UGA Amicus Briefs

May 1997

From the Director

by Professor Ann Puckett

Did you know you can use Law Library resources to prepare for your law practice in the real world? One of our goals in building a collection is to provide you, the law student, with an introduction to the bewildering variety of publications in all the different formats you will encounter when you enter practice. Whether you go into a large firm practice, a solo practice, or anything in between, you can get a head start by learning to use a variety of print, CD-ROM, and on-line services.

The newest CD-ROM service in the Law Library may be of particular interest to those of you who expect to practice in smaller firms. The service is LOIS, and at first glance it looks like Michie's and West's CD-ROM services. The CDs contain Georgia cases and statutes, and cases from the U. S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit. The difference is in the way LOIS is updated. The subscription price includes a weekly updating service that permits you to download new cases to your hard drive. Like other library resources, the LOIS Georgia database may be used free of charge in the Law Library.

LOIS also provides databases of other states and federal circuits. Law students and faculty who wish to pay an additional $5 per person per year can get Internet access to those databases as well. For small practitioners, LOIS may soon prove to be a viable alternative to the more expensive computer-assisted legal research databases.

For more information, contact Carol Watson (542-7365 or cwatson@uga.cc.uga.edu).

Web-site of the Month

Calling all Web-surfers! If you use the Internet to research legal materials, you may find the following site at the University of Texas Tarlton Law Library to be useful: http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/tallons/content_search.html. This site contains contents pages from over 750 law reviews and scholarly journals published in the U.S. and abroad. Only recent issues (within past 3 months) are included. UT updates the pages daily, and the site also allows you to search by keyword.

Please note that UT receives some journals not found in the UGA Law Library and vice-versa. If you're not already surfing the Web, ask a Reference Librarian to show you how to access this useful site.

New Technologies Create New Possibilities and New Problems

by Ann Smith, Senior Serials Assistant

When you receive that new issue of the Yale Law Journal or find the current pocket parts for the OCGA are in place, you may thank the behind the scenes work of Technical Services. We work deep in the bowels of the Law Library Annex to bring to you the most timely information as fast as possible. Rarely do we have an opportunity to stray far from our offices. So this past March, when I received an invitation to attend a conference being held at the Coca-Cola business headquarters in downtown Atlanta, I jumped at the chance to go.

The conference, "Integrated Information Management: Trends and Technologies," was presented by the serials vendor EBSCO. The company acts as a middle man of sorts to deliver journals, reviews, and magazines to libraries across the nation. Representatives of other libraries and legal departments from all over the state of Georgia attended the conference as well. They included Emory, Georgia State, the Federal Reserve, Berry College, and the Coca-Cola Banking Office (to name a few). The main focus of the conference was the delivery of and access to the electronic information available today.

Two major methods of electronic information delivery today include CD-ROMs and the Internet. These technologies give us faster and easier access to information than we've ever had before. They also present an entire new set of questions and complications.

Both the CD-ROM and online access allow the information you want to be centrally located, searchable, and available to more than one person through a Local Access Network (LAN). However, different publishers charge different prices for their products and have different license agreements for distribution of the information. For example, some publishers will allow up to eight users access to the same information simultaneously through a LAN, while charging one base price or flat rate for the product. Another publisher will charge a base price for one user, but may charge between $50 and $200 for each additional simultaneous user.

Another issue is ownership rights - who owns the material? Some publishers allow you to pay for the information you need, but have an expiration date on how long you may access the information. When the time expires, the ownership of the information reverts to the publisher and you cannot get to it again. Some publishers will not allow you to download the information or print it out, while others don't have a problem with this. Yet another issue is storage: where will the older CD-ROMs go? When publishers don't want to store that online law journal any longer, how will you have access to it? And then there is the "Year 2000" problem which we will be facing in less than three years.

These are just some of the issues that our library and libraries around the country are facing in dealing with electronic documents and information. Hopefully in the years to come there will be some uniformity and regulations on how to manage the information we receive via CD and Internet. However, the future developments in information delivery will most likely bring more complications in purchasing, accessing, and archiving the data.

Staff Focus

The members of the Law Library staff welcome our newest addition, Xingying Guo, who joined the Acquisitions Department on April 21.She replaces Elizabeth Spainhour as Serials Assistant. Xingying has experience working in two academic libraries (Emory's Woodruff Library and the University of Iowa Main Library). She has a B.A. in English from Peking University, an M.A. in American Studies from Emory, and an M.S. in Teaching of English as a Second Language from Georgia State University.

Xingying has been in Athens for four years while her husband has been working on a doctorate in Education at UGA. They have a 13-year old son who attends Clarke Middle School and loves to play basketball.

You can find Xingying on the first floor of the Annex: drop by and say hello.

Extending Your Lexis and Westlaw Password Through the Summer

You can extend your Lexis and Westlaw passwords for the summer if you are not graduating and if you fit into one of the following categories: Be forewarned, you may NOT use your Lexis or Westlaw password for law firms, government organizations, corporations, internships, externships, public interest projects or pro bono work. Such use is strictly prohibited.

To extend your Lexis password, sign on to Lexis and choose the CAREER library. Select the SUMMER file and follow the instructions on the screen.

To extend your Westlaw password, you can either access the Westlaw password summer extension web page at: http://www.westpub.com/pswdextn.htm or you can fill out a Password Summer Extension Agreement postcard. There is a shortcut to the Westlaw password summer extension page on all of the Win95 PCs in Computer Lab 274. If you prefer to snail mail your request, postcards are available in the Westlaw lab in the Annex.

Conference Room

Need a place to work on a group project? Looking for a small meeting room? Don't forget the Student Conference Room, which is Office 203 on the second floor of the Law School (near the entrance to the Law Library). Go to the Circulation Desk to reserve the room and to get the key.

Library Hours

Regular Hours:

Monday - Friday 7:30am - Midnight Saturday & Sunday 8:00am - Midnight

Exams & Interim (April 29 - May 26):

April 29 - May 18 Regular Opening Hours Closing Hour extended to 1:00am

Mon., May 19 7:30am - 5:00pm

Tue. - Fri., May 20-23 8:00am - 5:00pm

Sat., May 24 (Graduation) 8:00am - 1:00pm

Sun., May 25 CLOSED

Mon., May 26 8:00am - 5:00pm

Summer School (May 27 - June 30, 1997):

Monday - Thursday 8:00am - 10:00pm

Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm

Saturday 9:00am - 5:00pm

Sunday 1:00pm-10:00pm

UGA Law Librarians Teach CLE Course

Several members of the Reference staff and library director Ann Puckett taught portions of a Continuing Legal Education course held at the Swissotel in Atlanta on April 28. Carol Watson was co-organizer of the course, titled "Cost Effective Legal Research." In addition, she presented a program on using Lexis and Westlaw efficiently. Professor Puckett discussed print materials that increase the cost-effectiveness of legal research, while Anne Burnett and CiCi Cleveland presented a program about legal resources on the Internet.

Have a great summer!

This newsletter is a publication of the University of Georgia Law Library.

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