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From the New York Unified Court System Press Release, December 17, 2008.

“NEW YORK – Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and the Presiding Justices of the Appellate Division today announced a new set of attorney conduct rules for New York, effective April 1, 2009. The Rules of Professional Conduct, which will replace the existing Disciplinary Rules, introduce a number of important ethics changes for New York lawyers and are set forth in a new format and numbering system that are based on the ABA Model Rules….”

Complete Press Release

To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, December 11, 2008 Dutil v. Murphy, No. 06-2292 The text of the Massachusetts SDP statute, as interpreted by state courts, does not on its face violate the due process protections heretofore afforded sexually dangerous persons subject to civil commitment. Appellant’s due process rights are not violated by the statute’s failure to provide an unambiguous timeline for a redetermination of his sexual dangerousness.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, December 11, 2008 US v. Poellnitz, No. 07-2774 District court did not commit plain error in accepting Defendant’s allegedly involuntary guilty plea, and committed no error in failing to credit defendant for the value of the property that he returned to his victim. Conviction and sentence for wire fraud are affirmed..

To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw.

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, December 11, 2008 Dutil v. Murphy, No. 06-2292 The text of the Massachusetts SDP statute, as interpreted by state courts, does not on its face violate the due process protections heretofore afforded sexually dangerous persons subject to civil commitment. Appellant’s due process rights are not violated by the statute’s failure to provide an unambiguous timeline for a redetermination of his sexual dangerousness. .

U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, December 11, 2008 Broadley v. Hardman, No. 08-1342 Absent any allegation that state officials were used to enforce the process, Defendant was not transformed into a state actor for section 1983 purposes when he issued a subpoena commanding the Plaintiff to appear at a pretrial deposition, even though the subpoena was issued in his capacity as a notary public and in the name of the state of Rhode Island.

Update from the Lexis Alert Service, Search run morning of December 17, 2008.

1. People v. Danvers, 4244, 4703/05, 4245, SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT, 2008 NY Slip Op 7745; 55 A.D.3d 362; 864 N.Y.S.2d 770; 2008 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 9179, October 14, 2008, Decided, October 14, 2008, Entered, THE LEXIS PAGINATION OF THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE PENDING RELEASE OF THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION., THIS OPINION IS UNCORRECTED AND SUBJECT TO REVISION BEFORE PUBLICATION IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

The People of the State …

According to libraryjournal.com, a libraries taskforce has been formed to investigate the recent OCLC policy changes regarding the use and transfer of WorldCat records.

According to libraryjournal.com:

“Taking a step likely to be welcomed by many in the cataloging community, the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have formed an ad hoc task force to study the recently disseminated OCLC policy governing the use and transfer of WorldCat records.

According to an NBC report on MSNBC, use of library has gone “way up” during the present economic downturn; circulation is “skyrocketing”. All of this at a time when the budgets of many of these libraries are being cut..

When you go to the above link, be patient, You will first need to listen to a brief commercial before getting to the report about libraries.

“GPO’s Authentication initiative focuses on the primary objective of assuring users that the information made available by GPO is official and authentic and that trust relationships exist between all participants in electronic transactions. In furthering GPO’s mission to provide permanent public access to authentic U.S. Government publications, GPO is working to afford users further assurance that files are unchanged since GPO authenticated them.

The Beta release of an Authenticated Congressional Bills application provides digitally signed and certified Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files for a sample set of Congressional Bills from the 110th Congress. GPO has signed and certified the House and Senate bills PDF files within this application as part of GPO’s initiative to reassure users that the online documents are official and authentic.

The documents in this database are available as ASCII text and digitally signed and certified Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.”

From: The New York City Bar Library December 15, 2008.

The New York City Bar has finalized an agreement with Google and LLMC-Digital to digitize the remaining print volumes of Records & Briefs in the City Bar’s collection. This project will preserve court cases from the New York Court of Appeals (1823-1929) and all four departments of the Appellate Division (1896-1940). The project will also include scanning very scarce cases from the Superior and Appellate Term courts in the mid-late 1800’s. The trial transcripts and briefs will be available free of charge from Google and in an enhanced format in the LLMC-Digital database available through the City Bar’s web site (www.nycbar.org ).

The City Bar expects to transfer 1,000 volumes per week to Mountain View, California starting this week. Other New York area libraries may also become involved in this project in order to create a comprehensive online collection of New York Records and Briefs.

QUESTION:

What are libraries with existing Thomson West Library Maintenance Agreements (LMAs) planning to do when those Agreements come up for renewal? Responses, arranged by type of library are quite varied. All names have been removed to protect privacy but we are especially grateful to the person who both submitted the question originally and compiled the responses below:

RESPONSES:

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