptetitive intelligence, brand image, and reputation management. While these issues may or may not crop up in your everyday requests, it does give some good tips for searching blogs in standard web search engines. The article is not one of the free ones from the onlinemag.net site, but if you have access to the magazine, you might want to read it.

Blog Searching for Competitive Intelligence, Brand Image, and Reputation Management
By Christina K. Pikas
VOLUME 29  NUMBER 4  Jul/Aug 2005  p. 16+
ONLINE
THE LEADING MAGAZINE FOR INFORMATION PROFESSIONALS

Amanda Lefebvre did a wonderful job demystifying blogging, RSS, and podcasting last Saturday morning. She gave a quick overview of the history of blogging, talked about the power of blogs, and gave a quick demo of creating a blog account via Blogger.com and creating an entry.

She also talked about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which is often represented by little orange buttons on a blog with either the letters XML or RSS on the button. If you click on the button, you'll see a page that looks like gibberish, but if you copy that URL and add it to your favorite blog aggregator web service or software, you can get the latest entries of your favorite blogs without having to visit each and every one.

The last topic was Podcasting, a relatively new development. The phrase was coined by the conjunction of iPod and broadcasting, and is the newest hot thing. Podcasts are MP3 files that may contain blog entries, CLE's, or even classes. Hey, how about DALL meetings?

Copyright © 1997-2005 by the Dallas Association of Law Librarians.
All Rights Reserved.

Contact information:

Questions about DALL:  President or 1st Vice-President/President-Elect
Questions about dues, membership listing, or joining:  Treasurer
Questions about the newsletter or publicity:  2nd Vice-President/Newsletter Editor
Correspondence/Minutes:  Secretary
Questions/Comments about the website: Webmaster
Questions about the listserv: Listserv Manager