David Whelan, the Director of Legal Information & the Great Library Society of Ontario, discusses his recent article “The No Legal Research Provider Landscape,” and how lawyers, law librarians, and the legal industry looks at legal information services. Do you need to have multiple resources like Westlaw, LexisNexis, Bloomberg or others, or can
One of the best things about being President of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), is the advocacy I get to see first-hand that we do in fighting for the rights of our members, access to justice issues, and when we join in solidarity with peer organizations to urge that our government representatives take
 |
| Image [cc] Josh Bancroft |
This morning, the American Library Association came out against the FBI’s attempt to order Apple to unlock an iPhone connected to the San Bernardino shooters, who murdered 14 people and injured another 22 back in December 2015. ALA’s Managing Director of the Office of Government Relations issued the following statement:
The
 |
| Image [cc] Chris Makarsky |
There were a couple of incidents I read about over the weekend of government officials destroying unreplacable historic documents. The reasons for the destruction are not exactly clear, but it gives conspiracy theorists some interesting ideas of why officials would destroy the archives of which they are supposed to be caretakers for the
It seems everyone is talking about the NSA’s surveillance program, PRISM, these days. Although the program seems to be very creative in ways of gathering information, it seems that the group’s presentation skills need a bit of work. Don’t worry, French freelance presentation designer, Emiland, has come in to help!
Emiland has taken the
If you’re a fan of the idea that the government that represents you should be transparent and open, then you’ll be a big fan of the Sunlight Foundation Projects. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation has created a number of tools and resources to help citizens access public information, and work to expand the definition
 |
| Almost all those books… government created content that someone paid for! |
I am a huge proponent of state governments helping their citizens understand the judicial system, and help with the access to justice, but I think that a recent action from the State of Montana is sliding down a slippery slope in its actions to
Last night in its 120th annual meeting in Vail, Colorado, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) passed the Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (UELMA) in order to provide a set of rules for states to follow to establish “an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by publication
I missed commenting about this when it was announced last week. Looks like former AALL Government Relations representative, Mary Alice Baish, is hard at work at her new post and is working to pilot the release of Federal Court decisions via FDsys.gov. This should prove to be a much better format than the PACER
Last week, there were a couple of random tweets that flew between Ed Walters, Don Cruse, and me that weren’t really a big deal in and of itself, but it got me thinking about the way that Government data is compiled, accessible, online, authoritative, and free to the end-user. Ed’s tweet was what caught my