Here’s an update from, Katrina Stierholz, Director of Library and Research Information Services at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, on what’s new in FRASER  (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research).

Federal Banking Laws and Reports

• A compilation of major Federal banking documents from 1780 to 1912. It includes founding documents for the Bank of North America (1781), ordinances for the First and Second Bank of the United States (1791, 1816) as well as reports and proceedings. It was published for the 50th anniversary of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency in 1963.

Penn Central Failure and the Role of Financial Institutions

• Five staff reports of the U.S. House Committee on Banking and Currency examine the collapse of the Penn Central Transportation Company, the single largest bankruptcy declaration in U.S. history at the time.

Operation of the National and Federal Reserve Banking Systems

• A seven-part hearing from 1931, before a subcommittee of the Committee on Banking and Currency, U.S. Senate, to “inquire into the banking situation of the country.”  Hearing is pursuant to Senate Resolution 71: to make a complete survey of the administration of National and Federal Reserve banking systems.

Shadow Open Market Committee Policy Statements (1973-1997)

• The Shadow Open Market Committee (SOMC), an independent organization with members from academic institutions and private organizations, was founded by Professors Karl Brunner of the University of Rochester and Allan Meltzer of Carnegie-Mellon.  Its first semi-annual meeting was held on September 14, 1973.  The objective was to evaluate the policy choices and actions of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC).  Since 1973, the SOMC has met semi-annually to discuss economic policy.

Public Statements of Marriner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Board of Governors (1934-1948)

Public Statements of the Members of the Board of Governors.  Eccles (1948-1951)

Federal Reserve Bulletin, Now available from 1915-2003.

As many of the cite-checkers on our journals can attest to, it is not always easy to find old newspapers.  The Law Library has current issues, and maybe a week back for several papers, but older materials can be quite difficult to find.  Some papers keep wonderful archives—if you want the New York Times, for example, they have a nice archive on their own website—you can get from 1981 for free (not in PDF), from 1922-1980 in PDF for a price, and from 1851-1922 in PDF for free.  If you really need a PDF you may need to go looking through microfiche at the Wells Library, or it is possible that it is part of the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. 

For really old materials, though, the Library of Congress has a website called “Chronicling America.”  The site includes information about US newspapers back to 1690, and PDFs of newspapers from select states from 1880-1922.  You may not often need a newspaper article from 1899, but even if you are not looking for a specific piece it is a very interesting website to browse.  Even the advertisements in these newspapers are a little slice of history.  Go take a look!

For many years one of the best places to go for government documents has been the Government Printing Office website, GPO Access.  But recently GPO has been in the process of rolling out a new website, FDsys. At the moment both sites are up, so many legal researchers have simply continued to use GPO Access.  It sounds like once the transition is completed, though, GPO Access will no longer be updated.  So how does the new FDsys stack up?  You can read a short review by Peggy Garvin in LLRX.  We here at the law library have our own reviewing to do, but this is a good start.  Thanks to the Law Librarian Blog for passing this along.

One of the best places to go when you are doing basic, state-level research, are state government websites.  Usually government websites are pretty good, but they all have their strengths and weaknesses.  Recently, Marc Holzer, Aroon Manoharan, Robert Shick, and Genie Stowers took stock of those strengths and weaknesses in the U.S. States E-Governance Report (2008)—An Assessment of State Government Websites. The report evaluates state government websites based on content, security, and usability.  The Indiana State website is a very useful resource, and in fact it ranks fifth on the list of overall best (After Maine, Oregon, Utah, and South Carolina).  We are first in the Midwest.  Take a look!  If you ever find yourself needing to look for state information, it’s good to know what kind of resources you have available to you.

Thanks to the beSpacific blog for posting this.

HeinOnline, the best place to go for journals and law reviews and many other sources, is offering periodical webinars on their resources.  Next Wednesday they will be hosting a course on using Hein for the Code of Federal Regulations.  It never hurts to be up to date on how to use legal research tools, so if you would like to register for this new webinar (at either 10AM or 2PM), or view the previous one, check out the HeinOnline Weblog.

July 1st is the traditional effective date for most new laws in Indiana.  This year Gov. Daniels signed about 180 bills into law.  The law that has been getting the most press, of course, is the state budget, which was came so close to the deadline for passage that some people were worried that there would be a state government shutdown.  It did pass, late yesterday.  There are other interesting laws newly minted today, though.  One of the big ones that is that teenagers may now no longer use their cell phones while driving, unless it is an emergency call. Other laws address school discipline, protections for homeowners, identity theft, feticide, and puppy mills, among others.  You can get highlights of the new laws from the IndyStar, the Tristate Homepage, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, or Indiana’s News Center.  If you are feeling particularly ambitious you could head over to IN.gov to look at their information on the new budget. Or just look at the IndyStar’s break down of biggest winners and losers.

Each year the ABA TECHSHOW presents all the newest and best of legal technology to the world. And each year they end with a guide to 60 Sites in 60 Minutes. Attorneys and panelists at the show share their favorite internet sites. Some of the websites are law related, some of them are helpful in general, and some of them let you launch kittens into explosives. No matter what you are looking for there is probably something there for you, especially as the TECHSHOW website houses Hall of Fame lists back to 2001, and complete lists back to 2004 (The Kitten Cannon is 2008, just in case you were wondering.).

We are now nearly five months into the year that President Obama has given to close the Guantanamo Bay facility.  There has been a lot of political back and forth about whether or not this is a good idea, and what to do with the prisoners.  If you are interested, the Council on Foreign Relations has a nice page devoted to legal issues surrounding the closing of Guantanamo, including the legal status of prisoners.  They also cite many other helpful sources, like this Congressional Research Service report. 

Thanks to the Moritz Legal Information Blog for throwing this our way.

Most everyone in the legal world knows about THOMAS, which is the place to go for current legislative information.  Now you can have it come to you!  THOMAS now offers an RSS feed of the Congressional Record Daily Digest.  The Daily Digest is not a page turner in and of itself, but if you are interested in a particular piece of legislation that is currently up in the air it is a great place to go.  It keeps track of House and Senate chamber actions, committee meetings, etc.

The THOMAS RSS feed is one of five feeds offered by the Law Library of Congress.  You can also sign up for Current Legal Topics, the Global Legal Monitor, News & Events, or Webcasts.  Go take a look!

Speaking, as we were yesterday, of knowing your resources, Legal Technology News has posted a review of ten free places to get case law.  These are not only websites it would be good to you to know about, but it is also nice to see some of their strengths and weaknesses pointed out.  Free websites in general are not going to give you the same coverage and ease of searching that West and Lexis will, but you can often use them for a simple problem. Go take a look at the review.  Go take a look at the sources themselves.  Get an idea of which ones are easiest for you to use.  Check their coverage.  You don’t want to find yourself paying for something that you can get for free.