Wisconsin State Law Library

What's New – Connie Von Der Heide

May 1 is Law Day

Communities across the country will observe Law Day on May 1. This year's theme, Realizing the Dream: Equality for All, commemorates the 150th anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Join in the celebration! Here's the rundown of events taking place here in Dane County. Check local news outlets for events taking place near you.

Donations to the Professional Clothing Drive

National Library Week Recap

Many people took the opportunity to Connect @ the Law Library during our National Library Week activities the week of April 15.

Our Professional Clothing Drive was a success. Over 80 pieces of career-type clothing collected throughout the week were donated to the ongoing professional clothing drive of the Public Service Committee of the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Wisconsin. The committee works with local organizations that provide assistance to job seekers.

Several people attended our Google Hangout sessions to learn more about the WSLL web site. Couldn't make it? You can still view the session on our Youtube channel! And both library users and library staff took advantage of WestlawNext training sessions to become familiar with this new Westlaw interface now available on our public PCs.

Upcoming Classes

In our May 14th class, learn what HeinOnline has to offer and how you may access this subscription service for free at the library or anywhere you need it. With access to full-text law reviews and bar journals, primary federal law, congressional and federal agency documents, and sources of federal legislative history -- this database is too good to be missed.

"I need the legislative history of a Wisconsin statute. Where do I start? What do I do?" Get answers to these questions and more by attending our June 18th class, Researching Wisconsin Legislative History: Sources and Strategies. Participants will look at the primary resources used to research Wisconsin legislative history, navigate the online Wisconsin legislative drafting files, and learn some helpful tips and tricks along the way.

For details and registration, please visit our Classes page.

MLRC Staff News

MLRC bids farewell to library assistant Nicholas Becht, who has accepted a paralegal position with a Milwaukee intellectual property law firm. Congratulations and our very best wishes, Nick. And, we're pleased to announce that Kellee Selden Huston has rejoined the staff. Welcome back, Kellee!

Librarians Speak Out

Devin Rogers, WSLL Cataloger, recently participated in an event for students at the UW School of Library & Information Studies (SLIS), where she and five other librarians from a variety of work settings shared their experiences as new professionals in the field and provided tips for job hunting. A Q&A panel session was followed by smaller group discussions and pizza.

In March, Connie Von Der Heide, Director of Reference & Outreach Services, and Julie Tessmer, State Law Librarian, presented "May I Help You? Legal Information Sources for Pro Se Litigants" at Wisconsin clerk of courts training programs in Madison and Eau Claire.

In April, Connie Von Der Heide demonstrated a variety of low and no-cost online legal research tools to 2L and 3L students in UW Law School Professor Gretchen Viney's Lawyering Skills class.

WSLL hosted the April meeting of the Wisconsin State Agency Librarians, during which Heidi Yelk, Reference & Electronic Services Librarian, Carol Hassler, Web Services Librarian, and Connie Von Der Heide spoke about WSLL's legal research training program and educational outreach to Wisconsin judges, attorneys, and public librarians.

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This Just In… – Pete Boll

Updated! Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations, 10th ed., by Bruce Hopkins.
John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2011, with new 2013 supplement.
WSLL Call Number KF 6449 .H6 2011

Tax-exempt nonprofit organizations are subject to a complex set of rules and regulations. Written in plain English, this book helps those organizations keep up to date. Highlights of the 2013 cumulative supplement include discussions of numerous recent IRS private letter rulings, with particular emphasis on:

• Application of the private benefit and commerciality doctrines
• Church status and governance
• The private inurement doctrine
• Nonqualification of entities seeking to be exempt business leagues
• Use of for-profit subsidiaries

New Edition! How Arbitration Works, 7th edition, by Frank Elkouri.
Bloomberg BNA/ American Bar Association, 2012.
WSLL Call Number KF 3424 .E53 2012

Long considered by labor law and dispute resolution professionals to be the standard treatise on labor arbitration, this new edition provides additional analysis and incorporates major points of interest to labor relations practitioners. It includes citations to hundreds of recent arbitration awards as well as references to important judicial decisions, academic and professional commentary, administrative agency regulations and opinions, and federal and state legislation. These critical topics are covered in depth:

• Arbitrators' consideration of external law in labor arbitration
• Legislation and litigation developing standards for evidentiary privilege as it relates to union shop stewards
• Arbitrators' views on threats and violence
• Reconsideration of the continued viability of the plain meaning rule
• New case law on the unauthorized practice of law as it relates to labor arbitration
• Revision of the discussion of state and local government arbitration and interest arbitration in light of recent changes in state law

See our latest New Titles list for a list of new books and other resources.

For assistance in accessing these or other resources, please contact our Reference Desk.

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Tech Tip in Brief – Heidi Yelk

Bonus – 2 tips this month!

"CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" Loud TV Commercials

You may have heard that television advertisements are now required to be at or around the same volume level as the television program they are interrupting. How is that working for you? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has established a website to take violation complaints. Visit www.fcc.gov/complaints to submit a report.

For more information, see Loud Commercials and the CALM Act from the FCC, and the Final Rule published in the Federal Register.

WestlawNext User Tip: Narrowing Search Results

As noted last month, the Wisconsin State Law Library is now offering free access to WestlawNext on our public PC's at all three of our locations.

One of the defining features of WestlawNext is the global search – which means you can search across all available West legal databases with just a single query. Depending on your search, this can yield a great number of results, so here are two easy ways to narrow down those results for better search precision.

Filtering

Filtering may be used after clicking on a category within search results. For example, the graphic below shows some of the results for a search on "Daubert rule evidence." In the left sidebar, see that I've chosen to display only the results in the category called "Secondary Sources." Another helpful feature of WestlawNext is the document count indicator. The numbers to the right of the category names indicate how many documents, or results, are in each category. In this case, there are 7,024 "secondary source" items.

To narrow down those 7,000+ "secondary source" items, I can use the other filtering aids in that same left sidebar. For example, under Jurisdiction, if I check the Federal box my results will narrow to 103 documents. Results can also be narrowed by date, publication type, publication name, and more.

Search within Results

In the left sidebar above, there's also a "Search within results" box. This is another means of precision searching. In the example shown below, I've used the "search within results" box to search the phrase "technical expert," and then I restricted the results even further by checking the box in front of "Legal Newspapers and Newsletters," to display only the items in that publication type. As you can see, that has narrowed my results from over 7,000 "secondary source" documents to just seven.

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WSLL Recommends: Law of Electronic Commerce

As the volume of trade accomplished through electronic means continues to skyrocket, this area of the law is also developing and evolving at a staggering rate. To help practitioners keep pace with new cases, statutes, regulations, proposals, commentaries, and model laws, authors Jane Kaufman Winn and Benjamin Wright provide guidance on the implications of communications technology for both consumer and commercial transactions, as well as in the workplace.

The fourth edition of The Law of Electronic Commerce has been completely revised to reflect the explosive growth of the internet and the one-to-many network model that has replaced older forms of electronic commerce. Readers will find practice pointers and in-depth analysis of:

• Electronic contracting
• Electronic payments and lending
• Intellectual property rights and rights in data
• Privacy and collections of data
• E-business regulation, including antitrust, trade practices, securities, and banking
• Taxation of electronic commerce
• Computer crime and computer security
• Electronic records in litigation, including authentication and the best evidence rule
• Employer liability with regard to electronic communications and devices in the workplace
• Developing a records management program
• Liability of service providers

Author Wright also maintains both a blog and a Google+ page. His recent posts include:

• How to Confiscate a Mobile Device
• Attorney-Client Confidentiality: Data Security Breach
• Taxes, Regulation and E-Commerce Innovation
• Corporate E-mail Archives: Unwanted Liability or Searchable Asset?
• Negotiating By Way of the Cloud Gathering Mobile Legal Evidence

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Odds N Endings – Amy Crowder

Happy 165th Birthday, Wisconsin!

On May 29th 1848, Wisconsin became the 30th state to enter the Union.

New Look for Wisconsin History

Speaking of historical events, the Wisconsin Historical Society's website is undergoing a transformation and you can try out the preview site.

The new website offers a user-friendly design and organization structure, based on broad categories where people visit the most:

• Research Your Family History where you can search pre-1907 birth, death and marriage records, newspaper clippings, census records and civil war records.
• Visit Fun Wisconsin Historic Sites and Museums to plan your trip to one of Wisconsin's sites, be sure to check the events calendar for special history events, lectures and tours.
• Teach and Learn Wisconsin History with ready-to-use lesson plans, field trip itineraries, biographies published by the Society, and the 4th grade textbook "Wisconsin: Our State, Our Story".
• Preserve Your Homes and Properties which includes the National Register of Historic Places and the Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory.
• Explore Our Collections, did you know the Wisconsin Historical Society has the largest North American Heritage Collection next to the Library of Congress?

The Wisconsin Historical Society's preview site is in "constant development" and new content is being added continuously. Visit the preview site today and take advantage of the opportunity to submit feedback and support.

Housing Law Seminars

Landlords, tenants, and attorneys who represent them may be interested in attending one of the upcoming Housing Law Seminars being offered in various Wisconsin cities by the Tenant Resource Center, to learn more about recent changes in Wisconsin landlord/tenant law. Attorneys can earn CLE credit. Visit the Center's website to register for one of these events occurring in the month of May.

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