Author: farrah nagrampa

Introducing Fastcase

The Library is happy to announce the addition of Fastcase to the long list of electronic resources we offer the NYLS community.

Comparable in many ways to Lexis and Westlaw, Fastcase is a legal research service providing full-text searchable access to comprehensive libraries of federal and state cases, statutes, constitutions, court rules, administrative regulations, and attorney general opinions.  The robust service has recently expanded to offer libraries of newspapers, federal court filings, and legal forms.

Unlike Lexis and Westlaw, Fastcase will not restrict student access to its research libraries in June.  You’ll be able to use Fastcase libraries all summer long, at your job or for any other purpose.  Fastcase also offers excellent free apps for your iPhone and iPad, facilitating research on the fly.

It’s worth your while to check out Fastcase!  One easy way to get started is to sign up for one of their free webinars.  You’ll find a complete list here.

Don’t be an April Fool!

REMINDER:   The April Fool’s Day Info Hunt drawing is almost here!  Submit your completed entries by Tuesday, April 3rd at 5:00 pm for a chance to WIN one of many prizes, including study aids and texts, and OneCard Guest Cards (these can be used for food purchases as well as printing and copying).  The drawing will take place outside the library entrance at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, April 3rd.

For more information, click here.

April Fool’s Day Info Hunt

It’s almost April Fool’s Day, so let the games begin!

In the spirit of “the games,” the Mendik Library is challenging you with the chance to enter the April Fool’s Day Info Hunt with a chance to WIN one of many prizes, including study aids and texts, and OneCard guest cards (these can be used for food purchases as well as printing & copying)!

To access the April Fool’s Day  Info Hunt:

*  If you are using Firefox, Chrome or Safari, click here.

*  If you are using Internet Explorer, click here.

Each slide includes one question (there are only 5) plus helpful guidance on sources and steps to get you to the answer.  Press Enter to reveal each step in the research process and to move on to the next question.  Click here to access a PDF answer sheet (or pick up a copy at the Reference Desk) and submit your completed copy at the Reference Desk (or by e-mail: reference@nyls.edu) by 5:00 PM Tuesday, April 3rd to enter the drawing.  The official collection barrel for completed entries is located at the Reference Desk in the Library.  The drawing will take place outside the library entrance on April 3 at 5:30 PM.  Although you need not be present to win, winners in attendance will have the opportunity to choose from the selection of prizes, and may even receive bonus prizes.  Absentee winners will be contacted by email.

Good luck!

Our Online Catalog Has a New Look

The Mendik Library is pleased to announce  new enhancements to its Encore catalog interface – a state-of-the-art “discovery engine.”

Encore has a trimmer and cleaner look with tags listed on the left instead of displaying in a cloud. In the facets column on the left you can now access course reserves and other drill-downs to move you from broad search results to a more specific and focused list of resources.  Links to relevant full text articles from our HeinOnline subscription are now displayed at the bottom of the results screen.

This enhancement of Encore helps place New York Law School among the leaders in law school library technology. We hope you will enjoy using Encore to help navigate all of our resources. So give it a try and let us know what you think! We look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Bloomberg Law Training Sessions on Wednesday March 7

A reminder that tomorrow, Wednesday March 7, Bloomberg Law is offering a series of trainings on how to use Bloomberg Law to search for various content types.  If you are a 1L, these trainings satisfy the Research Skills Workshops component of your Legal Practice Course requirement.  Please Note: Bloomberg Law offers UNLIMITED summer access to students.

Trainings are being held in room L207 and are currently scheduled for:

Mar. 7 – 10:00 – 10:50 a.m. (Wednesday) – Formulating Effective Searches on Bloomberg Law.

Mar. 7 – 11:00 a.m. – 11:50 a.m. (Wednesday) – Finding and Researching Regulations on Bloomberg Law

Mar. 7 – 12:00 p.m. – 12:50 p.m. (Wednesday) – Formulating Effective Searches on Bloomberg Law.

Mar. 7 – 2:00 p.m. – 2:50 p.m. (Wednesday) – Finding and Researching Statutes on Bloomberg Law.

Mar. 7 – 3:00 p.m. – 3:50 p.m. (Wednesday) – Using Bloomberg Law’s Citator (BCITE).

Please contact Omesh Seemangal via e-mail at oseemangal@bloomberg.net to reserve a spot for one of the training sessions.  Please also e-mail Omesh if you are unable to attend on Wednesday and would like to request possible additional training opportunities, or have questions about the service itself.

Thomas More, Patron Saint of Lawyers

Born on February 7, 1477, Thomas More was an English lawyer, statesman, author, scholar, dedicated father, early proponent of education for women, and eventually, a saint.  Raised in London, he entered the bar around 1501 after studies at Oxford and legal apprenticeship.  Politics followed shortly afterwards with his election to Parliament in 1504.  He eventually rose to the high office of Chancellor in 1529.  More’s strongly held religious convictions brought him into conflict with the king when Henry VIII established the Church of England.  More could not bring himself to acknowledge the king as supreme to the Pope, which led to his trial and execution for treason in 1535.  He was canonized in 1935 and is the patron saint of a variety of groups, including lawyers.

Douglas Linder, The Trial of Sir Thomas More, Famous  Trials, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/more/more.html (last visited February 3, 2012).

A Man for All Seasons (Highland Films 1966).

More, Sir Thomas, http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0833989.html  (last visited February 3, 2012).

Thomas More, Utopia (1516).

Mendik Library In The News


Victoria Sukhol, Assistant Director for Cataloging at NYLS, was recognized recently by the American Association of Law Libraries for her work cataloging the website of the Joint Committee on Taxation.  The AALL selected the Joint Committee’s website as its website of the month in December, and thanked Ms. Sukhol for her work cataloging this rich source of tax legislative information for the past century.  The Committee recently posted to its website all of its publications back to the 1920s.

The Joint Committee on Taxation is a nonpartisan committee of the U.S. Congress, originally established by the Revenue Act of 1926. The committee operates with a professional staff of economists, attorneys, and accountants, who assist members of Congress of both parties with tax issues.  The committee staff is involved with every aspect of the tax legislative process, including:

  • Assisting Congressional tax-writing committees and Members of Congress with development and analysis of legislative proposals;
  • Preparing official revenue estimates of all tax legislation considered by the Congress;
  • Drafting legislative analyses for tax-related bills; and
  • Investigating various aspects of the Federal tax system.


Perhaps best known of the Committee’s publications are their “Bluebooks,” which provide explanations of tax legislation enacted in each congress.    The explanation follows    the chronological order of the tax legislation as signed into law. For each provision, the document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date.  The analysis provided in the Bluebooks is often cited in tax cases.  For more information please see the committee’s website at http://www.jct.gov/.  You may review Victoria’s catalog record at http://lawlib.nyls.edu/record=b1676785~S0 .

 

Find Some Love in the Library

The Valentine’s Day Info Hunt has arrived!  As our Valentine’s Day gift to you, the Mendik Library is offering another opportunity to be entered into a drawing to WIN one of many valuable study aids and texts, along with other prizes we will be giving away (see a sampling below).

To access the Valentine’s Day Info Hunt:

*  If you are using Firefox, Chrome or Safari, click here

*  If you are using Internet Explorer, click here   

Each slide includes one question (there are only 5) plus helpful guidance on sources and steps to get you to the answer.  Press Enter to reveal each step in the research process and to move on to the next question.  Click here to access a PDF answer sheet (or pick up a copy at the Reference Desk) and submit your completed copy at the Reference Desk by 5 PM Tuesday, February 14 to enter the drawing.  The official collection barrel for completed entries is located at the Reference Desk in the Library.  The drawing will take place outside the library entrance on February 14th at 5:30 PM.  Although you need not be present to win, winners in attendance will have the opportunity to choose from the selection of prizes, and may even receive bonus prizes.  Absentee winners will be contacted by email. 

Among the titles and prizes winners will choose from are:

The Elements of Legal Style

Legal Writing Process, Analysis, and Organization

New York Practice Hornbook (Siegel)

Understanding Labor Law

and many more

. . .

plus:

Starbucks gift cards

OneCard guest cards (can be used for food purchases as well as printing & copying)

. . . and who knows what else!

Try the Enhanced Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) is now accessible through HeinOnline with the added benefit of direct linking to many articles.  Give it a try!

The IFLP indexes nearly 300,000 articles and book reviews across more than 500 periodicals.  Links to the full text of more than 34,000 items are available.  The IFLP covers public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia.

2011 First Week Pizza Survey Results

For the fifth consecutive year we surveyed 1Ls during First Week library tours about their use of digital communication tools. Our apologies for this late delivery — though the pizza may be cold it’s still worth having. 

In addition to telling us their favorite pizza topping (answer below), more than 470 members of the class of 2014/15 responded to questions about:

• their preferences in electronic communication;
• their social networking activity;
• their usage of blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, e-books, and Twitter; and
• the types of electronic devices (smart phones, e-book readers, etc.) they owned.

You can see all the survey questions (and the responses) here. Below are some highlights, revealing a continuation of some trends we have been watching develop.

• E-mail use continues to plummet vis-à-vis text messaging as the preferred means of written electronic communication. The percentage of those favoring e-mail fell this year to 37%, down from 45% in 2010, 55% in 2009, 62% in 2008, and 67% in 2007. At the same time, entering students’ preference for text messaging rose to its highest level yet, 46%, overtaking e-mail as the most popular form of written electronic communication. This result is consistent with the findings of a Pew Internet & American Life Project 2011 study detailing that 73% of American adults who own cell phones (83% of Americans) send and receive text messages. The study further found that young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 averaged nearly 110 texts per day, translating to more than 3,200 per month.

• Facebook remains the dominant social networking site for these students, favored by nearly 86%. Significantly, this group is also using Facebook more often than predecessor classes; frequency of use increased for the fourth straight year, with 49% reporting logging on to the site more than once per day, compared to 2010 (46%), 2009 (39%), and 2008 (28%).

• For the first time, our survey included questions about Twitter. We’ve learned that nearly 38% of the entering class have a Twitter account, although only 5% tweet more than once per day. Another 5% tweet a few times per week and 14% tweet occasionally. But, that tells only half the Twitter story: 26% of the class are regularly following more than five Twitter feeds with another 5% following between one and five feeds. We would expect both types of Twitter usage to increase over time.

• Blogs and RSS feeds are still not an important part of most students’ lives. Just over a third of the 1L class arrived at NYLS as subscribers to or readers of blogs (a slight decrease from last year) and only a very small number (8%) take advantage of RSS or e-mail subscriptions that push the information directly to them.

• Similarly, podcasts have still not gained much traction – usage has more or less stagnated for the past three years with 49% of the class not having downloaded or listened to a podcast and another 7% not even knowing what a podcast is. Last year’s numbers were 47% and 10%, respectively.

• The popularity of Macs compared to PCs continued to increase, albeit at a slower rate, rising to 51% from 50% in 2010, 39% in 2009, and 31% in 2008.

• Internet Explorer continued to lose popularity while Google Chrome made big gains as the browser of choice. Some of Chrome’s gains came at the expense of both Firefox and Safari. While Chrome usage surged from 12% to 22%, Firefox dropped from 36% to 24% and Safari from 30% to 28%.

• When asked which search engine they use most often, respondents again identifiedGoogle by a wide margin (94%), with Yahoo a mere 2% and Bing barely 1%. Interestingly, 44% of those surveyed “sometimes” use a different search engine to perform an identical search after receiving results from an initial search, perhaps recognizing that individual search engines can have limitations and failings. That number is nearly identical to the results of 2010’s survey. An additional 5% “usually” use another search engine to supplement their results (compared to 8% for 2010) and nearly 7% “always” do so (compared to 5% in 2010).

• For just the second time, the survey asked students which among certain specified electronic devices they owned. Among “smart phones,” Blackberry lost ground this year (from 40% to 32%) to the iPhone (up to 37% from 22%) and the Android (at 21%). Ownership of an iPad or other tablet device increased from 5% to 16% and ownership of an e-book reader increased from 4% to 14%.

• Of great interest is that despite a large increase in the number of students owning e-book readers and tablet devices, the actual use of e-books showed an unexpected drop-off – 50% compared to last year’s 56%. A reluctance to move away from traditional books seems to linger.

• Finally, after last year’s brief upset, Pepperoni regained its crown as students’ favorite pizza topping, pulling in 26% of the vote compared to Extra Cheese the nearest contender with 15%. Mushrooms, at 13%, continued to repeat as a third place finisher.