Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

From Zimmerman's Research Guide:

"The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries shows you the current boundaries of each county in the U.S., and it explains how each county’s boundaries changed over time."

What a cool database!

Federal Register 2.0

Check out the new Federal Register site:

Drive the DriveSafe.ly Way!

Imagine this scenario:

You're waiting for a very important email/text/voicemail on your smart phone, but you also need to get to... um... Costco before it closes (you're desperately out of cat litter and vitamins and the coupons expire that day)! On top of that, there's a huge traffic jam on 65 and 459, so you have to take 31.

Traffic is slow, but not too bad, and there's a police car right next to you.

Ding! You've got email/voicemail/a text! Joy! But you don't dare do anything because you're driving through Vestavia!

Ack!

Well have I got an AWESOME phone app for you - and it's available for the iPhone, the Blackberry and the Droid!

DriveSafe.ly

This is a free app which "reads text (SMS) messages and emails aloud in real time and automatically responds without drivers touching the mobile phone. DriveSafe.ly is the solution to texting while driving."

Lisa Salazar over at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog says "you can, of course, upgrade to a paid version that will give you Caller ID, more words read, ability to change the voice and the reading speed, plus the creation of an ad-free auto-response. The price is $3.99/mo. or $13.95/yr."

Google Announces Free Download of 10 terabytes of patents and trademarks

From BeSpacific:

Google Public Policy Blog: "When we launched Google Patent Search in 2006, we wanted to make it easier for people to understand the world of inventions, whether they were browsing for curious patents or researching serious engineering. Recently, we’ve also worked on a number of public data search features, as well as experimental features like the Public Data Explorer...That’s why we’re proud to announce that the USPTO and Google are making this data available for free at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html. This includes all granted patents and trademarks, and published applications -- with both full text and images. And in the future we will be making more data available including file histories and related data."

Bibliography of Alabama Law Books

Have you ever wondered if there was such a book as Alabama Employer’s Desk Book, or
Legislator’s Guide to Alabama Taxes?

Or maybe you have just been curious if there is a bibliography of Alabama law books.

Who in the world would make such a thing? Who in the world would have that?

Alabama law librarians, of course!

The Law Libraries Association of Alabama, of which I am a member, has created an annotated Bibliography of Alabama Law Books.

We law librarians initially decided to design the bibliography for other law librarians in the state; however, we soon realized what an important tool it can be for lawyers, judges, courts and other librarians — anywhere!

Located on the LLAA website, the bibliography lists Alabama law books alphabetically by title. Included are the publisher, date of publication and most recent updates; and annotations when available.

“This list is probably not completely accurate or completely comprehensive, but should at least provide a starting point for anyone who needs to find books specifically about Alabama Law.”

As it is a work in progress, we are continuously adding to the list.

HeinOnline

Have you found yourself scratching your head, wondering just how you’re going to get your hands on an Alabama Law Review article from 1948? Who the heck has that?

I have a secret.

We do!

No, really! We do!

There just happens to be a fantastic, wonderful, marvelous online service out there called HEINOnline. And we have it!

So what is HEIN?

HEIN is a unique collection of historical legal information from rare and well-known law reviews to the CFR to the Federal Register and on and on and on — all digitized and all from the BEGINNING!

That’s right—from the BEGINNING!

So that means that you can get that 1948 Alabama Law Review article, or look at the CFR from its inception (1938), or a Federal Register section from 1951… or how about Session Laws from all 50 states?

Looking for Statutes at Large? It’s there. Or maybe you’re interested in some obscure U.S. Congressional document from 1873. They have it.

HEIN is continuously expanding its content — adding more and more pages and different titles each month.

And what’s even more spectacular is that it is super user friendly. Whether you have a citation, a topic, an article title, it does not require those complicated search terms other online services require you to use.

To top it all off — there’s no “per search” charge. Nope. Not a single red cent. We pay one set subscription cost and that’s it. Search all you want; print all you want.

Oh, so you want to use it? Sure! Just let me know and I'll provide you with the log on information.

I hope this will be a great help to you. It’s a wonderful database—I can’t say enough good things about it.

Blue Book 19th

The Harvard Blue Book, 19th, will be released by June 1st, according to Harvard Publishing. The price is $25 for both print and online versions.

Go here to order yours today.

PACER's new look

PACER is changing the look and feel of its website - TOMORROW!

Go here for a preview.

Greg Lambert over at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, summed up some of the changes:

The Case Locator replaces the U.S. Party/Case Index and provides enhanced search and display capabilities including the ability to:
- request lists of cases for a specified date range by court type;
- conduct searches based on chapter, discharge date and dismissal date for bankruptcy cases;
- access case information for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation;
-choose result formats, including HTML, delimited text, and XML which can be easily imported to other programs for analysis;
- change the sort order of the results displayed; and
-conduct refined searches within the results of a previous search.

Inefficient Westlaw Searches Causes One National Firm to Hold Mandatory Training for Associates

From 3 Geeks & A Law Blog:

A memo (see snippet below) was sent out to all associates at one national firm last week mandating any associate that "utilizes or intends to utilize Westlaw" to attend a training session to learn the firm's "Best Practices".

Click here for the whole article.