Marcus P. Zillman has updated his best practices bibliography of sites and reliable sources focused on the hot topic of statistics and big data. These sources are representative of multiple publishers, national and global – government, academia, NGOs, and industry, many of which leverage open source and collaborative applications.
David H. Rothman discusses how e-books, collections of electrons, not atoms, come with special advantages. They eliminate physical-shelving costs and are especially useful for blind people and others with special needs. Digital technology can also help multiply the selection of books for residents of small towns as well as large cities with underfunded neighborhood library branches. This technology can likewise drive down the costs of providing best-sellers and help with popularizing authoritative information on key issues such as health and finance.
The world is rapidly changing as government data transparency, Big Data and the ability to access actionable information from institutional databases is increasingly released on the web without restrictive fees or subscriptions. This new guide by web research guru Marcus P. Zillman comprises the leading world wide web resources for discovering new knowledge and leveraging the latest reliable data on the New Economy.
Attorney Nicole Black brings context to the impact of the proliferation of social media accounts among the majority of adults in the United States. The information from these accounts has become a prime source for lawyers to mine for evidence to support their clients’ cases.
In the past, attorney Nicole L. Black has described misguided attempts by judges to excessively penalize jurors for using social media or the Internet during the pendency of trials. In fact, over the last year, judges have gone so far as to fine or jail jurors who have used social media during trial, and legislators have proposed laws that would criminalize such conduct. This despite the fact that jurors have been violating judges’ orders not to research or discuss pending cases since the dawn of jury trials.
Marcus P. Zillman’s current annotated link compilation encompasses top value-added resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. The selected resources and sites provide a wide range of actionable knowledge and avenues for information discovery to leverage as part of your overall research project strategy.
On December 31, 2012 more than 100 patrons of the District of Columbia Public Library were lined up electronically for 10 e-book copies of John Grisham’s new novel about the murder of a federal judge. Some 400+ D.C. library users awaited 60 electronic copies of Gillian Flynn’s new book, the best-selling fiction title on the New York Times list. In light of consistent demand across the country, David H. Rothman continues to champion the case for affordable, wide spread access to e-books through public libraries. These institutions continue to struggle with dwindling budgets, increased demand for services and copyright/licensing laws impacting e-book cost and distribution.
Hays Butler and Emily Feltren document the process and successful implementation of dynamic, extensive project conducted over the past three years by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) working with law librarian volunteers around the country to build the first-ever National Inventory of Legal Materials, an inventory of print and electronic legal materials at all levels of government. More than 350 volunteers have added nearly 8,000 legal titles to the inventory so far.
Scott A. Hodes’ New Year’s commentary is both an overview and a roadmap to the FOIA process. Scott’s experience has taught him that requesters do not realize that their biggest obstacle to having their requests processed in a timely manner is not usually FOIA offices. The biggest obstacles tend to be the program offices that have equity in the records sought and the agency executives who see FOIA offices as an expense they don’t want to fund.
Attorney Nicole Black discusses the rise in the number of lawyers using mobile devices, the growing number of apps developed specifically for lawyers, and how these apps increasingly support lawyers at every stage of the litigation process.