| Senator Gives Into His Anger … It Makes Him Stronger |
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My buddy xxxxx [name redacted] alerted me to this story from The National Law Journal. Senator Joseph Lieberman — who xxxxx calls Senator Palpatine for (I think) obvious reasons — wants to know why PACER still charges people for access: “The senator, who is head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, expressed concern in a Feb. 27 letter that the federal judiciary had a $150 million surplus in its technology fund as of fiscal year 2006 yet continues to charge the public and lawyers $.08 per page for access to documents. ‘While charging for access was initially required, Section 205(e) of the E-Government Act changed a provision of the Judicial Appropriation Act of 2002 (28 U.S.C. 1913) so that courts “may, to the extent necessary” instead of “shall” charge fees “for access to information available through automatic data processing equipment”,’ Lieberman wrote.” Palpatine Lieberman also cited Carl Malamud’s research into privacy violations in government docs: “Given the sensitivity of this information and the potential for identify [sic] theft or worse, I would like the court to review the steps they take to ensure this information is protected and report to the committee on how this provision has been implemented as we work to increase public access to court records.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Comments (0)February 13, 2009
| Yet Another Article About Carl Malamud |
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Yesterday the NY Times had another article about the ongoing activities of Carl Malamud, the guerilla legal publisher who’s trying to shove PACER into the 21st century. The article doesn’t really say anything that hasn’t been said before: Malamud says the PACER system is outdated and we shouldn’t have to pay to see legal documents, which are part of America’s “operating system”. Lets be real here. The federal government is good at spewing out documents. They’re not so good at analysis. So if they got their you-know-what together, the feds would be absolutely fabulous at dumping huge amounts of cases on us. (At the EPA, we used to call that “shovelware”.) But would they make it easy to analyze the cases to determine which ones are the “good” ones, the ones to use as legal precedents? No. That’s why we have aggregators such as LexisNexis and West. The hard reality is that anybody who wants to do serious legal research is going to have to deal with “Wexis” at some point. Spoiler Alert: Here comes the shameless plug for Jenkins. We understand that legal research can be expensive. That’s why we make a bunch of quality legal tools available to our members. From your desktop at home or in the office, you can access:
Now I know that these tools are not technically “free”, because you have to pay to become a Jenkins member. But the services you get more than make up for what you spend to join. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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November 19, 2008
| From Hurricanes to Hollywood |
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1) Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Outstanding Need, Slow Progress 2) Editing Hollywood’s Editors: Cleaning Flicks for Families 3) Steroids in Sports: Cheating the System… What do all of these things have in common? They are all the titles of hearings before the U.S. Congress. Although other documents, such as Committee Reports, are considered more valuable sources of legislative history, hearings are still a piece of the puzzle. They provide great background and include a range of useful information. Hearings are usually held to assist Congress with proposed legislation and give committee members the opportunity to ask questions and collect information from experts, scholars, and officials. Hearings commonly contain transcripts of Q & A sessions, prepared statements by witnesses and exhibits. LexisNexis Congressional is available to members 24/7 and has complete versions of hearings from 2004 - present. In addition, select testimony transcripts and submitted statements are available from 1988-present. If you need any help with your research, call the Reference Desk at 215-574-1505 or email research@jenkinslaw.org |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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October 17, 2008
| Compiling Bibliographies in JAC, Jenkins’ Catalog |
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A: You’re in luck. JAC offers a new feature of creating lists (called My Lists) To use this feature:
Save Records to a List
You can send your list to either your email account or to the screen in any of 4 formats: Full Display, Brief Display, Pro-Cite or End_Note/RefWorks. Please leave a comment about other JAC features you are interested in learning more about. |
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Submitted by: Katrina Piechnik, Head of Technical Services
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Q: I am working on compiling a bibliography for a research project and would like to know how I can accomplish this by using JAC.
October 8, 2008
| As a Public Service … |
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… I present you with a guide for stopping cellphone spam. One of the options involves blocking text messages sent through email. (You may not be aware that your cellphone has an email address. For AT&T, my carrier, it’s phone_number@text.att.net. Other carriers use different addresses.) That’s all well and good, but it’ll disable the Text to Phone feature we’ve recently added to our online catalog. If you find an interesting book, you can send its title and call number to your mobile. That way, you don’t have to waste paper printing the record. And you never go anywhere without your cellphone — right? — so you’ll have the info you need when you get to Jenkins. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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October 7, 2008
| LexisNexis Congressional |
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We’ve just added a great new resource to our Member Online Services. LexisNexis Congressional is available 24/7 to all Jenkins members. This web site will help all of those federal legislative researchers out there. For starters, it provides access to the Statutes at Large (1789-present) and the United States Code. Then comes all of the wonderful federal legislative history material. There are Committee Reports (select coverage 1990-present), Committee Prints (select coverage 1993-2004) and the Congressional Record (1985-present). This product offers full Congressional Hearings in a digital format (searchable PDFs) from 2004-present and select testimony transcripts & submitted statements from 1988-present. As an extra bonus the CFR is searchable from 1981-present. As you do your research on LexisNexis Congressional, you might come across abstracts to older material that is not available in full text. If you need one of these documents, call our reference desk at 215-574-1505 or email research@jenkinslaw.org. We have an almost complete collection of federal legislative history documents here at the library from 1970-present and select material available prior to 1970! |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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September 25, 2008
| Journal Portal |
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Have you checked out Jenkins’ Journal Portal lately? The Journal Portal is a great tool to use when you are trying to figure out where a title is available electronically (i.e. Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, etc.). It works well for journals and even many treatises. Once the portal helps you determine which databases carry the title you want, how do you get access to these databases? Many are available through Jenkins. Call the Jenkins reference desk at 215-574-1505 or email research@jenkinslaw.org. We can check to see if the title is available on your desktop through one of Jenkins’ Member Online Services databases or is included on our Lexis & Westlaw Patron Access stations here at the library. Other databases (as well as Lexis or Westlaw titles outside of the Public Access accounts) can be searched for you by our librarians. Sometimes titles that come up in the portal might not be part of Jenkins’ collection. Usually this occurs when there is a coverage issue in one of the electronic databases. For example, a particular title might be available in full text for very recent volumes, but only as an abstract for older issues. If your title is only available as an abstract, we can still help you locate and obtain the full text. We have a wonderful Interlibrary Loan Department with staff that work hard to obtain material as quickly as possible. So search away on the portal, and let us know if there is anything we can do to help you get what you need.
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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September 17, 2008
| Court Rules |
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Researching a particular court rule? Try Shepard’s on Lexis.com or KeyCite on Westlaw.com. Both are great tools for finding annotations dealing with a rule. |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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September 11, 2008
| Congressional Record |
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Check out the U.S. Congressional Documents on HeinOnline. This is a great new addition to our Member Online Services. Search or browse the Congressional Record (1873-2003) or the Congressional Record Daily (1994-2008) from your desktop. As with all of our Member Online Services, they are accessible 24/7. Wondering what the difference is between the Congressional Record and the Congressional Record Daily? Both contain debates and proceedings from the floor of the U.S. House and Senate. The Daily gets published quicker and is numbered with a pagination system that begins with H for House, S for Senate or E for Extension of Remarks. The Congressional Record, sometimes referred to as the bound or permanent edition, gives legislators a chance to revise or amend remarks. The permanent edition should usually be cited to, unless it is not yet available. HeinOnline is only available to Jenkins members in firms with less than 50 attorneys. |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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September 4, 2008
| U.S. Federal Agency Decisions added to Member Online Services Remote Access |
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Jenkins has added the U.S. Federal Agency Library from HeinOnline to our Member Online Services remote access databases. You can search or browse decisions from the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission, the Board of Immigration Appeals and much more! Many titles have great coverage - the Internal Revenue Cumulative Bulletin, for example, goes all the way back to 1919. HeinOnline is only available to Jenkins members in firms with less than 50 attorneys. |
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Submitted by: Jenny Hohenstein, Reference/Electronic Services Librarian
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