I recently helped a student use an item in our Rare Books Collection to verify a citation that a professor had recorded for a forthcoming law review article.  One of the references she wanted to check was the original publication date of the volume.  When we looked on the back side of the title page, we discovered the following statement:

(You can click on the image to make it larger.)

Needless to say, my researcher was a little confused--this lengthy narrative looks almost nothing like the modern convention for declaring copyright: that ubiquitous symbol, ©.

It may be hard to believe, but the copyright symbol was not formally adopted until 1979, when copyright laws were overhauled.  Before then, owners of works had to petition the Copyright Office to copyright their works. 

 What looks to modern eyes like an arcane, roundabout way of stating something very simple was actually a necessary explanation that the author of a work had been granted copyright by the Copyright Office. 

An old professor of mine in college once quipped that Charles Darwin was a great thinker but "he needed an editor."  19th Century prose has often been described as florid and verbose.  Copyright notices of that era are no exception, suggesting that even something this routine could take on a dramatic flair.

Biddle Law Library at the University of Pennsylvania Law School will host the first MidAtlantic Academic Law Libraries Symposium on March 13, 2009. The symposium is being sponsored by  Bloomberg, Law Division.

The morning session will feature John Palfrey, Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School and a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society will deliver the keynote speech. 

In the afternoon Jordon Steele, Archivist at Biddle,  will facilitate a panel on blogs in academic law libraries and Ed Greenlee, Associate Director for  Public Services at Biddle will moderate a panel on the role of Facebook in academic law libraries.

A few of the institutions attending include the law libraries at Duke, Fordham, Howard, Cardozo,
Hofstra, University of Maryland and University of Pittsburgh.

Ed Greenlee and Tim Von Dulm, Reference Librarian, are the co-organizers of the symposium.

For more information,  please email Ed Greenlee at egreenle@law.upenn.edu. 

If you have access to Biddle Law Library's electronic resources, you now have access to a new database: AudioCaseFiles (ACF). ACF provides multimedia access to audio opinions and trial video. You can search by course or casebook to locate material from 1L classes and 2L and 3L subjects.                                                           

Through streaming video, visitors to the site canl watch practitioners argue cases on products liability, antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, and other areas of the law. You can listen to the audio content through your computer or download it in MP3 format. Streaming trial video is also available.

 

Featured Video: Mark Lanier

Watch attorney Mark Lanier deliver the closing argument for plaintiffs, McDarby and Cona. Lanier uses PowerPoint to explain the requisite burden of proof to the jurors, and to summarize the actions of the Merck executives. He humorously names his presentation "Desperate Executives."

• Hear intro on technique from William and Mary Professor Jeffrey Breit
• View the argument

Thanks to a grant from the ACTEC Foundation, the Biddle Law Library Archives was able to process the papers of Richard V. Wellman, the primary architect of the Uniform Probate Code.  A finding aid for the processed collection can be found here.

At 28 linear feet, the Wellman Papers comprise one of the largest collections in the Archives of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL). The NCCUSL Archives primarily consists of the papers of individuals who have worked on various projects by NCCUSL, an organization that endeavors to promote greater uniformity in the law by drafting uniform laws and model acts.  As NCCUSL Archivist (one of my many hats around the Library), I am responsible for maintaining both electronic and print records related to these NCCUSL projects.  Professor Wellman's papers represent the latter.  

Born in 1922, Wellman taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Georgia.  He is perhaps best known as the chief reporter for the Uniform Probate Code, first promulgated by NCCUSL and the American Bar Association in 1969.  Like the Uniform Commerical Code, the Uniform Probate Code sought to streamline and simplify a vast and complex area of the law: in this case, laws governing wills, estates, and intestacy.  The Wellman Papers include correspondence, meeting materials, and drafts related to Wellman's work on the Uniform Probate Code as well as other UPC-related projects.  The collection should prove to be a boon for researchers interested in the history of the law of wills and estates, as it is probably the largest known body of probate-related archival material.

When word got out that we were processing Wellman's papers, I was notified that another institution had papers related to Wellman's work for the California Law Revision Commission.  We recently accessioned these papers and they should be available soon as part of the processed collection.

Please contact me for more information about the Wellman Papers and other collections in the NCCUSL Archives.

I am posting this entry on behalf of our reference intern, Michele Penn, who brought this very cool site to my attention.--Jordon

Are you trying to find text of Senate debate on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the "Stimulus Package")? What about a presidential signing statement from 2003? How long would it take for you to find those documents, and which web sites would you use?

Two government watchdog organizations, OpenTheGovernment.org and the Sunlight Foundation, have teamed with a nonprofit technology organization, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), to create a web site, ShowUsTheData.org.  The site asks users to nominate and vote on which unclassified federal government documents should be available online.  Here, "online" means findability and access in places other than official ".gov" sites. According to the web site's documentation, the goal of the project is to "encourage open government and citizen participation in democracy through full disclosure of unclassified government documents in open, interoperable formats."  Visitors to the site can suggest a document created by any of the three branches of government or vote on up to three "Most Requested Documents." 

The collaborators on this project do not accuse the federal government of hiding or limiting access to government information; rather, the argument is that most web users look to commercial search engines for government information, and that information is difficult to find there or not there at all (because departments and agencies do not open their sites to web crawlers). The E-Government Act of 2002 has made government documents easier to find, but the bill to reauthorize the Act died in committee last fall. Government documents are organized by branch on GPOAccess.gov, but that site can be cumbersome for inexperienced searchers and users who are not aware of government jargon. Groups like the CDT and the Sunlight Foundation want for documents to be accessible where most people first tend to look: the commercial search engine.

This project is timely, as the Obama administration has committed to open government and transparency in governmental action. Whether for a clerkship or personal use, it is likely that you will have a need to find government documents. Check out ShowUsTheData.org to vote for the documents you'd like to feature more prominently on the web.