Jenkins Closed on Saturdays Beginning January 2009
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Having reviewed usage on Saturdays over the past few years, we found that an average of 14 patrons, some of them members of the general public, use Jenkins on Saturdays. This is less than 3% of our membership The cost of keeping Jenkins open on Saturdays is about $30,000 annually. Not only do we pay for staffing, we also have to pay for utilities and other operational costs. In addition, the people who work on Saturdays are off on Mondays, so we are short staffed on that day. Having analyzed the situation and spoken with our Board of Directors, we have made the decision to eliminate Saturday hours at Jenkins beginning in January 2009. We recognize that some of our members want to work on the weekend and we believe that we can offer a service that will assist them with their research. In 2009, we will offer 24/7 access to Fastcase, a high-quality online legal research alternative to the larger commercial vendors. Fastcase offers unlimited searching of cases, statutes and regulations for all 50 states and Federal coverage as well. This new service will be available to all members who are solos or with firms with less than 50 attorneys. There will be no time limits for your research as we have with the Lexis Thru Jenkins Remote Program. We plan to continue the Lexis Thru Jenkins Remote program, for solo’s and firms with 10 or fewer attorneys. Our excellent web site, www.jenkinslaw.org , links to legal and non-legal information and our library of remote access databases that members can search from home or office continues to grow. We dislike having to withdraw a member benefit, but we are confident that the combination of remote databases we offer will assist our members with many of their after hours research needs. |
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Submitted by: Regina Smith, Director of the Law Library
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Comments (0)December 30, 2008
| Cuil Has Tanked (In Case You Actually Care) |
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Cuil, the new search engine that launched in July with massive media hype, is getting almost no search traffic, reports TechCrunch. I’m not surprised — it was almost unusable when I tested it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, either. If you want next-gen search engines, try these. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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| Money For Nothing |
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Last month my son — Mr. Monosyllabic — set the family record for text messages: 5,001. If I hadn’t already surrendered to inevitability back in the spring and agreed to shell out $30 a month for unlimited texting, he would have dinged me for $1,000. Why do I have to spend so much so that my family can zap dumb little text messages around the airwaves? The NY Times sheds some light here: (a) It costs the carriers nothing to send the messages. They’re sent using the control channel — the connection between phone and tower that has to be established anyway. (b) They want to lock you in with an unlimited texting plan. “Customers with unlimited plans, like diners bringing a healthy appetite to an all-you-can-eat cafeteria, might think they’re getting the best out of the arrangement. But the carriers, unlike the cafeteria owners, can provide unlimited quantities of ‘food’ at virtually no cost to themselves.” I’ll add one more: (c) Teenagers are the carriers’ best friends. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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December 29, 2008
| Garner on Language and Writing |
 By Bryan A. GarnerIn her foreword, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declares the book to be “a ‘must read’ primer” for her law clerks. Anyone with a lively interest in language, writing, and law will find this book hard to lay aside. Library Record • Borrow it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Web Content Coordinator
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December 23, 2008
| A Lean Christmas For Google Staff |
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No cash bonuses for them this year — the company’s stock is trading at less than 50% of what it was last year. So they only get a free G1 phone. I’m sorry, but they shouldn’t kvetch, for the following reasons: (a) 570,000 people are unemployed, the highest number in more than 25 years (b) The G1’s a great phone (c) Google unlocked it for them, so they can use it on any network, not just T-Mobile (d) Did I mention the unemployment rate? As the song goes, “When the world is running down you make the best of what’s still around“. Happy holidays, everyone. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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December 22, 2008
| PACER Turns Twenty [UPDATED] |
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Here’s an article from The Third Branch celebrating PACER’s 20th birthday. Usage is up, way up: in 2008 alone, they added more than 130,000 new users. Even though Carl Malamud of public.resource.org thinks PACER is “broken” and suffers from a “mainframe mentality”, the system is still innovating: “The latest enhancement to the PACER system is the availability of digital audio recordings of court proceedings. Five pilot courts make some digital audio recordings available through the CM/ECF system, accessible through PACER. Not surprisingly, [North Carolina Eastern District Bankruptcy Court justice J. Rich] Leonard’s court is leading the pilot program. ‘It’s the next level of transparency,’ he said. ‘And its potential is in opening up the judicial process to the public. I thought it was interesting that one local paper is picking up hearings and loading them to its Website. I know attorneys who load them to their MP3 players. This could be the antidote to mainstream media’s declining coverage of the courts.’” UPDATE, 12/23: Oops, forgot to give a shoutout to Gary Price for the link. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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| The Little Red Book of Wine Law: a Case of Legal Issues |
 By Carol RobertsonWine is a great passion of many professionals and this book takes an interesting look at how law and the wine have intersected, sometimes with very interesting results. In this book you’ll find a number of fascinating stories that examine the various legal concepts that are related to wine, vineyards, and wine-drinking, including law suits, disputes, and more. Library Record • Borrow it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Web Content Coordinator
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December 19, 2008
| HHS Secretary’s Blog |
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I recently (yes, I know, better late than never) discovered (stumbled upon) Mike Leavitt’s blog. He is the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. I must say that I am impressed that a member of the President’s cabinet has a blog that he writes himself so that he can report directly to the public on today’s health issues. He even takes the time to answer some of the questions and comments posted on his blog. And to help us find his blog there is a link from the HHS’s home page.
Currently on his blog are entries on trips that he took to Iraq and Pakistan complete with pictures. He observed first hand the medical treatment of our military and talked with many of the doctors and nurses involved in their treatment. Makes for interesting reading! In his Pakistan entries, he discusses the relationship between terrorist organizations and health care. From one of his posts, “In order to cultivate support among the local people of that region, terrorist groups work through non-governmental organizations friendly to their cause to undermine the credibility of the government in providing basic services like health care. They then set up clinics and actually provide services to the people themselves. Terrorist organizations have discovered the power of health as a tool in securing the loyalty of local people.” I never considered this connection but after reading Secretary Levitt’s blog it certainly does makes sense. Archives of his posts go back to August 2007 and cover a multitude of health-related and Department-related topics. There is also a list of links to these topics so you don’t need to go through all the archives if you are just interested in one topic. One of the topics that I blog about frequently are the issues involved with EHR’s (electronic health records). This link assesses Secretary Levitt’s posts on Health IT (of which EHR’s are a part), comments from the public, and his responses.
I find all of this very refreshing – a blog written by an Administration Cabinet Member reporting directly to the people in his own words. I would love to see more upper level government employees do the same. And I surely do hope some version of this blog is continued by the next Secretary of HHS! |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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| YouTube’s Now The Second-Largest Search Engine |
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It says so right here: 2.7 billion searches in November, about a quarter of all Google-based searches, and more searches than Yahoo. And Google’s starting to figure out how to monetize YouTube. According to CNET, Universal Music Group (one of the Big 4 labels) is receiving “tens of millions of dollars” is advertising revenues from YouTube. Speaking of music labels, the WSJ (subscription required) reports today that the Recording Industry Association of America will cease suing people suspected of illegally sharing music online. (Not that they’ve had much success anyway.) The RIAA is taking a different approach — use Internet Service Providers as cops, a task that they’re all too willing to embrace: “The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take. Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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| No Color Monitor. No Hard Disk. No Keyboard. But It Had Switches and Blinky Lights. |
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Thirty-four years ago today the world’s first commercially-successful personal computer, the Altair 8800, officially went on sale. (Notice I didn’t say “world’s first personal computer”. Obsessive techno-nerds get all manner of cranky when you call it the first PC.) The Altair was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular electronics. Obtaining an original copy of that issue is like the Holy Grail to computer enthusaists. The 8800 didn’t do a whole lot compared to today’s PCs, but it was popular nonetheless, especially with two ubergeeks named Paul Allen and Bill Gates. They got together to create a programming language for the Altair. (You know the rest of the story.) When you look at the guts of the thing, you realize how much the technology has changed in the last four decades. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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