The Goodson Blogson

If you’ve been frustrated to find the Law School’s dedicated LexisNexis and Westlaw printers out of toner recently, you’re not alone. Our student representatives for the popular research services have reported an increase in service calls lately due to a high volume of large print jobs, such as an entire 100+ page session law when the student probably needed only a few pages (judging from the amount of paper in the recycling bin). Printing individual sections of a code can also add up, if you forget to exclude the annotations—those secondary source and case summaries can easily increase your print job by hundreds of pages! In the interest of saving toner and trees, here are some tips on smarter printing from Lexis and Westlaw. DOWNLOAD FIRST, PRINT LATER Do you blithely hit the “FastPrint” button whenever you find a document that looks remotely relevant? If so, you’ve probably been shocked in the past when that enormous print job in the Document Production Room has your name on the ...

If you use the popular micro-blogging site Twitter , you probably already know its potential for broadcasting the minutest details of life to a wide audience. Inevitably, some of those details might be better left unsaid: Just last week, reality-television star Kim Kardashian made headlines by inadvertently "outing" a federal air marshal (whose identities and locations are meant to be classified) with whom she chatted on a flight. This news coincided with the release of Please Rob Me , an aggregator of location-based Twitter updates which advertise when a user is not at home. (Sound excessively paranoid? A 2009 burglary in Arizona was reportedly linked to the homeowner’s Twitter vacation update .) But the legal profession has been grappling with Twitter and similar technologies for much longer, especially when it comes to jury trials . While jurors have long been instructed not to conduct outside research on the details of a case, nor to discuss the case with anyone except o...

You already know about the Law Library’s popular Legal DVD collection , which contains current and classic films with legal themes. You probably also know that the Lilly Library at Duke houses an impressive film collection, with more than 14,000 DVDs ! (All of these can be searched in the libraries’ online catalog .) But sometimes the library is closed, or the movie you want is checked out to another borrower. We’d never advise anyone to seek out illegal video download sites, which can harm your computer with viruses and also put you on the wrong side of copyright infringement laws. We’re happy to say instead that there are plenty of legal sources for a movie fix, and you would be surprised what you can find on them. You may know Hulu as the go-to site for television clips. But Hulu offers a wide selection of free (advertising-supported) movies as well. Note that the selection is constantly changing, dependent upon the whims of the copyright holders (we’re sad to report that perennia...

With less than two months to go before April 15, income taxes are in the back of everybody’s mind. While the Goodson Law Library staff is not able to answer substantive tax-related questions (such as “what forms do I need to file?” or help interpreting the form instructions), the Goodson Blogson is happy to point you to some sources for tax assistance. Before you head to a professional tax preparation service, consider whether you qualify for the IRS’s FreeFile program . This service links qualifying taxpayers to free electronic federal tax preparation service (state tax preparation may also be available in some cases). Your adjusted gross income for 2009 must be $57,000 or less in order to take advantage of the FreeFile program. You may also qualify for assistance from VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) , a program in which trained volunteers assist with tax preparation for low- to moderate-income taxpayers, as well as senior citizens. Duke Law School proudly boasts a VITA chapter...

It's that time of year again! In 2008, the library assembled its first "survival kit" goodie basket for the annual PILF Auction , which raises funds to support Duke Law students who take unpaid employment in the non-profit/government sector. We had so much fun supporting this great cause that we did it again in 2009 . Now, it’s officially a Goodson Law Library tradition, and we’re once again contributing a great gift basket to this year’s PILF Auction on Saturday, February 20, 2010 at the Nasher Museum of Art . This year's basket theme is “ The Traveling Lawyer’s Survival Kit ,” and it’s intended to help law students make it to just about any destination: a distant moot court competition, a callback interview, or even just an exam period weekend camp-out in the library. Here are the highlights of this jam-packed basket: Trial practice/Oral Argument : Whether you’re a 1L dreading the first round of Hardt Cup or a 2L/3L traveling to a national competition, three books ...

Sending out a resume (or other important document) as an email attachment? Does it include carefully-crafted formatting and fonts? Think twice before you attach that .doc, .wpd, or any other file extension. Depending upon the recipient’s own word processing program and preferences, your specially-downloaded fonts may appear to them as Wingdings (or, "❖♓■♑♎♓■♑⧫"), and your careful page spacing may be horrifyingly-random line breaks. In addition, if you used Track Changes in Word (or other editing features), you risk exposing every insertion, deletion, and comment to the recipient. The solution? Create a PDF, which will preserve your formatting and fonts in an image-based format. (Note that PDFs will also preserve your Track Changes if you leave them visible during the conversion, so always proofread those documents before attaching them to your email.) While most computers are equipped with Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files, this free download does not allow users to actual...

Level 1 contains the majority of the library’s 600,000 volumes, due to our compact shelving system. This system allows us to store twice as much material in a space by requiring users to move rows of shelves in order to access needed materials. Although the rows may feel like a tight squeeze to the claustrophobic, “smart floors” with weight sensors ensure that no overly-competitive 1L could squash a fellow student between the shelves. It’s not a perfect system, as library users may have discovered recently. The sensitive “smart floor” is designed to lock the movable shelves if it detects any weight on the area between two rows. This includes the weight of a person, the weight of a fallen book, or—as it turns out—the weight of debris on the tracks. In January, approximately 20 rows of shelves “locked,” leaving researchers temporarily without access to the call numbers KE856 – KEZ and KG1—KGF2923 (a large part of our materials on Canada and Latin America). We’re pleased to announce th...