Online Legal Research Instruction

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Please see the RIPS Law Librarian blog for a post I wrote about online legal research instruction.

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Law School Rankings & Law Libraries

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that business schools are taking a stand against academic rankings. Business-school deans and research faculty at more than 20 universities are taking a stand against the academic rankings published by media outlets such as Bloomberg Businessweek, Nikkei Inc.’s Financial Times and the Economist Group. Rather than “acquiesce to methods of comparison we know to be fundamentally misleading,” the administrators are urging their peers at other schools to stop participating in a process they say rates programs on an overly narrow set of criteria.

 Those in the business of rankings say that the rankings help students make an informed decision about what is likely among the most expensive purchases these students will make in their lives. 

 The administrators opposed to the rankings methodologies are of the opinion that if the goal is to help inform [students] about how to make the best decision about business schools, let’s give them the raw information, an…
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The Dark Side of Open Access Publishing

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Normally, I am a staunch advocate for open-access (OA) publishing. See previous blog posts on OA here, here, here, here, and here. But with a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. req'd.), it became clear that advocating for OA publishing without mentioning the possible pitfalls is irresponsible.

The CHE article follows the recent demise of Beall's List -- the list created by a librarian to warn researchers about predatory publishers. CHE provides the following possible causes for the demise:

[Beall's] fellow university librarians, whom Mr. Beall faults for overpromoting open-access publishing models.A well-financed Swiss publisher, angry that Mr. Beall had had the temerity to put its journals on his list.His own university, perhaps fatigued by complaints from the publisher, the librarians, or others.The broader academic community — universities, funders of research, publishers, and fellow researchers, many of whom long understood the value of Mr. Beall…
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The Continued Evolution of WEXIS Graduate Access

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In a continued effort to attract longterm users, both Westlaw & Lexis have modified graduate access to offer generous extended access.

As to Westlaw, currently, if you are a "Practice Ready" school, meaning that you subscribe to the Practice Ready suite, Westlaw sends the following message to impending graduates:



Don’t miss out! Enable your extended access now:
·Sign in at www.lawschool.westlaw.com ·If you have not already enabled your access, you should see a prompt asking you to extend. Click on “I agree” and you are all set. 
Not seeing the prompt? ·Use this link - https://lawschool.westlaw.com/authentication/gradelite
What do I get with my extended access?
·Know How - Access to helpful sample documents and checklists with Practical Law & Practice Point ·Research - Westlaw access to understand the law and find authority  ·Drafting Tools - Access to contract review, citation formatting and authority review tools with Drafting Assistant.
You’ll have 60 hours of access to the t…
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