Latest & Greatest - Continuing Legal Education Resources

Have you checked out our CLEs Lately? If not, you should. Harris County Law Library is home to hundreds of volumes of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) coursebooks published annually by the State Bar of Texas. These resources are often overlooked as a form of research, but they can provide valuable insights into a particular area of law. They typically include legislative updates, focused discussions regarding specific issues, court trends, and recent case law developments. The articles are written by experienced attorneys who are recognized experts in their field and regularly practice in that area.

The library collects CLE materials for many subject areas, including family law, wills, trusts, & probate, employment law, litigation, real estate law, criminal law, and much more. Just look at our catalog to see what we have. Coursebooks usually hit the shelves at the beginning of the year following the year in which they are published. This means that you can now find 2016 course materials in our library.

For those of you who may not have visited our library in a while or for those of you who are regular visitors who may not have noticed, we have rearranged and moved our CLE materials. All CLE resources, including the criminal law coursebooks, are now shelved in one location of the library. Also, in an effort to make the collection more accessible, we have aligned our CLE categories to more closely match those set out by the Texas State Bar and the various law sections comprising the Houston Bar Association. Thus, some of our familiar categories may have a new name. For example, estate planning coursebooks have been moved to a new category: Probate, Estates, & Trusts, and DTPA materials are shelved in the Commercial and Consumer Law section. If you have any trouble locating a particular topic or are wondering whether we have a particular resource, just ask one of our helpful librarians for assistance.

In addition, we have added the tables of contents of the CLE coursebooks to our library catalog. So, if you are looking for a specific presentation or a particular topic, you can now search our catalog to see if we have it. The contents are included on CLEs from 2014 to present.

Latest & Greatest – The Copyright Librarian: A Practical Handbook

By Linda Frederiksen

Published by Chandos Publishing

Z 649 .L53 F74 2016

Suppose a patron or professor or lawyer wants to photocopy an entire chapter of a multi-volume treatise. Can he? Is such copying considered fair use? Perhaps. Ask the copyright librarian; she will know. Ask the copyright librarian? Huh? Who's that? Look at it this way: you know what copyright is (well at least theoretically) and you know what a librarian is. Putting the two together results in a copyright librarian or a copyright specialist or as the author terms it, an information professional who educates others about the “ethical use and best practices surrounding copyrighted materials.”

In her book, The Copyright Librarian: A Practical Handbook, Linda Frederiksen points out that as the intermediary between the creators of information and the users of that information, librarians should be well-versed in copyright laws as to know and understand when an infringement of a creator’s copyright has occurred or to provide guidance when faced with a copyright dilemma. Considering the confusing, complex, and often ambiguous, nature of copyright laws, the task is far from simple and incredibly daunting. The Copyright Librarian is not a book for those seeking an explanation of the law of copyright but rather is intended for librarians and information professionals who are interested in becoming a specialist in the field of copyright, thereby enabling them to respond to questions about copyright and how it affects the use of information. The author describes how copyright is necessarily intertwined in library functions, from acquisitions and collection development to cataloging and circulation. She further explains how a librarian interested in copyright can acquire the necessary knowledge to become a specialist through professional development, continuing education, and current awareness and delineates what a copyright librarian ought to know.

If this a field that you would like to explore further, come to the Harris County Law Library and have a look at The Copyright Librarian: A Practical Handbook. Perhaps you can get in on the ground floor of this emerging specialization.

Registration Open for Legal Tech Institute CLE

Register today for our upcoming Legal Tech Institute training session! On Thursday, April 27, 12pm - 1pm, our Westlaw representative will lead a training session on family law resources available for free on the Law Library's Westlaw computers. Texas attorneys can earn 1.0 hour CLE credit and all who are interested in learning more about free access to Westlaw at the Law Library are welcome to attend.

For more information and to register, visit the Legal Tech Institute Course Catalog.

Visiting the U.S. Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit Library System - Houston Satellite

March is Federal Practice Resource Month at the Harris County Law Library. Throughout the month we are featuring some of the federal practice legal materials found in our collection. We are also calling attention to a select few online resources, including the Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys.  Law Library staff are always available at the reference desk to help in using any of these materials.

Another helpful resource is the satellite branch of the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit Library System, located right here in Houston at 515 Rusk.  This Satellite Library, open to the public, is a valuable resource for researching federal legal issues and it's well-worth a visit for those working in federal law.

You can learn about the Satellite Library's services and guidelines using the Visitors' Guide to the U.S. Courts Library in Houston, Texas.  Many of the sources available in the Harris County Law Library collection are also available at the Fifth Circuit Library, but the staff's knowledge and expertise regarding the federal judiciary may add even more value to your research. Federal law is their specialty, and they are happy to help you access the resources you need. The Houston Satellite is also a United States Federal Depository Library, where government publications, including a selection of official sources of our nation's primary legal documents, are housed.