Spring 2001

A Quarterly publication of the South Florida Association of Law Librarians.   Download the Spring 2001 SFALL Newsletter in Adobe Acrobat format. Click here to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program.

President's Message

Terry Seale
Greenberg Traurig

We have scheduled the next SFALL luncheon for March 22, 2001. We will meet at Greenberg Traurig in Miami. At this luncheon, the British Library team will be presenting topics covering English legal resources, foreign patent resources, and The British Library's collections. This will give you the opportunity to take advantage of free access to one of The British Library's leading web services. The British Library has the best collection of accessible information in the world. It is used everyday by librarians, researchers, and business professionals in business and industry. The product is known as inside web.

inside web provides access to the entire British Library database of 250,000 indexed journal titles. 20,000 of the most current journals are further indexed at article title level and 100,000 conference proceedings at paper level. With daily updates, inside web provides a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary source for the information manager.

inside web combines current awareness and alerting tools with the significant document delivery services of The British Library.

Please plan to attend.

Terry

Please read the full invitation to this SFALL event here.

SEAALL/SWALL

Atlanta 2001
April 18 - 21, 2001

In April 2001, SEAALL and SWALL members will gather in Atlanta, GA for a joint annual meeting, Southeast Meets Southwest: Librarians’ Odyssey. Pre-program offerings include a Lexis Mini-TRIALL and an Institute, led by Tory Trotta, devoted to integrating and managing print and electronic collections. Program topics include Working Relationships Between Library and Technology Professionals, Managing People, Nuts and Bolts of Delegation, Grantsmanship, and Public Records. For more details, check out SEAALL’s Internet site at http://www.aallnet.org/chapter/seaall/2001.shtml.

Guide to United Nations Information In the NSU Law Library

Rhonda Gold, Reference Librarian/International & U.N. Collections
Nova Southeastern University

Nova Southeastern University Law Library and Technology Center has been a depository library for official documents of the United Nations since 1977 and is the only United Nations depository in South Florida. As a full United Nations depository, NSU Law receives Official Records of the main organs of the United Nations, selected periodicals and the United Nations Treaty Series. The depository program does not include materials from the specialized agencies within the United Nations system (e.g. FAO, WTO, ILO, WHO, UNICEF and UNESCO). United Nations materials are located on the northwest side of the first floor of the library.

There is much more to this excellent article! Please click here to read the entire article.

GET ON BOARD - LEGALENGINE.COM

Carol Yecies, Information Services Manager/Collection Development
Nova Southeastern University

When our law students aren't busy studying, winning Moot Court championships, or doing wonderful pro bono/volunteer work, they fill their "empty" hours with other experiences, such as building an incredible Internet site. Two of our students, Hugh Hedley, a May 2000 graduate, and Barry Goodman, a December 2000 graduate, have created LegalEngine.com, an Internet metasite and search engine.

Legalengine.com,(http://www.legalengine.com/) is a huge, icon-driven metasite of the best legal research, law related sites, and search engines on the Internet. The focus is on law, law-related topics, education, and reference at the college level and above. It was built to serve multiple markets, including lawyers, college and law students, professors and the general public.

Since it appeared, LegalEngine.com has been garnering awards. It was named by PhillyLawyer.com as the "site of the week" (March 26, 2000), selected by USA Today as a "Hot Site" (April 11, 2000), recognized by the Scout Report, a weekly current awareness publication that highlights new and newly discovered Internet resources (March 31, 2000), and demonstrated at CALI (June 2000).

The home page of LegalEngine.com is uniquely designed with point and click icon graphics. These icons are navigational tools, relying on pictorial suggestions, using American symbols mostly relating to the law or history, such as the scales of justice, Statue of Liberty, Congress, and various maps to link to the major categories of information. Many of these icons are also used to lead to detailed sub-sites or clickable maps that make all federal, state, city and county, international, and uniforms laws easy to locate quickly.

Another key feature of the home page is a left side pull-down menu. The topics in this menu act either as a support system for the icon groupings and/or a separate information source. Topics range from a general education section to a reference section, including the Blue Book online. There are also specialty sub-sites such as those for cyberlaw, environmental law, and intellectual property law.

Resources aimed at students include links to CALI exercises, outline banks, other law schools, famous cases, and audio and video of key cases with the transcripts and briefs. Students and practitioners will find useful links to state and federal statutes, court rules, and cases. Specialized materials include, but are certainly not limited to, international law, the U.S. Patent Database, the UCC online, online legal forms, and available U.S. law school online libraries and catalogues. LegalEngine.com has an online law journal called LegalEngine Journal which includes a section for students' submissions for publication in a student online journal. The site also has the capability to publish all online law journals in any language and hyperlinked pathfinders, including multi-media, audio, and/or video along with text.

Not content to rest on their laurels, Barry and Hugh continue to work on the site, adding links and material. They are planning to expand the sub-section areas to include Scientific Evidence and Real Estate platforms. So don't be left at the station; hop on board LegalEngine.com and ride on into this electronic ecosystem!

Sfall Newsletter is the official publication of the South Florida Law Librarians Association. It is published quarterly and distributed free to all Sfall members. Editorial comments or submissions should be sent to:

Lisa Smith-Butler, Associate Law Library Director
Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad Law Center
Law Library & Technology Center
3305 College Ave.
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314
(954) 262-6215
954.262.3838 (F)
smith-butlerl@nsu.law.nova.edu