April 2013 - Volume 1 - Issue 8

In this issue:

 

New Practising Law Institute Database

Content from the Practising Law Institute (PLI), a popular publisher of continuing legal education materials, was removed from Westlaw databases (Westlaw Next & Westlaw Classic). While Bloomberg Law and LexisNexis still have some PLI materials, they no longer include recent PLI treatises.  However, the Law Library provides online access to all recent PLI content, including course handbooks, treatises, answer books, legal forms and program transcripts via the PLI Discover Plus eBook platform, listed on our A-Z database list.  

Discover Plus
You may also wish to search the Library's catalog for older print PLI titles.

Gathering Course Materials for Summer 2013

The Law Library handles copyright permissions and photocopying of course materials.  This includes print course packs, materials that are distributed during the semester, and materials to be loaded on Blackboard pages. Course materials to be photocopied, regardless of the number of pages, must be submitted directly to the Law Library for copyright clearance prior to photocopying. Once the course materials are submitted to the library, a determination will be made as to whether copyright permission is required.  In order to manage this process in a timely fashion, please submit course documents to law-copyrightclearance@law.umaryland.edu as soon as possible.

Once permission has been granted for the materials, all photocopies will be delivered to the Copy Center for duplication.  Course packets are offered to students at no cost.  Please coordinate with Jean Robinson in the Copy Center to work out distribution of course packets to students.

Your faculty liaison is available to help you locate resources, find appropriate readings for specific topics, create a course research page, and post your course syllabus on the course Blackboard page. Once materials are selected your liaison can obtain any materials not in the library or assist with linking to articles or documents on your course Blackboard page.   While linking to materials on Blackboard is the preferred method for distributing materials, the library will place course readings on reserve in the Reading Room.  To place an item on reserve, please contact Pamela Bluh.

The Academic Technology Department offers a variety of support services for Blackboard. Documentation on Blackboard basic features is provided online, and group training sessions are offered throughout the year. Instructors may also schedule individual training sessions or one-on-one consultations for assistance with a particular Blackboard course or feature. To schedule a training session or to ask questions or provide comments, please email the Academic Technology Department directly.


Sunset on Classic Lexis and LexisAdvance Enhancements

This summer, Lexis will be moving away from dual-system accounts so that by the Fall, all law school users will need to make the switch to using Lexis Advance only.  All Lexis.com IDs will deactivate once the law school migrates to the Lexis Advance standalone platform.  Any alerts set up on Lexis.com IDs will no longer be accessible.  However, our Lexis account representative, Elizabeth Ferrick, will be around this summer to help faculty with the transition and to help manually move alerts from Lexis.com to Lexis Advance.

The vast majority of content in Lexis.com will be available in Lexis Advance.  The only notable exception is international caselaw, which will be migrated at some point in the future.   In the meantime, Lexis Advance will provide links to the international caselaw content in Lexis.com.

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New functionality has been added to Lexis Advance, along with the migrated content, to make the transition easier.  Upgrades include depth of treatment indicators in Shepard's, segment searching capabilities, and sharing of document folders.

Westlaw Printer Removal

Westlaw is discontinuing free law school printing and removing its printers.  As you may recall, the faculty printers and journal printers were already removed during the Fall 2012 semester. The student printers are now slated to be removed from the law school on June 30th.  In addition to being a cost-saving measure by Westlaw, the interest in printing documents from legal databases has significantly decreased over the years. The library staff has noticed a dramatic reduction in faculty printing here, especially in the last year, as our faculty have turned to more efficient and environmentally sound means of document and data delivery.

There are still many options for your research assistants to store and organize Westlaw research electronically, including WestlawNext’s email and folder sharing options.  Further, with the WestlawNext's send to Kindle feature and its mobile device apps, more and more users are reading and annotating documents completely online.  For researchers who still prefer to read Westlaw results in paper, select "Attached Printer" after clicking on the print icon.

WLNext

While Bloomberg Law has never offered free-standing printing, Lexis is committed to keeping their stand-alone printers for the foreseeable future.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please consult with David Grahek, Associate Director for Instructional Services.

Cool Tool: Annotary

WestlawNext, Bloomberg Law, and Lexis Advance already allow users to save, highlight and add notes to online documents.   But for regular research on the web, you may want to try Annotary.  Annotary is a browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that also allows you to mark up web pages and save them later for research.

To start, cAnnotaryreate a free Annotary account.  You will then be prompted to install the Annotary toolbar browser extension on your computer.

When you come upon an interesting web page you'd like to save, click the Annotary button in your browser to open the Annotary toolbar.

From there, Annotary will present you with a toolbox to bookmark the page and mark it up.  Press the Save Page button in the pop-up window that appears and start annotating!

Annotary 4
After you highlight a relevant box of text, a sticky note will pop up, allowing you to add your own notes related to the highlight. If you decide you no longer need the note or mistakenly highlighted the wrong passage, just mouse over them and a small trash icon will appear for you to click and delete.

Once you're done, your highlights and notes will be saved for reference later on your Annotary account.   Just click on the home on the Annotary toolbar and your account will load.
Annotary5

You have the option to make a collection visible only to a particular organization.  This is in addition to the normal options of keeping a collection private (visible exclusively to you) or public (visible to everyone, to your organization and beyond).

Tech Tip of the Month: Backups

As we saw last month, the Office of Information Technology at the Law School backs up the network drives on the office work computers daily.  Even when there is a major malfunction in the server room, backup servers restore and retrieve saved information.  But this is also an important time to remind you to backup your home computers to save important files and information.  For personal use, backup solutions include internal and external drives, online storage sites, and removable storage devices (thumb drives, CD or DVDs).  Windows and Mac OS X have great built-in backup utilities, but here are some things to consider when choosing a backup solution:
  1. What type of content do you want to backup?  Are you interested in just saving Word documents and personal pictures?  Or would you also like to back up programs installed on your computer?

  2. How much space do you need?  Regardless of which platform you decide to use to backup your computer, the amount of space needed will always impact the price.  If you want to backup files and computer programs, it is generally recommended that the capacity of your device at least matches the one that's inside your computer. 

  3. Do you need your saved information to be portable?  External drives are great for recovery if your computer's internal hard drive crashes.  But one of the benefits of an online solution is that you can access and download your documents from anywhere with an internet connection, there is no need to worry about losing or leaving behind your files when you travel.  Whichever method you select, remember that you should keep at least one backup copy of your important files in a different physical location.  

  4. What is your comfort with technology?  Sometimes, the easiest way to back up key files is through a thumb drive or an external hard drive that runs without a software installation.

Consumer Reports online has an excellent blog post that breaks down the different pros and cons of each type of backup system and method, and recommends the best hardware and online options.