The Goodson Blogson

New Year's Day is a time for many to take stock of personal goals for the future. But January 1 also merits a look back to the past, as this year thousands of copyrighted works from 1926 will enter the public domain, along with hundreds of thousands of pre-1923 sound recordings. Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain outlines these exciting new additions at Public Domain Day 2022 . Books entering the U.S. public domain this year include early works by Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, and Agatha Christie. Films starring the likes of Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, and Rudolph Valentino will join them, along with compositions by George Gershwin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Irving Berlin. As noted at the Public Domain Day site, this year features the first major entry of sound recordings into the public domain, under the schedule created by Congress in the 2018 Music Modernization Act . (These older compositions were already in the public domain, but the indi...

Rebranding has been a hot trend over the last year or two. Facebook? Recently rechristened its parent corporation to Meta . Washington's football team? Officially now the…Washington Football Team. Legal research databases are no exception -- particularly at Wolters Kluwer, which has renamed several of its research products in late 2021. First was VitalLaw (formerly known as Cheetah), which at Duke provides access to a number of Wolters Kluwer treatises on various topics, particularly in intellectual property, securities law, and tax law. Some key resources include: Hazard et al, The Law of Lawyering : a core treatise on law practice and professional responsibility topics Federal Securities Law Reporter : reproduces the key securities acts and collects cases, regulations, releases, no-action letters, and editorial commentary, all arranged by the act to which they relate Epstein on Intellectual Property : treatise covering various aspects of IP law, including patent, trademark,...

First, the not-so-nice news: with continued disruptions to both the global supply chain and the postal service, holiday shopping will present additional challenges this year. Experts recommend advance planning, especially for expected shipping delays. However, there's still time to find a great holiday gift! Since 2009 , the Goodson Blogson has scoured the internet to find gift ideas that are suitable for the law students and lawyers in your life. Judging by the consistent demand for the library’s sit-stand desks, many law students (and, presumably, lawyers) might also enjoy a similar setup in their home office spaces. If you'd like a copycat model, our sit-stands are the UPLIFT Standing Desk (48" x 30" desktop) with ash gray laminate. However, these desktops can also be customized in about 20 different styles, including a whiteboard laminate. Book stands are another thoughtful gift, although law students will need a larger version to accommodate their heavy cas...

Sunday, November 7 marks the thirteenth anniversary of a fateful meeting at the Goodson Law Library. During the Law School's Dedication Week festivities in 2008, marking the end of a fifteen-month building renovation project, a group of academic law library directors gathered in the library's conference room. That meeting was the genesis of the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship , formally released in February 2009 after several months of drafting. The Durham Statement aimed to improve the dissemination of legal scholarly information through formal commitments to open access and electronic publication. In February 2021, the current directors of the signatory law libraries formed a Durham Statement Review Task Force, comprised of representatives from four drafting schools, in order to explore the current status of the Statement's adoption, examine barriers to adoption, and recommend best practices going forward, including potential revisions to the statem...