Professor James Edward Maule of Villanova University School of Law has written a thoughtful post about blogging and law professors, in which he argues that "it appears that the so-called traditionalists are beginning to sense the threat to their way of academic life that blogs, and technology generally, pose."  Professor Maule also authored an earlier post on blogging in academia if you're interested in his earlier musings on the topic.  The National Law Journal also has a lengthy article on blogging and law professors entitled "Blogging Law Profs Assault Ivory Tower."  According to the article's author, at least 182 law professors are also blog authors, and the law schools at University of Chicago and UCLA have the highest number of blogging law professors.

A student working on a cite-check asked us to decipher the abbreviations that appear after different versions of a piece of federal legislation in THOMAS search results.  (For those of you wondering what THOMAS is, it’s a Library of Congress website that compiles a wide variety of federal legislative information, including legislation, House and Senate committee reports, the Congressional Record, and more -- most of it is available in PDF format from the Government Printing Office.)  For example, if you search for H.R. 2520 on THOMAS in the records of the current session of Congress, you will see search results that look like this:

1.  Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 (Received in Senate from House) H.R. 2520.RDS

2.  Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 (Placed on Calendar in Senate) H.R. 2520.PCS

The letters that are tacked on to the end of the bill number (RDS and PCS) simply represent the different versions of the bill.  According to the Library of Congress, the meaning of these extensions "is largely explained in the preceding parentheses."  Thus, "PCS" stands for "placed on calendar in Senate," and "RDS" stands for "received in Senate from House."  Thanks to THOMAS for taking the time to create a useful and informative "Help" page!

The MPRE is coming up in mid-March, and we’re starting to get questions about MPRE study aids at the reference desk.  Our research guide, Guide to Bar Exam Resources, can be found online on our ClaraNet Page, and it has a section on Heafey’s MPRE study resources.  As noted in the research guide, we have a copy of MPRE Sample Questions V and MPRE Sample Questions VI (the latest set of sample questions from NCBE) in the Stauffer Collection.  You can also register to access a free online copy of an MPRE sample exam with an answer key at the NCBE website.  Good luck to everyone who is taking the MPRE on March 11!

The House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations held a hearing last week on "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?".  The hearing featured testimony from human rights and free speech advocates, such as Radio Free Asia and Human Rights in China.  Most of the American search engine companies doing business in China also testified, including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! Inc.  If you click on the link above, you can access a webcast of the hearing as well as PDF copies of all of the hearing testimony.

Enter our Heafey Headnotes trivia contest for a chance to win Barnes & Noble or Starbucks gift certificates!  Simply open and print the contest from this page or pick up a copy in Heafey Law Library.  Complete all of the questions, then submit your entry at the Reference Desk by Friday, March 10.  Remember to include your name and email address on the contest form. Once we determine that you've submitted complete and correct answers, we'll enter your name in a drawing for exciting prizes!

Indiana University School of Law will host a symposium, "The Next Generation of Law School Rankings," on April 15, 2006.  The one-day symposium is free and open to the public.  According to the conference organizers:

The goal of this symposium is to deepen our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education. The participants in this symposium will examine the need for law school rankings; the effects of rankings on legal education; and the various new approaches to addressing the public’s insatiable demand for ever more and increasingly sophisticated rankings, which permeate not only legal education but also all aspects of American life.

The online version of the Wall Street Journal published an excellent story this week on the viability of law reviews, which is a "must-read" for law review editors and faculty.  According to the article, "law professors are looking beyond law reviews, moving relevant and timely commentary to the Internet and blogosphere."  As the article points out, the academic legal community is starting to take aim at law reviews.  By now, most of us have read Richard Posner’s piece, "Against the Law Reviews," in which he states that "too many articles are too long, too dull, and too heavily annotated, and . . . many interdisciplinary articles are published that have no merit at all."  And Professor Rosa Brooks at the University of Virginia asked in a recent LawCulture post, "Is there any good reason, post-tenure, not to eschew law reviews for books and other less stultifying genres, on the theory that people beyond my immediate family may then read what I write?"  Some journals are responding by moving content online, developing blog-like online communities such as The Pocket Part, and insisting on shorter articles.  I don’t think that the journals will vanish quickly -- after all, scholarly publications are part of law school tradition, and law schools tend to move fairly slowly when it comes to dispensing with traditional features of the law school experience.  However, I do believe that scholarly journals are going to have to become more tech-savvy if they want to appeal to a wider audience.  It seems like discussing some of the measures described in this article would be a great place to start.  

LLRX features a useful article this month on practical web strategies for attorneys, but these tools are really for anyone who spends a significant time doing Internet research.  Frederick Faulkner IV describes how to maximize your web browsing experience by using toolbars, bookmarklets, and extensions.

PrawfsBlawg’s guest blogger, Julian Ku, has an interesting post about Hofstra’s recent decision to require first-year law students to take a course in international and comparative law called "Transnational Law."  The post spurred an interesting discussion in the comments about the wisdom of Hofstra’s decision that’s worth reading.   

The ever-useful Inter Alia highlights blackprof.com in its Blawg of the Day category this week, which is a blawg co-authored by African-American law professors from across the country.  This blawg tackles both legal and cultural issues, and also features an advice column, Ask Mom!, just for professors or wannabe professors.