Thursday, August 22, 2013

Law Library Closed on Friday, August 30.

The Law Library will be closed on Friday, August 30.

This day precedes the Library's interim schedule closure on Saturday and Sunday and the campus holiday closure on Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 2d.

The Reference Office will also be closed on those days and staff will not be available to answer questions submitted via the Ask Us / QuestionPoint service.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

New Catalog Tips

Have you tried the new catalog search yet?

Here are two quick tips: one for successful searching and one for individual preferences.

AND
When you type a few words into the keywords search box, the system assumes an "AND" between each word. So a search for "rodgers environmental" is interpreted as "rodgers AND environmental."

That is great, unless you need to use synonyms because you may not be sure of which word appears in a title or subject heading.

Say you are looking for material on Washington State laws concerning children. Do you use child, children, infants, or minors in the search? You can use all of those terms; just type the word OR between them.

Please, May I Have Some More?
I am frustrated by only seeing ten results after I run a search. Many other databases give me the option of asking for a greater number of results, why not the catalog?

Well, you do have the option of seeing more results, but the option isn't where most of us expect to find it, on the first page of our list of results.

Instead, click on the link to Your Library Account--you'll see this on the top right hand side of the screen. If you signed in with your UW Net ID before the search runs, you will get into the Account information automatically. (If you didn't sign in individually, you will need to so now.).

On the right side of the page you will see Display Settings.

Here you can adjust the number of results per page that you will see whenever you login at the beginning of a catalog search setting. The default option is 10; you can also choose 20 or 30 items.

Monday, August 19, 2013

New Guide on Washington's Limited License Legal Technicians

Reference librarian Anna Endter has created a new guide to Washington State's LLLT program. It chronicles the history and development of the concept and its adoption by and through the Washington Supreme Court and the Washington State Bar Association.

The guide describes and links to court orders, Board of Governors' meetings, magazine articles, and a YouTube video.

This fall, the University of Washington School of Law will offer a family law curriculum to qualified applicants.

A companion guide covers State Activities Related to Limited License Legal Professionals. This page addresses developments in California, New York, and Oregon.

Both sites will be updated as additional developments occur.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Don't be a pooper-trator! Dog doogity, we've got to bag it up!

The sun is shining and the fields are filled with children playing, people flinging frisbees, dogs romping about and... ewwwww, what's this on my shoe?!  It's dog doodie and it's a crime that someone didn't dispose of their dog's doodie properly!  You might have seen our previous post on Seattle's 'poop scoop' law but did you know that someone wrote a song about it:



Monday, August 5, 2013

Track what our legislators are up to with Capitol Words!

If you've been frustrated by Congress' lack of productivity, you might be interested in tracking the legislature's activity with Capitol Words. Capitol Words is a project launched by the Sunlight Foundation; the project "indexes and tokenizes the Congressional Record" allowing users to see which issues lawmakers address daily, weekly, monthly and yearly as well as the most popular words spoken by lawmakers on the House and Senate floor.

The Capitol Words start page
The utility of Capitol Words is wondrous! Let's say you read this recent CNN article on the child custody rights of rapists, and were shocked that in "31 states, rapists do enjoy the rights of a father." You might wonder how frequently or infrequently each party in the legislature has discussed rapists in the Congressional Record:

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Library and Reference Office Move to Interim Hours

With the end of the School of Law's summer term, the Law Library and the Reference Office will move to interim hours, effective Saturday, August 3d.

During the interim period, the Law Library will be open:

Monday - Friday: 8am - 5pm
Saturday & Sunday: Closed

The Reference Office will be open:

Monday - Friday: 9am - 12noon and 1 - 5pm
Saturday & Sunday: Closed

These interim hours will be in effect through Saturday, September 21.

On Sunday, September 22, the day before School of Law autumn classes begin, the Library will be open from 12noon - 5pm and the Reference Office will be open from 1 - 4pm.