Cleveland Law Library Weblog

Library of Congress taking Its Show on the Road to Ohio Beginning Tomorrow

Starting tomorrow, on October 5th, the Library of Congress will be bringing its traveling exhibit called "Gateway to Knowledge" to Ohio. The show will include copies of some of the Library's major exhibits and information about the millions of resources the Library offers. Traveling by means of an 18-wheel truck that expands to twice its size with a staircase, LOC will be visiting 4 sites in Ohio on the following days:

Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, October 5-6, 2010

Twinsburg Public Library, Twinsburg, Ohio, October 8-9, 2010

Oberlin College, Oberlin College, October 12-13, 2010

Hobart Arena, Troy, Ohio, October 15-16, 2010

Register for Our Library's Year-End CLE Programs on Foreclosures, Technology and Ethics

Our Law Library is once again sponsoring three (3) year-end CLE programs. This year, we start off the CLE season with a November 19th program on the foreclosure process from start to finish. Our second CLE on December 3rd will cover technologies for the Web 2.0 lawyer, including mobile apps., cloud computing and blogging. We will finish out our CLE year on December 8th with our annual program on Ethics, Professionalism and Substance Abuse. 

Here is our complete lineup, with links to the registration forms:

Foreclosures: Process, Prevention & Preservation, Friday, November 19, 2010

The Web 2.0 Lawyer: Mobile Apps., Cloud Computing & Blogging, Friday, December 3, 2010

Ethics, Professionalism & Substance Abuse, Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Our Fall 2010 Newsletter also contains hyperlinks to the registration forms for the programs.

West Publishing Is Now Renting Casebooks to Law Students

The latest news for poor law students is that West is renting its casebooks for 3, 6 or 12 months. Renting a hard-copy book apparently comes with e-access to an online version of the same book. It is hard to believe, but students are allowed to highlight and mark up the books as much as they want, giving the rentals much greater utility. Just hope you aren't the second person to borrow a book where every other sentence is highlighted in different color highlighters. West is also offering an online library of Gilbert outlines, Nutshells and other handy tools for helping to get through classes and study for the bar exam.

Cleveland Law Library "Green Certified" for 2010-2012

For the second time, our library, the Cleveland Law Library Association, has been "Green Certified" by the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association. Our certification is effective for the next 2 years for the biennial period from 2010-2012. In addition to historical practices we employed that predated now-popular nationwide "green" initiatives, we have instituted many new policies over the last few years to reduce our energy consumption and use of paper products. We also recycle our e-wastes and constantly challenge ourselves by conducting informal "green" audits to see where we can continue to make our library a greener place to work and research.

Daily Legal News Applauds Services That Law Firm Librarians Provide

Today's issue of the Daily Legal News carries an article captioned "Librarians' roles expand as they become even more valuable tools for law firm." How true that is. The article indicates that librarians' duties are expanding beyond legal research to compiling backgrounds on businesses, providing project management, and tracking case information. Some of the librarians in Cleveland have reported that they are routinely performing competitive intelligence and compiling information on emloyement candidates. By doing so, they are becoming essential to their employers in a day when the article comments layoffs are unfortunately touching the profession of librarianship.

Lexis Will Soon be Launching its New Flagship to be called Lexis Advance

Not to be left behind by West with its brand new online product called WestlawNext, Lexis is getting ready to lauch its new flagship, which will be called Lexis Advance. Thanks to the blog called "3 Geeks and a Law Blog" for this tip. Lexis plans to starting rolling out this product later this year.

Annual Survey of Am Law 200 Librarians Shows They Are Surviving Layoffs and Cost-Cutting

The new survey of Am Law 200 Librarians from law.com shows that although they have been hit with layoffs and cost-cutting, they are surviving the storm with savvy business practices. These librarians are buying less print, playing tough with print and online vendors of all sizes, taking advantage of free in-house vendor-training sessions to perform otherwise costly research, and working leaner on smaller budgets. The good news is that their duties are expanding to include business development research, which will continue to make them indispensable to their law firms. Click here for a good summary of the survey results.

National Center for State Courts Issues 2010 Edition of Future Trends in State Courts

The National Center for State Courts has just released its 2010 edition of Future Trends in State Courts. According to the Press Release, the focus of this report looks at "court reengineering"-which evaluates court operations with the goal "to improve processes and save money while increasing efficiency and maintaining service levels to the public." The report gives concrete examples of states that are tackling this project through changes in service structures, technology and much more.  While part of the study reports that the recession is impacting court activity in Ohio, it also indicates that litigants are finding more and more help finding legal information from their local libraries. Significantly, the report also indicates that Ohio is planning to implement appellate court e-filing in the next 2-3 years. Both Steve Hollon, the Administrative Director of the Ohio Supreme Court, and Chris Davey, Ohio Supreme Court Director of Public Information, played major roles in creation of the report.

YouTube Video Extols Valuable Contributions Librarians Make to Courts

A new video has recently been released on YouTube extolling the valuable services librarians provide to the federal courts. The same can be said of the work librarians perform for members of the practicing bar and members of the public! We hope our members will take advantage of all the reference and research services we have to offer.

Membership Includes Expanded Access to Lexis and Westlaw

As part of reneogiating new Lexis and Westlaw plans, the Cleveland Law Library and the Cuyahoga County Law Library expanded what the law library has to offer. Click here to review all databases we currently offer and review our new Lexis and Westlaw databases, including the breadth and scope of our new public records access.