News from Organizations

March 26, 2011

The Jury Expert Has a New Look

The people at The Jury Expert are excited about moving to a new platrorm, WordPress, where they can incorporate a new look and possibly some new features as well. Below is their e-mail announcing the change and providing links so you can see for yourselves. Take a look:

The e-mail:

We are too excited to wait until our next issue to get this announcement out! The Jury Expert has moved to a WordPress platform and we are ready for our close-up. We invite you to visit and see how much easier it is to find what you’re looking for on our new site. One of the benefits of our new platform is we can use categories (see the right-hand side of the webpage for the category drop-down menu) to help you find what you need.

February 1, 2011

Internet Society Statement on Egypt’s Internet Shutdown

by David Badertscher

Source: The Internet Society Newsletter Volume 10 Number 1 January 2011.

On 28 January, Lynn St.Amour President and CEO, and the Internet Society Board of Trustees issued a statement on the Egypt’s Internet shutdown:

“We are following the current events in Egypt with concern as it appears that all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic has been disrupted. The Internet Society believes that the Internet is a global medium that fundamentally supports opportunity, empowerment, knowledge, growth, and freedom and that these values should never be taken away from individuals.

September 22, 2010

Using Google Scholar Library Links to Locate Journal Articles Online

by David Badertscher

Theodore Pollack, Senior Law Librarian at our public access law library writes: “Here is an interesting feature for Google Scholar regarding attempting to locate journal articles that are not easily available in Westlaw, Lexis, or HeinOnline. If you set the preferences in Google Scholar to libraries that you have access to, Scholar is supposed to inform if the article is available online thorough a digital subscription.”
http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/librarylinks.html

September 22, 2010

U.S. National Archives Puts 3,000 Historic Documents Online*

by David Badertscher

The National Archives has created a new online public website that features more than 3,000 historic documents, photos and videos available for download, along with applications for teachers to create and share history lessons about the items, officials announced.

The new website, DocsTeach.org, offers historic items such as a short newsreel of American war planes attacking Japan in 1944, photos of President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration and a court document on the conviction of activist Susan B. Anthony for voting before it was legal for women to vote….

Click here to see complete article.

September 17, 2010

ABA Criminal Justice Section Iniated or Co-Sponsored Resolutions*

by David Badertscher

Approved by the ABA House of Delegates

Sept. 2010

At the 2010 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the House of Delegates approved resolutions that the Criminal Justice Section initiated or co-sponsored regarding the following issues (click on the relevant REPORT # to view the full text of the resolution and the background report):

September 9, 2010

ABA: Justice is the Business of Government (JBiz) Taskforce

by David Badertscher

In September 2009, the Executive Committee of the ABA Board of Governors (“BOG”) approved the formation of a joint Task Force of the ABA Standing Committee on Judicial Independence (“SCJI”) and the National Center of State Courts (“NCSC”) to follow up on recommendations made at the May 2009 ABA Summit Conference, “Justice is the Business of Government,” in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Justice is the Business of Government (“JBiz”) Task Force is co-chaired by Mary C. McQueen, President of the NCSC; H. Thomas Wells, Jr., ABA President (2008-2009), and Edward W. Madeira, Jr., SCJI Special Advisor. Jack L. Brown, immediate past Chair of the ABA Judicial Division (“JD”), chairs the JBiz subcommittee on principles and standards relating to state court funding.

JBiz members additionally include: David Adkins, Executive Director, Council of State Governments; Hon. Louraine C. Arkfeld, Presiding Judge (retired), Tempe Municipal Court (1994-2010); Hon. Russell Carparelli, Colorado Court of Appeals; Hon. Ernestine S. Gray, Orleans Parish Juvenile Court; Steven C. Hollon, Administrative Director, Supreme Court of Ohio and past President, Conference of State Court Administrators (2009-2010); Hon. David A. Horowitz, Chair, ABA JD Lawyers Conference; Donald Murray, Senior Legislative Director, Justice and Public Safety at National Association of Counties; David Quam, Director, Office of Federal Relations at National Governors Association; William T. “Bill” Robinson III, President-Elect, American Bar Association; William K. Weisenberg, Assistant Executive Director for Public Affairs and Government Relations, Ohio State Bar Association and Chair, SCJI; and Robert N. Baldwin, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, NCSC.

The focus of JBiz is to address and advance the cause of adequate funding for our state courts. Towards that end, the NCSC acts as the staffing component of the Conference of Chief Justices (“CCJ”), recognizing that the courts must plan “to do more with less.” The NCSC, working to establish the value of courts in the administration of justice, has engaged in a “re-engineering” project implicating case administration, court governance, the functions of state courts, and principles for funding…

August 31, 2010

New York is Moving Forward on E-Discovery and E-Filing

by David Badertscher

In his August 31, 2010 New York Law Journal article, Court Rule Altered to Buttress E-Discovery; I-Filing Advances, Joel Stashenko discusses the amended Uniform Rules of Trial Courts of the State of New York as an effort to insure that lawyers keep “up to speed” regarding their clients’ records at the early stages of discovery. The amended rules were published August 18 and went into effect immediately, having been approved beforehand by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and the presiding justices of the four appellate division departments.

Much of this activity has been influenced by a New York court system report, Electronic Discovery in the State of New York, published in February 2010. The key recommendations of that Report includes: establishing an e-discovery work group; improving the preliminary conference; more e-discovery programs in Education and Training; more court attorney referees serving as e-discovery specialists, establishing an institutional presence at the Sedona Conference; and working harder to improve the quality of E-Discovery practice.

On the second front mentioned in Mr. Stashenko’s article, electronic filing of litigant papers is said to be proceeding in New York at a deliberative pace. While more than10,000 lawyers registered for New York’s electronic filing system in 2009, compared to only 300 in 2002, there is , as Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau has observed, “there is a long way to go: before e-filing and E-Discovery are required in all New York Courts. After 11 years of experimentation with electronic filing, New York has accorded permanent status to the effort and is now beginning to institute mandatory e-filing in limited areas.

August 16, 2010

OCLC Update 2010

by David Badertscher

Today we received a link to a slide presentation by Glenn Patton, Director of Wordcat Quality Management at OCLC on July 11 at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. We are sharing this information with you because these slides convey an important message regarding the urgency of establishing acceptable standards and developing techniques based on those standards for ensuring continued and improved access to structured data stored in various formats on web.2.0 and future versions as they evolve. .Topics covered include updates regarding the Connexion client, some discussion of the Virtual Internation Authority File (VIAF), and the ISO 27729 ISO Standard, International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI).

June 17, 2010

2010 ABA Silver Gavel Award Presentation

by David Badertscher

This is indeed the season for presenting awards. The ABA Silver Gavel Awards honor those in media and the arts that foster a better understanding of the law. All are invited to the Gavel Awards presentation at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on July 7 at 5:00 p.m. The event is preceded by a reception and registration is required [http://www.abanet.org/publiced/gavel/presentation.shtml

Here are the event details sent to us by the ABA:

Event Details Wednesday, July 7, 2010 5:00 – 6:30 P.M.

May 24, 2010

American Bar Association: Report of the Executive Director to the ABA Board of Governors

by David Badertscher

April, 2010

This Report of the Executive Director to the ABA Board of Governors* highlights issues related to ABA Membership, and Personnel, Also highlighted is an extensive list of Programs and Projects including those related to Bioethics and the Law, Center for Professional Responsibity, Criminal Justice, Family Law, Government Affairs, Immigration, Intellectual Property, Law Library of Congress, Mental Health and Disability, Rule of Law Initiative, Science and Technology Law, Substance Abuse, Women in the Profession, and many more. See the entire Report by clicking on the link below:

April 2010 Report of the American Bar Association Executive Director to the ABA Board of Governors