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Law Library Blog (March 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook, Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Conspiracy theories attempt to explain events as the secretive plots of powerful people. While conspiracy theories are not typically supported by evidence, this doesn’t stop them from blossoming. Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. To help minimize these harmful effects, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook, by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, explains why conspiracy theories are so popular, how to identify the traits of conspiratorial thinking, and what are effective response strategies.

The Handbook distills the most important research findings and expert advice on dealing with conspiracy theories. It also introduces the abbreviation CONSPIR which serves as a …

A Baker's Dozen Of Tips For Better Web Searches, Anne Burnett

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Anne E. Burnett also served as Program Chair. Burnett is the Foreign and International Law Librarian for the Alexander Campbell King Law Library at the University of Georgia School of Law.

An Attorney's Guide To Business And Investigative Research, Carol A. Watson

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Carol A. Watson is the Director of Alexander Campbell King Law Library at the University of Georgia School of Law.

On Being A New Voice, A New Everything, Geraldine R. Kalim

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

In this thoughtful post, member Geraldine Kalim reflects on being a new librarian, a new University of Georgia employee, a new/returning resident of the state of Georgia, and a new mother.

AALL's New Voices is for members to share insights on any aspect of law librarianship. Pieces in this series also appear on the Members Open Forum in addition to being published as part of the AALL monthly eNewsletter. Topics in the series include: starting a new role, insights on professional development, recommending a favorite resource, providing an overview of an AALL webinar, or your take on an article …

Scraping Bepress: Downloading Dissertations For Preservation, Stephen Zweibel

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This article will describe our process developing a script to automate downloading of documents and secondary materials from our library’s BePress repository. Our objective was to collect the full archive of dissertations and associated files from our repository into a local disk for potential future applications and to build out a preservation system.

Unlike at some institutions, our students submit directly into BePress, so we did not have a separate repository of the files; and the backup of BePress content that we had access to was not in an ideal format (for example, it included “withdrawn” items and did not …

Nothing Says "I Love You" Like A Correct Bluebook Citation & Formatting The 1l Brief, Jason Tubinis, Heather Simmons

Presentations

Law Librarians Heather Simmons and Jason Tubinis walked students through the necessary formatting for 1L brief success, as well as shared their top tips for Bluebook citations. Formatting topics included Table of Authorities, Table of Contents, page numbering, and styles. Students were encouraged to bring their laptops for hands on help with both Mac and PC versions of Microsoft Word.

Cool Tools For Time & Project Management, Rachel S. Evans, Geraldine R. Kalim

Presentations

Student Services Librarian Geraldine Kalim and Metadata Services Librarian Rachel Evans shared their favorite web-based applications and smartphone apps. Tools included Kanbanflow, Google Suite, Trello, Slack, Moleskin Journey, and Voice Notes. Screen captures and specific examples of how each presenter uses the apps in their daily worklife in the law library as well as examples of special projects and best apps for team collaboration were given. There was also a short time for questions and discussion following the talk.

Does Ai Hold The Keys? Bloomberg Law’S Docket Key Unlocks Federal District Courts, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

Evans shares a review of Bloomberg Law's newly expanded docket search "Docket Key" by providing a brief intro to docket searching and explaining the type of AI-machine learning at work in the product.

The CS-SIS Blog Committee is charged with providing CS-SIS members with timely and useful information through an official yet informal medium about relevant subjects for the membership, including the activities of the members, committees, and Executive Board.

Roadmap For Open Science (Canada), Mona Nemer

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The objective of the Roadmap for Open Science is to provide overarching principles and recommendations to guide Open Science* activities in Canada. The recommendations are intended for science and research funded by federal government departments and agencies.

The Roadmap for Open Science was developed in the context of the Directive on Open Government, the Model Policy on Scientific Integrity and the Data Strategy Roadmap for the Federal Public Service. It builds on the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications and the Statement of Principles on Digital Data Management. A federal approach to supporting Indigenous data strategies is outlined in the …

Criv Sheet Summaries: A Review Of Aals Programming, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Osi 2019 Annual Report, Glenn Hampson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

OSI’s 2019 work focused on building a bridge to 2020—continuing our pivot from being an organization focused on understanding facts and perspectives, to one poised to pursue a significant, global reform agenda. This is a challenge for any group—doubly so for a group like OSI at the pioneering edge of a nebulous field, while also trying to maintain a republic format where all participants are co-equal leaders. OSI’s strategy in 2019 focused primarily on these three agenda items:

1. Find sustainable financing.

2. Help coordinate the construction of a new global roadmap for open.

3. Prepare for and start work …

Analyzing Analytics: Litigation Analytics In Bloomberg Law, Westlaw Edge, And Lexis Advance, Ashley A. Ahlbrand

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Dear President Trump,, Coalition Of Open Access Policy Institutions (Coapi)

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

We strongly endorse updating existing U.S. policy to eliminate the current 12-month embargo period on articles that report on publicly funded research, as instituted by the Obama administration, and to ensure that they are made immediately available to the public.

Copyright, Fair Use, And Creative Commons: An Active-Learning Exercise For Studio Art Students, Arthur J. Boston

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This article describes an active-learning exercise intended to help teach copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons licenses. In the exercise students use a worksheet to draw original pictures, create derivative pictures on tracing paper, select Creative Commons licenses, and explore commercial usage, fair use, and copyright infringement. Librarian-instructors may find the completed worksheets to be useful aids to supplement copyright lectures; student perspectives will be integral because they are generating the examples used in discussion. Although a scholarly communication librarian developed this exercise to help introduce some basic copyright information to an undergraduate studio art and design class, the exercise …

Congressional Committee Resources On Space Policy During The 115th Congress (2017-2018): Providing Context And Insight Into U.S. Government Space Policy, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Article 1 of the US Constitution assigns the US Congress numerous responsibilities. These include creating new laws, revising existing laws, funding government programs, and conducting oversight of these programs' performance. Oversight of US Government agency space policy programs is executed by various congressional space policy committees, including the House and Senate Science Committees, Armed Services, and Appropriations Committees. These committees conduct many public hearings on space policy which invite witnesses to testify on US space policy programs and feature debate on the strengths and weaknesses of these programs. Documentation produced by these committees is widely available to the public, except …

Copyright And Libraries: Georgia State Copyright Lawsuit, Laura Burtle

University Library Faculty Publications

Overview of the litigation between academic publishers and Georgia State University and the University System of Georgia regarding the use of electronic reserves. The chapter covers the fair use findings of the district and appellate courts and provides background on the case.

A Bibliography Of University Of Nebraska College Of Law Faculty Scholarship 2014-2018, Stefanie S. Pearlman, Keelan A. Weber

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library

This bibliography lists faculty scholarship from 2014-2018. It updates A Bibliography of University of Nebraska College of Law Faculty Scholarship 1892–2013. This bibliography includes publications from law, law library, and law clinical faculty. It also includes assistant deans, faculty with courtesy appointments at the College of Law, and visiting faculty teaching at the College of Law for three or more years. Although we did not include the scholarship of faculty who visited for less than three years or adjunct faculty, we did include a list of those faculty members for historical purposes.

Contents:

Bibliography of Law Faculty Scholarship, 2014-2018 …

The Gaps Model And Faculty Services: Quality Analysis Through A “New” Lens, Alex Zhang, Sherry Xin Chen

Scholarly Articles

Faculty service is an important function of U.S. academic law libraries. This article evaluates three types of faculty services programs using the Gaps Model to identify, analyze, and propose ways to fill four main gaps: knowledge, policy, delivery, and service quality.

Academic Law Library Director Status Since The Great Recession: Strengthened, Maintained, Or Degraded?, Elizabeth G. Adelman, Karen L. Shephard, Richard J. Patti, Robert M. Adelman

Journal Articles

The status of the academic law library director is central to the educational mission of the law library. We collected data from 2006 to 2016 showing a 25 percent decrease in tenure-track directorships. We also found one in four changes in directorships since 2013 resulted in the new director having a degraded status compared to her predecessor.

Fall 2020 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2020 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

Mplp: From Practice To Theory, Kyna Herzinger

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Most American archivists are familiar with More Product, Less Process or MPLP and are sensible of its strengths and weaknesses, while applying its time-saving methods. Minimal methods are currently justified over more time-honored, time-consuming ones by applying MPLP’s now largely accepted practices in an effort to maximize resources and prioritize competing workplace demands.

This paper traces MPLP’s development through four broad observations and seeks to reframe how archivists engage with MPLP and its diverse approaches. MPLP’s larger impact is considered by encouraging a conversation around how professional values have found a voice in MPLP and, in turn, considers MPLP’s impact …

Law, Artificial Intelligence, And Natural Language Processing: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Search Results, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Renowned legal educator Roscoe Pound stated, “Law must be stable and yet it cannot stand still.” Yet, as Susan Nevelow Mart has demonstrated in a seminal article that the different online research services (Westlaw, Lexis Advance, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Ravel and Casetext) produce significantly different results when researching case law. Furthermore, a recent study of 325 federal courts of appeals decisions, revealed that only 16% of the cases cited in appellate briefs make it into the courts’ opinions. This does not exactly inspire confidence in legal research or its tools to maintain stability of the law. As Robert Berring foresaw, …

Using Law School Faculty Author Profiles To Promote Impact: The U.S. News & World Report Saga Continues, Allison N. Symulevich

USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: When U.S. News & World Report announced that it would rank law schools’ scholarly impact, U.S. News asked law schools to work with HeinOnline, a legal database, to ensure the accuracy of the database-created faculty author profiles because they would be using Hein’s database to gather citation metrics to measure scholarly impact. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM: This practice article describes a project at UNC Chapel Hill in the law library to ensure that their faculty publications were included in HeinOnline’s database and that HeinOnline Author Profiles were accurate. This case study helps librarians tackling either similar law library projects or …

Accept Me, Accept Me Not: What Do Journal Acceptance Rates Really Mean?, Rachel Herbert

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Journal acceptance rates should not be used as evaluative metrics for journals: we find no evidence that acceptance rates are a reliable signal of quality or impact. Journal acceptance rates are useful for submitting authors and ICSR recommends that they be made publicly available where possible. Gold open access journals do tend to have lower acceptance rates than other open access types, but these also tend to be younger journals: as these journals age, will those acceptance rates increase, or will the open access model influence the acceptance rate? ...

We identified the fact that low acceptance rates are demonstrated …

The Gaps Model And Faculty Services: Quality Analysis Through A “New” Lens, Alex Zhang, Sherry Xin Chen

Faculty Scholarship

Faculty service is an important function of U.S. academic law libraries. This article evaluates three types of faculty services programs using the Gaps Model to identify, analyze, and propose ways to fill four main gaps: knowledge, policy, delivery, and service quality.

Who’S Writing Open Access (Oa) Articles? Characteristics Of Oa Authors At Ph.D.-Granting Institutions In The United States, Anthony J. Olejniczak, Molly J. Wilson

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The open access (OA) publication movement aims to present research literature to the public at no cost and with no restrictions. While the democratization of access to scholarly literature is a primary focus of the movement, it remains unclear whether OA has uniformly democratized the corpus of freely available research, or whether authors who choose to publish in OA venues represent a particular subset of scholars—those with access to resources enabling them to afford article processing charges (APCs). We investigated the number of OA articles with article processing charges (APC OA) authored by 182,320 scholars with known demographic and institutional …

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Susan David Demaine, Susan Azyndar

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Works Of Eleanor D. Kinney, Susan David Demaine

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Eleanor D. Kinney was a prolific scholar throughout her thirty-five years as a professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She authored or co-authored more than seventy-five journal articles, publishing in numerous peer-reviewed medical and health journals, as well as law reviews. She wrote three books, edited a fourth, and published nine book chapters

Professor Kinney’s work has been cited in at least ten court opinions. Her work has garnered more than 700 citations in law review articles, and nearly 200 in medical and health policy journals. The influence of her work places her within the top …

Touring The Lilly Library, Kimberly Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

When I began my job in January 2015, I was the first person to be officially designated as the Student Services Librarian at Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Jerome Hall Law Library. One could argue that almost all the functions of a librarian at an academic law library are indeed “student services,” but I was given the exciting, and at times overwhelming, task of making the students happy on a full-time basis.

What makes students happy? Does anything (short of free food) make law students excited about the law library? I took it as a personal challenge to find …