October Link Roundup

FDsys Website to be Retired This December	Links to additional info on the transition from the GPO’s Federal Digital System (“FDsys”) to Gov Info. FYI (for those of you who’ve somehow made it this far without hearing the news): FDsys will be fully retired this December!
The FY2019-2023 Strategic Plan of the Library of Congress	The Library of Congress announced exciting new changes to put “. . . users first.” Click the link to learn more about plans for “. . . expanding access and enhancing services, while applying data and optimizing resources.”
Try the New Experimental Congress.gov Chrome Browser Extension	A new open source Google Chrome browser extension (available for download at the link) offers the ability to help ” . . . quickly discover the primary source” of legislation discussed in news stories. By highlighting a bill’s citation on a webpage, the extension will bring a user to the bill summary’s landing page on Congress.gov. Because the extension is still in beta, it’s not yet available on the Google Chrome Web store (hence the download).
	In an email sent by Rita Young (and initially spotted by Karen Shepherd), the SLA Solo Librarians Division & Route 66 Chapter presented a session called, “Challenges of Being an Embedded Librarian.” If you’re reading about this for the first time in the Monthly Recap posted on the wplla.org website, you’ve missed it. But if any WPLLA member attended, please reach out to let us know what you thought!
5 Free JPG to PDF Converters: Combine Images Easily Into PDFs	If you need to convert an image file to a .pdf, try one of these free websites or services that can help you with the task! Options include JPG2pdf.com, iLovePDF.com, JPG to PDF converter for Mac & Windows, SmallPDF.com, and PDFCandy.com. Click the link for more info on each one.
Harvard Political Review – The 21st Century Library	Comparing the traditional memory (or misconception) of the library to the contemporary version (one filled with “. . . students consumed by laptops” and librarians helping patrons “. . . access databases, not . . . retrieve documents”), this Harvard Political Review article, linked by beSpacific, denounces the perceived obsolescence of libraries and instead explains how they’ve evolved to become important in our modern and ever-changing world.
How to Set Follow-up Reminders for Email in Outlook	If your Outlook 2016 email account “. . . is set up with the IMAP protocol rather than POP3 or Exchange Server,” you may have difficulty flagging a message for follow-up or setting an email reminder for yourself. Review this blog post at Attorney at Work for a step-by-step instruction on how to set reminders by turning Outlook emails into tasks.
	WPLLA member Dr. Joel Fishman forwarded an important announcement from HeinOnline: the U.S. Congressional Serial Set is now available. Any subscriber to the U.S. Academic Core+ package has access to this content at no extra charge, courtesy of the subscription.
New Bots From DoNotPay Includes One That Lets You Sue In Any Small Claims Court At The Press Of A Button	DoNotPay (discussed in an October 18, 2018 blog post on the WPLLA.org website) has launched several new “. . . legal and consumer-protection bots, including one “. . . that will enable individuals to file an action in any small claims court in the United States.”
TECH THURSDAY: PASSWORD MANAGERS	The Cleveland Law Library links to PCMag.com to identify the best free password managers.
American democracy is fracturing. Libraries say they know how to help	Defenders of U.S. public libraries claim that “. . . in a fractured society, libraries are a crucial way to fight the ravages of scorched earth partisanship, rising social discord, and educational inequalities.”
What’s new to Congress.gov in October?	There are several new enhancements to Congress.gov, including an Advanced Legislation Search which allows users to see all names associated with a Committee and a Search Results Navigation improvement that lists all amendments for a specific bill.
New GODORT website	Though the GODORT wiki is no longer being updated, the main GODORT website just got a new makeover! More pages will be added in the upcoming weeks, but feel free to click through to get a feel for the new experience.
Appeals Court Says Georgia’s Laws (Including Annotations) Are Not Protected By Copyright And Free To Share	Quoting a post from techdirt, beSpacific notes that “[t]he 11th Circuit appeals court has just overturned a lower court ruling and said that Georgia’s laws, including annotations, are not covered by copyright, and it is not infringing to post them online.” This in-depth post gives a thoughtful backstory to the saga, complete with multiple links.
100 Websites That Shaped The Internet As We Know It	beSpacific links to a Gizmodo article that attempts to define “. . . a canon of the most significant websites of all time.” Some of the sites on the list are “cesspools” and the authors don’t include apps or services; however, this list serves as a pretty good “. . . evaluation of power and who has seized it.”
12 Authors Write About the Libraries They Love	“The New York Times asked 12 authors to describe their local public libraries or share a memory of a library from their past.”
LC – Foreign Law Web Archives	In a significant compilation first identified at The Signal and later defined in this beSpacific post, experts discuss significant Library of Congress collections, including the Foreign Law Web Archive (“. . . comprised of foreign legal materials, including online gazettes and judicial websites”).
ABA ethics opinion offers guidance on data breaches	“Lawyers have to safeguard client data and notify clients of a data breach, and the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has issued a formal opinion that reaffirms that duty.” This beSpacific post links to Formal Opinion 483, as well as several other opinions and posts to provide background information and bolster the framework of the new opinion.
US midterm elections: A guide to everything you need to know	Linking to multiple articles posted by CNN, beSpacific provides information on the upcoming midterm elections.
WIPO Lex provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property	WIPO Lex, is a “. . . a global database that provides free of charge access to legal information on intellectual property (IP) such as treaties administered by WIPO.” Because WIPO is a specialized Agency of the United Nations, it is required to make intellectual property information available to the public. WIPO Lex “. . . also covers IP legal information of the Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO).”
GPO issues digital release of statue compilations	The U.S. Government Publishing Office (“GPO”) recently released 40 statute compilations as part of a pilot program on the website govinfo; “[t]hese publications are compilations of public laws that either do not appear in the U.S. Code or that have been classified to a title of the U.S. Code that has not been enacted into positive law.” Expect additional statute compilations on the site in the next few months. Later, the GPO will “. . . convert legacy Statute Compilations file formats into United States Legislative Markup (USLM) XML and provide access to those files as bulk data.”
Navigating Law Librarianship While Black: A Week in the Life of a Black Female Law Librarian	In a short yet poignant paper, three law librarians discuss a myriad of micro-aggressions that people of color, and specifically law librarians, suffer due to pervasive implicit biases. WPLLA member Joel Fishman also thoughtfully provided the paper as a /pdf attachment to the email, for those unable to visit the website.
Statistics and Academic Law Library Survival	Cross-posted from The RIPS Law Librarian Blog, beSpacific posts inspirational words from a law librarian about the future of law and new opportunities for reinvention.
The Caselaw Access Project expands public access to US law	Per beSpacific, the Caselaw Access Project (“CAP”) makes “. . . all published U.S. court decisions freely available to the public online.” The decisions are digitized from a collection housed at the Harvard Law Library. The information discussed on the blog post links to the scope and limits of the project, digitization specs, and usage and access rules, among others.

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