RICHARD ZORZA
As you may know, the economic crisis is having a major impact upon courts, self-help programs, and indeed litigants.
A major focus of selfhelpsupport in the next year will be working to make sure that courts and their access partners continue to innovate in access to justice, even when times are tough and resources are tight.
The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is proud to announce it is adopting a new, powerful, state-of-the-art learning technology, which will provide a new learning gateway to all AALL members.
The new Ed2Go @AALLNET site will provide members with:
Online access to the AALL Annual Meeting program recordings, as well as archived Webinars, audio recordings, and video recordings
Special Libraries Association (SLA) has announced the slate of candidates for the 2010 Board of Directors. Two of the board candidates are members of the Legal Division Their names appear in bold type in list below:
2010 Board of Directors Candidates Announced
Alexandria, Virginia, February 18, 2009 – SLA has nominated eight candidates to run for election to the 2010 SLA Board of Directors. The candidates were identified by the SLA Nominating Committee, which annually solicits names of potential candidates from the membership, and is responsible for putting together a slate of candidates that has exceptional talent, is professionally diverse, and provides regionally balanced representation.
On February 20, 2009 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced that it is rescinding the book advertising policy sometimes known as the “mirror image doctrine”. Below is an excerpt from that announcement with links the complete FTC Announcement, the forthcoming notice in the Federal Register, an an article in the National Law Journal discussing this action:
“The Commission has approved the publication of a notice in the Federal Register rescinding the agency’s enforcement policy for advertising of books, also known as the Mirror Image Doctrine (MID). As detailed in the notice, which will be published soon and is available now on the FTC’s Web site and as a link to this press release, the agency is rescinding its stated policy that it will not ordinarily challenge advertising claims that promote the sale of books and other publications when the advertising purports only to express the opinion of the author, or to quote, i.e., ‘mirror,’ the contents of the book or publication….”
As noted above the National Law Journal has also published a Web-only article, FTC Rescinds Decades-old Enforcement Policy on Book Advertising, ” by Marcia Coyle. (February 24, 2009)
TITLE: The Supreme Court and the American Elite, 1789-2008
AUTHOR: Lucas A. Powe, Jr.
PUBLICATION DATE: April 2009
U.S. Department of State:
http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=12725
Foreign Service Information Resource Officer
BY STEVEN ESSIG*
Library Trends Volume 57, issue 1 focuses on “Digital Books and the Impact on Libraries”. Issue Editor Peter Brantley, Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation (DLF), introduces the discussion by summarizing several cataclysmic developments in the library and publishing worlds that are forever changing the production, delivery and acquisition of books and other print materials: namely, the increasing centrality of Google and the resulting uncertainties over the disruption of the traditional relationships between authors publishers and libraries and the disruptive effects of ubiquitous internet technology on people’s everyday lives. Brantley asks whether there are alternatives to Google-shaped agreements for librarians and publishers and what economies would be necessary to sustain these alternative agreements.
Among the articles that follow this introduction, particularly interesting discussions include that of Jason Epstein’s “The End of the Gutenberg Era” (pages 8-16). Epstein, formerly the editorial director of Random House and founder of Anchor Books, foresees a continued place for most current versions of the physical book (though purely reference materials such as encyclopedias will go totally online) but emphasizes a change in the manner of its distribution. Increased digitization will cut back elements of the previous supply chain reducing costs of the physical inventory, packaging etc. and replacing this costly and elaborate setup with a “practically limitless digital inventory”, making it possible to “email an entire book with all necessary metadata as easily as a letter” (15). Epstein then discusses his involvement with “On Demand Books”, a company marketing an “Espresso Book Machine” which prints books on demand from online digital files. He foresees this print-on-demand technology being setup as a sort of “ATM for books” where readers could order a title at their computers (much as they currently do at Amazon.com) and then collect the item at a nearby machine, perhaps located at a Kinko’s, Starbucks or local library or bookstore. For this setup to become widespread, there would need to be cooperation with publishers and other content providers; Epstein sees it as in the latter’s interest in cutting back on the current costly distribution infrastructure as well as in the chance to “exploit new technologies and markets” (16).
Martha L. Foote M.S.L.I.S, Chair of the SLA Legal Division has sent the following announcement which we are glad to post here for the benefit of some who might not otherwise see it:
The preliminary program for the 2009 SLA conference is now available on the web site at http://www.sla.org/pdfs/sla2009/09PCP_web.pdf. This year’s conference has very strong programming, much of it coming from our own division. Please take a few minutes to review the content and make arrangements to attend SLA 2009.
Volume 13, Number 2 of this Newsletter is being reproduced in full on this posting with the permission of its Editor and Publisher, Lesley Ellen Harris. I am grateful to her for granting us this permission.
FROM THE OFFICES OF LESLEY ELLEN HARRIS Copyright, New Media Law & E-Commerce News __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Vol. 13, No. 1, January 5, 2009 ISSN 1489-954X
We recently received the following information regarding a legal information and legal informatics workshop being held in Poznan, Poland on April 28, 2009, thanks to Robert Richards of Philadelphia, PA.:
Call for Papers: Workshop on Legal Informatics and Legal Information Technology, Poznan, Poland, April 28, 2009.
Submission details are at http://bis.kie.ae.poznan.pl/12th_bis/wscfp.php?ws=lit2009 .
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