ZiefBrief

HeinOnline and Fastcase Announce Publishing Partnership

HeinOnline and Fastcase have teamed up to integrate content.  In today's press release, the companies described their partnership as follows:

Under the agreement, Hein will provide federal and state case law to HeinOnline subscribers via inline hyperlinks powered by Fastcase. In addition, Fastcase will completely integrate HeinOnline’s extensive law review and historical state statute collection in search results, with full access available to Fastcase subscribers who additionally subscribe to Hein’s law review database.

According to the press release, these enhancements will roll out at the end of this summer. This is a great enhancement for both products!



Professor Freiwald Guest Blogging at Concurring Opinions

Professor Susan Freiwald will be a guest blogger with the popular law professor blog, Concurring Opinions, for the next month. 

Kindle Textbook Rental Service Now Available

Tired of carrying heavy textbooks around?  Now some law textbooks are available for rent through Amazon’s Kindle rental service.  You don’t even have to own a Kindle to use the service. You can simply download a free Kindle reading app for any of the following: PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android Windows Phone 7, Blackberry or Kindle. 

According to Amazon, you can save up to 80% off the list price of the printed version of the textbook.  Further, you can typically rent a textbook for between 30 and 360 days.  If you begin with the minimum you can always extend your rental for additional days if you’d like and you pay only for the time you need to rent the book.  You also get to keep any highlights or notes you make even after the rental period expires. 

To find a book, you just search in Amazon’s Textbooks Store and search for the book you want, either by title or by browsing the Law section.  Then look in the Formats section to see if a Kindle edition is available for rent and specify your rental dates.  Be careful, though, as some Kindle editions are only available for purchase.  Make sure you don’t accidentally buy something.  Also, before renting, be sure to compare the price of the Kindle rental to that of a new or used print version of the casebook just to make sure you’re getting the best deal. 

So far many legal textbooks do not have an electronic version available. However, Amazon’s Kindle rental program is a good start.  Hopefully, Amazon will offer more electronic versions of textbooks in the future.  For more details about the Kindle rental service, visit Amazon. 

Bluebook Pet Peeves

Over at The Faculty Lounge, Professor David Cohen vents about the Bluebook's requirements for statutory citation. To cite to a statute correctly, authors are supposed to include in parentheses "the year that appears on the spine of the volume, the year that appears on the title page, or the latest copyright year -- in that order of preference." I agree that this is one of those Bluebook rules that qualifies as baffling.  It's not particularly useful information in an age when most of us view statutes online and very rarely in print. It creates busy work since authors have to physically check the print volumes to correctly cite each statute.  Alas, the chances that we will soon see the end of this rule are slim since the Bluebook was just updated last year.

ALM Media Content Switches to Lexis

ALM Media just signed a deal with LexisNexis and, starting May 1, ALM publications will be available exclusively on Lexis. Search popular ALM publications, such as The Recorder (San Francisco's legal newspaper), American Lawyer, National Law Journal, Corporate Counsel and Law Technology News on Lexis.

The Bluebook Slammed by Richard Posner

I think it's safe to say that Judge Posner hasn't been particularly fond of the Bluebook for quite some time (he called the 16th edition a "grotesque 255 pages long"), and that is especially true for the new 511-page 19th edition.  Here are a few choice quotes from his review of the 19th edition in Yale Law Review:

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation exemplifies hypertrophy in the
anthropological sense. It is a monstrous growth, remote from the functional
need for legal citation forms, that serves obscure needs of the legal culture and
its student subculture.

[N]eedless to say, I have not read the nineteenth edition. I have dipped into it, much as one might dip one’s toes in a pail of freezing water. I am put in mind of Mr. Kurtz’s dying words in Heart of Darkness — ‘The horror! The horror!’ — and am tempted to end there.

The basic rule of abbreviating, ignored by the authors of The Bluebook, is to avoid nonobvious abbreviations: don’t make the reader puzzle over an abbreviation, as The Bluebook does routinely. . . . It’s as if there were a heavy tax on letters, making it costly to write out Coast Guard Court of Criminal Appeals instead of abbreviating it “C.G. Ct. Crim. App.”

I imagine Judge Posner would have similar harsh words for ALWD, which has now grown to a monstrous and unwieldy 661 pages. 

 

Free Electronic Copies of Casebooks

A few professors have decided to create their own electronic versions of casebooks for their classes, which they are willing to share with others at no charge. Eric Johnson just posted the first volume of the Torts casebook that he has created on PrawfsBlawg.  Another example of the free electronic casebook, Thomas Field (Intellectual Property).  If you are a law professor interested in creating your own electronic casebook, check out CALI's eLangdell Stimulus Project, which includes some small financial incentives for publishing your own electronic casebook with CALI (conditions and restrictions apply).

Rent a Casebook from West

If your professor assigns a West-published casebook for your class, you may have the option of renting the casebook and saving a bit of money.  According to West, you can write and highlight in your rented casebook, and you won't be penalized for doing so.  Renting the casebook also gives you access to an electronic version of the casebook for the duration of the semester.  BUT you can only access the electronic version on a PC or Mac - no Kindle, iPad, or Nook access exists at this time. To find out more, visit the West FAQ page on the rental program.

New Bluebook Edition

The 19th edition of the Bluebook is out!  We expect to receive our new copies at Zief any day now.  In the meantime, if you're just dying to know what has changed from the 18th edition to the 19th edition, check out Pace Law Library's list of the 19th edition changes (PDF).

Law Review Articles on Google Scholar and HeinOnline — A Comparison

No sooner had we posted our comparison of Google and Lexis/Westlaw case law searching than we find, on the HeinOnline Blog, a post comparing law review searching on HeinOnline and Google Scholar. The conclusion: if you have HeinOnline (and at USF, we do), start there to take advantage of the full range of content and features.

[Update: December 13, 2009] The HeinOnline/Google Scholar conversation continues in the HeinOnline Blog with a post responding to communications from Google Scholar about updates to its indexing and content. HeinOnline's conclusion comes as no surprise: those with access to HeinOnline still would do well to start there.