Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Privacy: Statewatch: monitoring civil liberties in the EU. [Privacy Digest] Also, Privacy.org which is a joint project of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Washington, DC) and Privacy International (London, England and Washington, DC) are informative resources. Why is watching these developments important?  Many states have privacy laws that pertain to libraries and library records.   But some recently proposed federal legislation may impact those laws, like the USA Patriot Act.  For more on how privacy laws may impact libraries, see the ALA Washington Office site and Robert Hughes' article, "Free Libraries, Free Society," in American Libraries. But some libraries also provide Internet service like an ISP.  For example, Bensenville Public Library in Illinois is the home of CleaRNET, the community network for Bensenville.  Libraries that provide community networks (email accounts, etc.) might have to negotiate their way through these possible conflicts between the state laws that protect patrons' rights to privacy and other laws, like the proposed EU one that would require keeping of communication records by communication providers for up to a year. 12:53:24 PM

"Know your federal judge - the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary is a great publication, but for years it was only available in print.  It has biographical information on all of the judges in the federal judiciary.  Stuff like who appointed them, date of birth, educational and professional background and so forth.  It also now includes financial information gleaned from the mandatory disclosures that the judges are required to file.  By far the most useful facet of the work is the anonymous comments of practioners  I haven't used the book lately (because it costs a lot to update and our copy has most of the judges that we need to know about), but when I did last look at it I was impressed at how useful and accurate the comments (taken in the aggregate) were.  The Almanac, which is published by Aspen Publishers, is now available online.  The bad news is that it costs $1,900 (although you can try it free for 10 days).  The online service provides a directory of court guidelines that is updated 3 times a year.   If you spend a significant amount of time in federal courts outside of your home turf then the price of this publication is a pittance." [Ernie the Attorney] Thanks to Ernie the Attorney and his ab fab blog for reviewing this legal resource. CLS members: What do you think of this?  How useful is it to you?  Please let us know if this is of interest to you as a CLS member library in CLS Online.  If there's interest, I'll see if Aspen would be willing to work out a consortial discount for CLS members. 11:26:08 AM

© Copyright 2002 Chicago Library System.