American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Pres. Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act today. To assist citizens to understand this act a website was created to explain the act and to permit tracking of the money spent. Recovery.gov is a one stop site for this important piece of legislation.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Free Federal Court Docs

There was an article in the New York Times last weekend about public.resource.org, which has taken a large number of federal court documents and made them free and available on the general internet, rather than downloadable for 8 cents per page on Pacer.  Watch out if your social security number was ever included in a court filing, though.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Presidents' Day

In honor of Presidents' Day and President Lincoln - this year being President Lincoln's 200th - I will be prowling the Library from 10am-6pm (which coincidentally, is when the Library will be open). For those interested in the Lincoln bicentennial, check out the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Military Personnel Statistics

Those who are interested in finding the latest numbers for American military personnel on active duty, whether by rank or by region, will find the Department of Defense page for Military Personnel Statistics to be helpful. Just click "personnel" after following the previous link. Historical reports from 1994 through 2001 are available, as well.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Stay Up-to-Date with TicTOCs

If you are having difficulty staying up-to-date with content from your favorite scholarly journals, try ticTOCs. TicTOCs, a table-of-contents aggregator, is a free service which provides the most recent table of contents for more than 11,000 scholarly journals. You can view the table of contents, link to the full text of articles, or save your selections for future access.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Forms from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts

Finding appropriate legal forms is sometimes difficult, so it is a great help that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has prepared and made available some basic forms for use by practitioners. The forms can be found here. Note that there is a link to Bankruptcy forms on this page. Collier's on Bankruptcy does have forms, but it is good to have an alternative source.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Kindle 2

Amazon unveiled the Kindle 2 today--a "new and improved" version of its e-reader. The event took place at the Morgan Library and included a guest appearance and reading by Stephen King. I understand from several news sources (for example, here and here) that it was a well attended event.




Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The Lighthouse in the Bronx

You know when you asked a librarian to help you find law review articles, and they sent you to some database that's not Lexis or Westlaw? That database was probably the Index to Legal Periodicals. It's owned by H.W. Wilson, which has had offices in the Bronx since 1917. Those offices are topped by a lighthouse, which is not there to direct trucks on the Major Deegan, but was originally put there as an advertisement for Wilson--which is still great at helping guide people through the vast sea of periodicals.

The NY Times' City Room blog had an anecdote last week about visiting Wilson's offices and trying to get into the lighthouse.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Where Does the Money Go?

Whether for school-related or personal interest, you can now see at a glance which banks have received federal bailout funds--and how much--under TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program approved by Congress. ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit organization that produces investigative journalism in the public interest, has created a user-friendly "Show Me the TARP Money" page, with a map and a running count of where this money has gone.

Also check out ProPublica's Stimulus Plan chart to view and compare the types of tax relief and expenditures proposed in the House-passed version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act now being considered in Congress. Take advantage of ProPublica's creative coverage, graphics, and mashups to keep up-to-date on economic recovery plans.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Check out the Library Webcasts

The Library is now webcasting our research workshops. If you are writing a paper this semester and could not make the Paper Writing Resources workshop (see Tuesday's post), go to Paper Writing Resources webcast on the Library's webcast page. In order to coordinate the audio and visual components, we use a system called WIMBA. You will need to set up WIMBA on your computer. The instructions are on the Library's webcast page.

Let us know what you think.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat