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

Two sources for finding country constitutions

Today I learnt about two sources for finding county constitutions.

The first is World Constitutions Illustrated, a module of the subscription service HeinOnline. It contains the current constitution for every country, in the original language and in English.  It also includes commentary and historical versions of constitutions.
http://home.heinonline.org/ 

The second is Constitution Finder, a global directory of constitutions online. It's made available by volunteers at the University of Richmond School of Law, who endeavour to keep the links as up-to-date as possible.
http://confinder.richmond.edu/index.html

IALS Library's Institutional Subscription Rates

Today I learnt that the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library welcomes access to practising lawyers and barristers if their organisation is an institutional library member.

Subscription rates are on a sliding scale according to location and number of lawyers:
http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/iservice/isrates.htm

The subscription allows any member of the subscribing organisation to visit the library in person to make use of the extensive collection and also to request photocopies and scans via the Document Supply service.

Further information is available on the IALS website:
http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/iservice/iservice.htm

Sorry if this sounds like an advert for the service; that's because I work at IALS Library! Until very recently I worked at a commercial firm in London which was an institutional subscriber and made frequent use of the document supply service. It's really interesting now to see how the service works from the inside.

Stationers' Foundation's Postgraduate Bursary Scheme

Today I learnt that the Stationer's Foundation offers 10 x £6000 bursaries to students on specific postgraduate courses related to "communications and content industries". Among these courses is the MA Library and Information Studies at UCL.

The deadline for applications for next year's intake is 7 July 2013. Applicants must normally be under 25 on 1 September 2013 and must not be in receipt of an AHRC bursary. Further details and an application form can be downloaded here:

http://www.stationers.org/postgraduate-bursary-scheme.html

Many thanks to Sam for this one! I found it when sorting through my inbox...