Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

Today I learnt about the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. There's a definite foreign and international law slant to my posts since I started work at IALS Global Law Library...

Edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, the encyclopaedia is an extremely comprehensive, peer-reviewed online encyclopaedia. You can browse by title, subject or author or run a search across the content.

 http://www.mpepil.com/home

Guide to foreign and international legal citation

Today I learnt about the Guide to Foreign and International Legal Citation.

It's produced by the good people at NYU. Not only does it cover legal citations in various jurisdictions worldwide, it also includes citation guides for international organisations, tribunals, treaties and law.

The first edition (2006) is available online to download at: 

www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv1/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__library/documents/documents/ecm_dlv_006388.pdf

The second edition (2009) is published by Aspen Publishers.

InforM25’s Union List of Serials

Today I learnt that there is an easy way to check journals holdings from the University of London, Imperial College London and the University of Westminster, namely InforM25’s Union List of Serials.

You can search by title, keyword, ISSN, etc., across the entire union list or select from the list of individual institutions. The following libraries participate:

• Birkbeck, Univ. of London
• Courtauld Institute of Art
• Goldsmith's Coll., Univ. of London
• Heythrop Coll., Univ. of London
• Imperial College
• Institute Cancer Research
• Institute of Education
• King's College London
• London Business School
• London School Economics
• Lon. Sch. Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• Queen Mary, Univ. of London
• Royal Holloway, Univ. of London
• Royal Veterinary College
• School of Advanced Study
• School of Oriental & African Studies
• School of Pharmacy
• St. George's Hospital Medical Sch.
• Univ. College London
• Univ. London Library
• Univ. Westminster

It’s obviously useful for students and researchers based in London who don’t want to travel very far to access a journal.

http://www.inform25.ac.uk/ULS/

Wex: the online legal dictionary and encyclopaedia

Today I learnt about Wex, a freely available online legal dictionary and encyclopaedia, written by legal experts. It’s hosted by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. 

It’s aimed at “law novices” but can be handy for those researchers who want to do a quick web search rather than refer to the tried and trusted hardcopy dictionaries and encyclopaedias we librarians tend to prefer. 

To ensure quality of entries, contributors are currently limited to those in the “selective author pool”. There is no hard and fast rule about who may contribute, but preference is given to legal academics and distinguished practitioners, and those with legal qualifications.

The entries are quite comprehensive and sometimes links are provided to the relevant entry in Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary, which can be useful for non/new-lawyers. You can search and browse, as you’d expect.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/

Windows Shortcuts

Today I learnt that CTRL + Z is a shortcut for undo.

I'm not kidding, I just learnt this today. I also learnt that CTRL + X means cut!

There a whole range of Windows shortcuts that I am not familiar with and they are available on the Microsoft support site:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449