The Goodson Blogson

It’s probably happened to you: maybe you’re searching the libraries’ online catalog . Maybe you’re browsing one of our excellent research guides . Maybe you’re skimming our list of Legal Databases & Links . Wherever you may be looking, once in a while you’ll see an ominous-looking note like “Password is required; see reference desk for assistance.” It’s hardly the end of the world to have to stop and ask for the password (we’re actually very friendly), but these little hurdles can be especially problematic for late-night and weekend researchers. While the library tries to provide easy NetID-based login to its electronic resources, not every database allows us that option, and some have restrictions (such as a limit on access to only current Law School students, faculty and staff) which require a little oversight by staff. One frequent password request at the Goodson Law Library reference desk has always been The Leadership Library , which is featured in our guides to Directories of...

During the ongoing "occupation" of Wall Street by protestors, police have unearthed—and enforced—an obscure state law which prohibits loitering in a public place while wearing a mask or disguise . Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that, since the start of the protest on September 17, at least five of the demonstrators who have been arrested were issued a summons for violating the strange old statute, which has been on the books since 1845. The protest has roots with the online collective Anonymous, whose members often don Britain's iconic Guy Fawkes mask (as seen in the 2006 film adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta ) during public demonstrations. (Notable past targets of the group include the Church of Scientology in 2008, and more recently the San Francisco BART system, in response to transit officials' jamming of subway cell phone service to prevent a growing demonstration in the city .) But it wasn't only the Guy Fawkes impersonators who...

LexisNexis and Westlaw have long battled for the hearts (and dollars) of legal researchers. The two premium legal information systems are so ubiquitous in law practice that many refer to the pair of market competitors with the single, Brangelina-esque nickname " Wexis ." But beginning in 2004, the financial juggernaut Bloomberg began an expansion into the legal research market, albeit one limited to use on Bloomberg Professional's proprietary computer workstations (four of which are still available in Duke's Ford Library at the Fuqua School of Business and three more at the Perkins Library's Data/GIS Computer Cluster ). In 2009, Bloomberg launched an alternative web-based legal research interface, Bloomberg Law , and has provided pilot access to selected law schools, including Duke. An ABA Journal cover story in February 2010 detailed the development of this version of Bloomberg Law, and the difficulties of breaking into a market so dominated by longtime com...

The Goodson Blogson is a few years behind on its leisure reading, but just finished Erik Larson's Thunderstruck (2006) , a fascinating nonfiction work which interweaves the notorious 1910 North London Cellar Murder case with Guglielmo Marconi's struggle to perfect his wireless telegraph (the technology which eventually led Scotland Yard investigators to ambush their suspects aboard a transatlantic steamer ship). American doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Cora, an aspiring singer, moved to England in 1900. A decade later, Cora disappeared from the quarreling couple's North London home; the doctor informed concerned friends that she had returned to America and later died of an illness. Unconvinced by Crippen's story (particularly since his young secretary, Ethel Le Neve, moved into the home almost immediately, and was frequently spotted around town wearing Cora's furs and jewelry), Cora's friends alerted the police, who eventually discovered human remain...

School is back in session, and the student journal editors are busily preparing new issues of their law reviews and journals. With literally thousands of law review articles being published every year, keeping up with the latest scholarship in a particular area can be a challenge. Sadly, one of our favorite law-focused current awareness services closed up shop this summer: Washington & Lee’s Current Law Journal Content service stopped updating its database in May 2011. The site lives on as a searchable archive of more than 1,400 law journals' tables of contents from approximately 2000- April 2011, and remains linked on our Legal Databases and Links page as a helpful tool for finding articles. But those who used its handy tools for saving searches as email alerts and RSS feeds will need to look elsewhere from now on. That leaves another long-time TOC service, the University of Washington's Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) as an obvious choice. CILP indexes the la...