October is Information Literacy Awareness Month! Cornell students are warmly invited to show off your sleuthing skills for a chance to win a $25 iTunes gift card. The contest is open to all students. Check out Facebook for a CLUE that will help you answer the question below!
Rulloff’s Restaurant in Collegetown is named after an infamous 19th century Ithaca resident, Edward Rulloff, who was convicted and hanged for murder in 1871. Was he guilty or innocent?
• Find credible historical evidence to prove or disprove the 19th-century crimes of which Rulloff was accused.
• Provide a 150-word synopsis of your findings, with one credible citation to verify your research, and enter to win a chance at a $25 iTunes gift card.
• (Hint: The back of the restaurant menu does not qualify as a credible source.)

Make your submission at trickortruth by November 7th to be entered in the iTunes gift card drawing.
Good luck—and Happy Halloween!

Have you ever come across a great journal article or database for your research, but were denied access? And then you had to practically start your research all over to try to find that article or database through the University Library web site? … Passkey can relieve your frustrations!
Passkey will make you a more efficient researcher, both on and off campus. It allows you to connect to databases and journals licensed to Cornell University without having to go through the University Library web site. Install Passkey and gain access simply by signing in with your NetID!

How do you get Passkey on your computer? From the Cornell University Library homepage, under ‘Library Services,’ select ‘Cool Tools’. Follow the installation instructions from there.

HeinOnline has become indispensable for law review articles, as well as pdfs of the US Code, CFR, Federal Register, U.S. Reports, English Reports, and much more. They have recently announced a free app for your iPhone or iPad. Click here for more details, including how the app works with our IP authentication access. Features of the app include the citation navigator, browsing by volume, and the electronic table of contents.

The New Books List for October 1-15 is now available on the Law Library web site. Click here to view the entire list. It includes the new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus. Here are a couple titles of interest:

Principles of law and economics / Daniel H. Cole, Peter Z. Grossman. — New York : Wolters Kluwer Law & Business/Aspen Publishers, c2011
Special Reserve KF385 .C65x 2011 — Law Library

What’s law got to do with it? : what judges do, why they do it, and what’s at stake / edited by Charles Gardner Geyh. — Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2011
KF8775.A75 W48x 2011 — Law Library

Click here to sign up for semi-monthly RSS feed of the new law books at the Law Library.

If you dare, check out our new display case in the Reading Room featuring Case Law from the Crypt, a compilation of the best cases generated by Halloween. Haunted houses, chainsaw-wielding maniacs, sexy costumes, and tombstones abound. For more details, read the article that inspired the display case. Authored by Buffalo attorney Daniel Moar, the full article is available in the October, 2011, issue of the New York State Bar Association Journal, accessible through our catalog.

The online resource Getting the Deal Through provides summaries of the laws of many countries on business-related topics (called “Practice Areas”) such as banking regulation, the environment, shipping, mergers & acquisitions, and product liability. The summaries, which are written by practicing attorneys throughout the world, are organized in a Q&A format. Getting the Deal Through has summaries for more than 40 practice areas and 100 jurisdictions, although not every jurisdiction is covered for each practice area. Material is up to date within the past year or so. Summaries for a practice area/jurisdiction (e.g. banking regulation in Argentina) can be downloaded in PDF. You can create a custom report by selecting only the countries and questions that interest you. To get to the database, do a title search in the Cornell Library catalog for “Getting the Deal Through” OR use the link on the Law Library’s Online Legal Resources page for Corporate & Securities.

Electronic filing of court papers with public access to many of the documents is now the standard for federal courts through PACER. And now New York State Courts have an e-Filing System, NYSCEF. NYSCEF permits the filing of legal papers by electronic means with the County Clerk and the courts in certain case types in designated venues, as well as electronic service of papers in those cases. Tompkins County is not yet one of the venues; click here for the list of current counties eligible.

For free public access, any individual can search via the “search as guest” function on the Log In screen; no NYSCEF account is required. However, the judge can order the county clerk to seal particular documents or the entire case. “Sensitive” documents can be viewed by attorneys consented in that particular case and by the public at the county clerk computer.

A demonstration video designed to familiarize filers with its functionality is available here. How to get to the Courthouse is no longer the first problem new lawyers have to deal with. NYSCEF and PACER on the web take you there virtually!

The Law Library now has chat reference. We can chat with you between 9 and 5 on weekdays and from 1 to 5 on Saturday, the same hours that we have reference service. So now you can ask your research questions in person at the desk, by phone, by email and by chat reference. We are using a chat program called Chatroll which is very easy to use. You can find the chat box on our web site here. You will be asked to click a sign-in button and will be given a guest number; then you will be able to ask your question. Remember that many questions require in-depth answers and research advice and are better handled in person at the desk. You might be asked to come to the reference desk if you ask for detailed help with a research project. Otherwise, we are ready to respond to your chat questions, so ask away!

This week you received a Bloomberg Law password via email. What is Bloomberg Law? It is a database that allows you to search for primary law, as well as news and company information. One of the major benefits from using B-Law is that you can keep your password and continue to use it over the summer. Our Bloomberg Law rep is Pamela Haahr. She will be here on Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 5th and 6th, to distribute information and answer your questions about this service. She will be set up at the table outside the Reading Room (in the 3rd floor stacks area) from 10am to 5pm. Feel free to stop by and get a short demo of this alternative to Lexis and Westlaw.

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