Daily Archives: September 2, 2008

LRW – “Legal Research Readings for Students: A Selective Annotated Bibliography”

Posted on by
Reply

“Legal Research Readings for Students: A Selective Annotated Bibliography“

SHAWN G. NEVERS, Brigham Young University – J. Reuben Clark Law School

Supplemental readings that are informative, interesting, and brief can do wonders in a legal research course. I use them to emphasize important points, facilitate interesting discussion, and provide a “real world” view of legal research. Students enjoy the change of pace and are generally engaged by the articles – something I can’t say about textbooks. This paper is a selective annotated bibliography of articles that could be used as supplemental readings in introductory and advanced legal research courses. The fourteen articles listed cover the importance of legal research, the research process, electronic legal research, and researching primary sources. As part of each annotation I have included my “two cents” about when and why these articles might be used in a legal research course.

Source: LSN Legal Education Vol. 5 No. 41,  09/01/2008

Free, Free, Free, Codes, Codes, Codes…..

Posted on by
3

The good folks at Public.Resource.org have just given us a nice ‘back to school’ present: a ton of free administrative codes.  And, you all know how much we love FREE things at LRP.   [Thank you Carl Malamud!] 

On the Codes.gov site, you will find both state and city level administrative code materials from across the country.  The vast majority appear to be safety, building and energy codes; however, the full California Code of Regulations appears on this site.  All are in easy-to-read PDF format, too.

As for myself, the Las Vegas Pool and Spa Code caught my attention….

Linking to UN documents from the Official Document System

Posted on by
Reply

Many UN document databases, such as the Official Document System (ODS) provide full-text access to reports. However, these dynamically generated URLs make it difficult to share the link with library patrons.  Our colleagues at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjøld Library in New York have devised a nice work around the problem. Use the following root URL http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m= 

 After the equal sign (=), add the UN publication’s document symbol number.

For instance, if you wish to link to the International Convention for the Suppresion of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, with a document symbol of A/RES/59/290, the URL would look like this: http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=A/RES/59/290.

Be aware that this links lead one to a Web page that includes the desired document in all six official UN languages.

Getting Documents from NARA about NARA – UPDATE

Posted on by
1

About one month ago, I posted an item about the difficulty of getting documents about NARA from NARA — the entry was based on an article written by Anthony Clark (Why Is It So Hard to Get Documents from the National Archives About the National Archives?, History News Network, July 21, 2008).

Here is an update to this very interesting story.  On the Archivists’ Forum, there is a recent entry from Anthony Clark detailing the latest ups and (mostly) downs of this saga.

Clark writes:

“Some readers may know that I have had great difficulty accessing NARA’s own records for my research into presidential libraries and NL, or NARA’s Office of Presidential Libraries (see http://hnn.us/articles/52350.html) for more information). What you might not know is that in July NARA offered me a deal” – if I dropped all of my pending FOIA requests for NL’s records, they would commit to systematically process all of NL’s records – some 230 boxes – at a rate of nine boxes per month, until all boxes have been processed and made available.  Just a few weeks later, not only did NARA “take back” part of that offer (while claiming it was never made), they have now reneged on it completely. I was so shocked by what NARA did today that I felt I had to make the list aware of what they had done.  [Full details available on the Forum page.]“

As I hear more about this NARA-tive, I’ll be sure to pass it along.