The
June/July issue of the HALL Newsletter the publication of the Houston
Area Law Librarians, has recently been published. In addition to notices
relating to new officers, the newsletter has a small feature on the
resources and services at the Montgomery County Law Library.
The
Spring 2012 issue of the Southeastern Law Librarian, the publication of
the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Libraries, has
also recently been published. One notable article examines the Legal
Issue Trail feature of Lexis Advance, a tool for finding cases that cite
a specific passage from a precedential opinion. The author tested the
tool by looking closely at the legal issue trail of a quote by Judge
Posner. For this particular example, the tool did not appear to give
relevant results that could have been found through other techniques,
and some of the results were irrelevant. Librarians should test out new
databases and tools and report their results to vendors and librarians
so that vendors can improve their products and librarians can deepen
their understanding of the research tools we use.
Another
interesting article discussed the importance of government documents
education for law librarians. Indeed, much of the materials law
librarians work with are created by governmental entities. These
documents can be found in both official and unofficial sources and with a
wide variety of research features. Law librarians can draw on their
government information knowledge to assist students and public patrons
with making sense of these sometimes unfamiliar sources.