We received the following letter from William H. Neukom President of the American Bar Association on December 3, 2007 and are forwarding it for your consideration:
Dear Fellow Lawyer,
Each day, evidence mounts that pressure brought by Americans and people of other nations is forcing Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf to soften his assault on the rule of law. But he has failed to address some of his most destructive actions.
David Badertscher
“Why we need to move from thinking about Web pages to thinking about the information on those pages.”
As many of you already know, significant changes, both stylistic and substantive, are being made to the federal judicial procedure and rules. We understand these changes will become effective on December 1.
Recently we have received some e-mails from the publisher Thomson West alerting us to the changes and providing a link to more substantive discussion and a video on their website. For your convenience we are reproducing two of the e-mails here. The first e-mail was sent of November 14 and the second on November 30.
First e-mail:
The following is from an article by Margaret Locher, published in the November 26, 2007 issue of CIO Insider. We especially call your attention to item 2 where she discusses the importance and usefulness of blogs in research:
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Professional librarians and researchers will tell you that the Web has many unexplored opportunities for finding more information on business topics. Pursue these six techniques to improve your research results:
100 Notable Books of the Year
The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 3, 2006.
Fiction & Poetry
As part of its mission, OCLC a worldwide library cooperative prepares in depth studies and topical surveys of issues and trends of interest and concern to all types of libraries, including law libraries. One of their latest reports addresses the topic of sharing, privacy and trust in our networked world .
Although this report was prepared primarily for OCLC member libraries the topic being addressed is of obvious importance to all of us, regardless of occupation, who are working in this highly interractive world of networks and are confronted daily with the necessity of reconciling matters related to information sharing, information security, and privacy. Recognizing this importance we are posting the entire document below. Since it is quite large we have created three links for your convenience. The first links only to the Introduction, the second only to the Conclusion, and the third links to the complete report in pdf format.
The report is divided into 15 sections including the following:
On October 18, 2007 a coalition of major media and technology companies released a set of guidelines designed to halt online piracy. Media companies involved include CBS, NewsCorp, Fox Enertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom Disney, and MySpace. Google was notable absent from the list. A You Tube spokesperson who asked not to be named said that Google had talked to Disney and You Tube about the guidelines but decided not to join the group out of concdrn that ‘ “industry-wide mandates would stifle innovation’ “. I
In a posting on LEXOLOGY by four attorneys from Arent Fox LLP “…The joint collaboration aims to eliminate infringing content on services providing user-uploaded and user-generated audio and video content (UGC) services, encourage uploads of wholly original and authorized user-generated content, and accommodate fair use of copyrighted content, and protect user privacy interests.” It is interesting to note that many of the concerns reflected in the guidelines are similar (except perhaps in context) to those confronted by libraries in their own efforts to resolve issues the reproduction and transfer of materials.
To provide added context for those interested in this topic, this posting includes the full text of an article published on FindLaw Corporate Counsel by Julie Hilden. Finally,some additional links to other sources are listed.
The following was published as an article in the November 20, 2007 New York Times.
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: November 20, 2007
The 2007 Annual Report of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct was released last Thursday. In his article in the November 19, 2007 New York Law Journal Daniel Wise writes that the Commission ” opened more investigations in 2006 [the year covered by the Annual Reporrt] and had more matters pending against judges than at any time in its 29 year history…”.
INTRODUCTION TO THE 2007 ANNUAL REPORT
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct is the independent agency designated by the State Constitution to review complaints of misconduct against judges of the State Unified Court System, which includes approximately 3,400 judges and justices.
With the expanding variety of formats required for effective storage and retrieval of information in libraries coupled with the rising level of expectations of patrons, the future of bibliographic control is of utmost concern for all types of libraries. The following material from the Library Journal Academic Newswire for November 15, 2007 discusses the work of one group, The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control and its recommendations.
From the Library Journal Academic Newswire;
Some big changes may be coming from the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, convened by Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for library services at the Library of Congress (LC). The extent of those changes, however, remains unclear, as LC did not actually release its report on bibliographic control and how the library community and LC can move forward. That release is now expected on November 30. LC did give attendees at an in-house session Tuesday a copy of a PowerPoint presentation. Also, a webcast on the Working Group’s session was downed by a technological problem, frustrating many eager to watch it.
