Due to inclement weather, Big Data and Big Challenges for Law and Legal Information: Georgetown Law Library - A Symposium in Celebration of 125 Years will not take place on Monday, October 29. Please check the Georgetown Law Library blog and the symposium webpage in the days to come for any information on a rescheduled event.

Georgetown College         October 20^th, 1882  

 My Dear Will,

....This does not come entirely from your delay in writing to me according to promise, but partly from the disappointment of my hopes of obtaining an early opportunity to experiment on your electric light.  I wrote Mr. Edison during the summer, informing him of annihilating his light on the market, and asking him (very modestly, you will say) for the means of experimenting with that intention...I was expecting to have abundance of time for experiment this year, but the classes had scarce got fairly underway, when Father Doonan asked me if I could manage to take the English Poets and Rhetoricians...

      -J.H. Richards, S.J.

The above letter was addressed to William Law McLaughlin, who graduated from Georgetown Law in 1884. We don't know if anything came of his electric light experiment, but after obtaining his law degree William returned to Deadwood in the Dakota Territory to practice law with his father Judge Daniel McLaughlin.  In 1886, William is elected district attorney for the county of Lawrence.  He also appears as defense attorney on several murder trials, notably the trial of Charles Brown for the murder of Mrs. L.P. Stone in 1887 and for the defense of Two Sticks a Brule Sioux Indian Chief on trial for the murder of four cowboys in 1893.  He practiced law in Deadwood until his death in 1911.

This letter is part of the McLaughlin Brothers' Papers, a collection of letters to William and his brother Daniel while they studied at Georgetown over the period 1879-1887.  The McLaughlin Brothers' Papers are available for research.  For more information please contact, Hannah Miller, Manuscripts Librarian at 202/662-6602 or htm@law.georgetown.edu.

Would you like to improve your online legal research skills? The Library is offering two classes for any interested LLM or JD students. These are the same classes we provide to the first-year JD students in the Legal Research and Writing classes.  In the “Terms and Connectors” class you will learn the nuances of terms and connectors (Boolean) searching and how to execute an effective search on WestlawNext and Lexis Advance. In the “Research Strategies” class students will learn different research strategies and how to formulate and follow a research plan.

To sign up for a class, please click on a date and time below or visit our Legal Research Classes page.  Each class is offered 3 times to accommodate schedules. The sessions are held in the Williams Library CLC (Computer Learning Center) and last 55 minutes. If you have any questions, please contact the Reference Desk.

Terms and Connectors Searching Class:
• Wednesday Oct. 24, 5:00pm
• Friday Oct. 26, 10:00am
• Friday Oct. 26, 12:00pm

Research Strategies Class:
• Wednesday Nov. 7, 5:00pm
• Friday Nov. 9, 10:00am
• Friday Nov. 9, 12:00pm

The Georgetown Law Library is currently accepting applications for membership on the 2012-2013 Student Library Advisory Board. The Board meets periodically throughout the academic year to discuss library services and resources. Members of the Student Library Advisory Board have the opportunity to learn more about the library and provide feedback on new and existing programs and initiatives.

All students are eligible and encouraged to apply. To submit an application, please visit http://apps.law.georgetown.edu/forms/?formid=589. The deadline is Friday, October 26, at 5pm.

For questions about the Student Library Advisory Board, contact Morgan Stoddard, Reference Librarian, Georgetown Law Library, mms237@law.georgetown.edu, (202) 661-6598.

In September, the Library of Congress, in collaboration with the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives and the Government Printing Office (GPO), unveiled a new free beta website for accessing federal legislative information: Congress.gov. 

The new website will incorporate the resources researchers have come to rely on from THOMAS, the Library of Congress’ public legislative website and Legislative Information Systems (LIS), Congress’ internal website. The Congress.gov website will be in beta form for approximately one year as they work to add materials (e.g., Congressional Record, committee reports, nominations, treaties and communications) and seek user feedback. Both THOMAS and LIS will continue to be available while Congress.gov is in development.

Currently the Congress.gov site includes federal bills and bill status and summary information (2001-current) and member profiles (complete coverage 1973-current; selective coverage 1947-1972), but more documents will be added over time. See Coverage Dates for Legislative Information  for a comparison of what is available on Congress.gov and THOMAS.gov. The new beta site was developed using best practices for creating a comprehensive and user-friendly system for searching and displaying information on various platforms, including mobile devices.

Georgetown Law Library – A Symposium in Celebration of 125 Years

Monday, October 29, 2012 (8:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.)
Georgetown University Law Center - Gewirz 12th Floor

"Big data" is a term perhaps too narrow for the topic: the size of data sets is not the key to big data issues. Rather, society is changing because of our growing ability to discover meaning by connecting points of information electronically, across multiple, often unrelated, sources. When thinking of quantitative decision making, big data may include "small data," but lots of it.

This conference will examine the public good and collective harms that follow from the large-scale aggregation of information from public and private sources. During the course of the day, panelists will also examine how scholars, researchers, and information professionals manage very large or complex data sets to distill meaning and develop public policy.

If you'd like to attend the symposium, please register here to reserve a place as attendance is limited. You may also view the symposium agenda online.

Starting this week, the Library has a New Books display in Williams Library Reading Room. Look for the booktruck of new titles just inside the doors to the Reading Room. New books will be added to the booktruck Monday through Thursday. After a few days in the Reading Room the books will be shelved in their permanent locations in Williams or Wolff Library. You’ll find books about various legal topics, some with a U.S. law focus and others with a foreign or international law focus. We also acquire popular reading materials for the Loewinger Lounge collection. Examples of some new titles include: The Making of Lee Boyd Malvo: the D.C. Sniper, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, and Maritime Piracy. Please feel free to browse and take books you are interested in to the Circulation Desk for checkout. A complete list of new titles added to the Library each month is available online.